all in one printers

[cameronellis]

i need to but an all in one printer .i have decided to go for an epson not sure why there isnt just black or colour ink do i need magenta ?

[lostboy87]

my girlfriend just bought me a canon pixma mp170 all in one printer for xmas and its amazing.ive just printed all my xmas photos on it and the quality was better than that of a photo developer.this just takes black and colour ink and i would recomend to anyone.

[teash]

The lad bought himself an HP C3180 with his xmas money. �39.99 beltin little set-up and has the ports for sd cards

[rojash]

"not sure why there isnt just black or colour ink do i need magenta"
Colour printers print by mixing the CMYK pigments - Cyan, Magenta,Yellow and Black. Some photo quality printers use two additional colours - Light Cyan and light Magenta.

Cheap printers take two cartridges: a black one and a "colour" one. The colour one actually has 3 ink tanks, one each for CMY. The disadvantage of this type is that if (say) the Cyan one runs out because you've been printing a lot of skies, you have to chuck the entire cartridge away and replace, even though the other two tanks might be full.

Better quality printers have a separate cartridge for each colour.