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To: Sean W. Smith who wrote (6114)	2/8/1999 9:56:00 PM
From: Sean W. Smith	Read Replies (3) of 14778

Spots and All, Photo Printers, Digital Cameras etc..... lemme further wet the appetite... I saw how well my friends HP 722 was printing photos on glossy stock and made me want a printer for the digital camera. His output was very pleasing compared to my HP 660C. Night and Day. Then I started researching photo printers. In this category Hp's are not really close to being top dog. 6/7 color inkjet printers do a better job with color blending. Epson and Lexmark models offer much higher resolution 1440x720 and 1200x600 than the venerable HP 600 DPI technology and more colors. I researched all the manufacturers pages etc, I spent hours reading deja news looking for info. Visted many digital photography web site and more. Pretty Much Consensus is that two inkjets stand above the rest for this purpose: Epson Photo Stylus 700/ and The Photo EX ($180 street) Lexmark 5700 The Epson seems to be the consensus pic for inkjet users. I had seen mention of die sublimation like the HP Photo Smart and Others for simmilar prices looked intruiging. Keep seeing questions and positive comments on a little known Die Sub printer called Alps MD-1300. ~500 retail. I then found some photographers and who had multiple Photo Ex's (these epsons do 11x17") and the Alps and they clearly stated it was the reference they used. One fellow even compares it to an Kodak 8460 ($8000) die sub printer which he owns. now I was interested. So I looked where they sold them and sure enough Comp Usa. Sunday Morning (11AM sharp) I'm waiting at Compusa not to bargain hunt but armed with photo paper and Diskettes hoping to get some sample output from some these cool printers.... Only HP had a salesman to print demos. He printed me a 4x6 on photo paper and I was impressed. It looked more like a photo what I had previously seen. Demo material looked very impressive. Espon Photo 700/EX had some sample output on plain paper and photo paper. Clearly better than the HP Ret II. Compusa wants $269 for the 700, low street is 180. HP Photo Smart is $299 (no idea on low street here). Alps has some book of samples for the MD-5000 ($599) that are just stunning. they 1 sample for the MD-1300 and it was stunning. So now I'm saying to myself "but how will it look when I print with it". Surprised to find the price at $399. $340 low street price. I decide to go for it and ge tto the register and its ONLY $349. Cha Ching... Setup, etc are uneventful except there are so many types of Ink cartriedges and papers and potential ways to damage the thing it appears daunting at first. I go for the gusto. Photo Ink. Photo Paper in Die sub mode. Results are spectacular. Blows away all the inkjet. I can't describe how good they look. you have to see for yourself. Some very slight banding on light continous tone areas. Maybe Dan S. has seen this and can comment further. Then I printed out 6000x4000 tif files and the results to my novice eye are indistinguishable from a photo, THERE ARE NO VISIBLE DOTS everything blends together smoothly like a photograph. The HP Photo Smart output of my pictures can't compare. This product is incredible at its price point. 20+ 8x10 Glossies later I still love it. 10+ min a page though. Anyone looking for a home photo printer needs to put this one on the TOP of the MUST SEE list. This is a not general purpose printer. Its far to slow for anything except presentation quality output but at the it truely excels. A+ alpsusa.com Sean

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