The PC Pro A List: 2000 vs 2010

Posted on 2 Jan 2010 at 00:00

In the final part of his nostalgia-tinged look back at the A List of ten years ago, PC Pro editor Tim Danton remembers the Epson Stylus Photo 750 - and doesn't really miss it.

Inkjet

Epson Stylus Photo 750

Buying an inkjet printer in 2000 wasn’t a straightforward choice. If your priority was churning out text with a few graphics here and there, your safest bet would be an HP DeskJet – something like the venerable 880C, with its four-colour system, which would set you back around £200 inc VAT. But it was fairly shoddy when it came to photos, which is why the Epson Stylus Photo 750 sat atop our A List.

Now this printer struggled on plain paper, both in terms of speed and quality. Indeed, our 25-page text test took a staggering 14mins 53secs to complete, and even then “the edges of the printed fonts suffer from jaggedness”. Switch to coated paper, though, and it was brilliant. Sharp colours, minimal dithering and excellent detail reproduction made it the clear number one choice.

Much has happened in the intervening years, with one obvious factor being plummeting prices at the bottom-end of the scale. Like the DeskJet mentioned above, Epson’s printer cost around £200 inc VAT – the price you’d have to pay for quality. Now, you can walk into Tesco, grab any of the printers on sale for under £50 and expect superior results on both plain paper and photo paper than we got ten years ago.

But that’s not quite true. Because you probably won’t be able to find an inkjet printer, as such, at all. Multifunction devices – which we didn’t even include on our A List back in 2000 – are now the de facto choice. The lure of a photocopier in the home as well as the office has clearly been too strong.

Another big shift we’ve seen is the rise of Canon. A variant of the Canon MP640 all-in-one has been atop the PC Pro A List for more than two years, and little wonder when it combines top-of-the-range scanning, copying and printing – no matter what type of paper (or even optical disc) you print onto. You still need to pay for this quality, though, with an asking price of £145 inc VAT in the same ball park as the A List inkjet printers of yesteryear.

This ends our journey into the A List past, but we’d be fascinated to hear from you. Did you buy any of these products, and if so do you still have fond memories? Let us know by posting a comment below.

Author: Tim Danton

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User comments

Considering how much technology has improved in the last decade (look at the size of that PC and camera), I'm looking forward to the next ten years. I wonder what will be on PC Pro's A-list in 2020?

By pbryanw on 2 Jan 2010

Printer

Didn't buy the A-listed 750, but had the previous model, the Epsom Stylus 660 - I say had - actually still have it, never replaced it to this day.
Admittedly I've not printed anything for a while and the last time I tried, the ink had dried up - but I'm sure (maybe) that if I spend far too much on new ink & waste a lot cleaning it out, it'll still work fine

By greemble on 2 Jan 2010

Loads of room in that PC of 2000! I still prefer CRT monitors, much warmer (physically and screenwise), colours more accurate and solid, much better viewing angles plus I can use any resolution I want. I find them much better for editing photos and producing artwork. To get a LCD, LED monitor anywhere close would cost me four figures so I will have to wait a while for prices to fall and put up with an inferior LCD display until then so current monitor technology is a backward step for me.

By flopsium on 8 Jan 2010

Even more uber geek

techade
should be : tekade
this gives it some old-greek mathematical facet, making it an delicious uber-geek obfuscation.

By dusanjovanovic on 9 Jan 2010

Would be great to compare real performance

For all the massive increase in power, are the systems actually that much faster. It would be really interesting to do comparisons. For example, how long from pressing the power button to having a 20 page word document open on the screen?

By Dannyt on 13 Jan 2010

misleading

"the Apple iPhone 3GS, costs around £1,000 over the course of your contract" just isn't true is it? You need to subtract the airtime part of the contract. On O2 1200 mins sim only = £30 per month. 18 months = £540.
3GS 16GB 1200 mins 18 mths £45 per month + 89.99 handset. total cost £900. handset implicit cost = 900 - 540 = £360.

£360! not "over £1000". And you keeo doing this. Stop it, it's misleading. And it's not even over £1000 total contract, it comes to £900 for the 16GB and £990 for the 32GB. Back to school chaps!

By gavmeister on 8 Feb 2010

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