Printers

[ciphergoth]

I'm looking into buying a printer for the downstairs flat, for printing letters and emails mostly. How do I go about choosing a printer so that I don't get reamed on ink costs?

Comments

[envoy.livejournal.com]

Look into laser printers, really. If you only need black ink printing their cost-per-page can be a fraction of the inkjets. For any printer you look at go look up their cost-per-page, it's amazing how much it can vary.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Thanks - where do I go to look up the cost per page?

[envoy.livejournal.com]

A quick run at Google didn't help much, lots of talk on the topic, but not a lot of figures...

I'd step it out like this:

Figure out of you need color printing or not, 'cause that's a big one. Then figure out how much printing you're going to do. Strangely, if you're only printing very infrequently you might still be better off with a laser printer because inket cartridges dry out over time (a fact that pisses me off *no* end.)

Once you know if you need color or black and white, start looking at individual models and try searching on the model number with cost per page, hopefully that should get you some real numbers.

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

A lot of amazon reviews are quite frank about ink prices.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

Buy a cheap laser printer.
If you don't mind secondhand, a secondhand LaserJet 5 is a good bet. They are very durable and have low operating costs (mine may have been made several years ago, but it's rated for 30000 pages/month, has printed about 50000 in its life, and is still running on the "dunno how much toner there is in this, it's free" toner cartridge I bought it with a couple of years ago).
With all the used HP laserjets, and most other printers, if you print the status and configuration page it will show you the total page count over the life of the printer, to let you spot really hard-worked printers.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm somewhat inclined to go for an HP of some sort. My LaserJet 4 is still going strong and I bought that sometime in the Mesozoic era.

[ravenevermore.livejournal.com]

We have an HP here in our office that is frequently fed with a number of Dead Trees to produce huge amounts of interim reports. They're good sturdy machines. As you guessed, I'm also seconding the suggestion for a cheap laser. Cheaper Per Page, and no ink drying out. One thing to keep in mind. Usually the toner it comes with is a 'half' unit that's only half full. So however long that one lasts you means on average the next one you buy will last you twice as long. Possibly.

[hughe.livejournal.com]

yeh get an HP laser printer. my laserjet 1100 is still on the same toner cartridge it has been on for 5 years. And when it does run out i can get it refilled.

[meta.ath0.com (from livejournal.com)]

Don't go for a new HP. Their quality control in software and hardware went to hell about 5 years ago. People still buy HP mostly because of their reputation before the Carly Fiorina era.

If you need color, Konica Minolta make excellent color laser printers for around $500, and they supply Linux drivers too.

I haven't looked at B&W laser printers much, but I know you can get Brother ones for $99 every now and again on dealmac.

[eqe.livejournal.com]

Having worked at a chips company that was attempting to get a design win in an HP laser printer circa 2004, I can say that this jives with my experience. The chip of ours they were considering was *not* qualified for the task, but our salesdroids was spinning their engineering quite a tale, and they seemed to be buying it. I left before the project really got off the ground so I can't say what became of it.

I quite like my Brother laser printer. I *think* it's the 5250DN but it's not in front of me just now.

[lovingboth]

Possibly stupid question - if the LJ4 is still going (and it was the last one HP made when HP was run by engineers, so it's not surprising) why replace it?

I have a LJIII for b/w stuff and an Deskjet 5150 for colour.

[reddragdiva]

If you can still find an old LaserJet 4MP, I believe they will still be here when even the toilet bowls have been eroded away, and you'll probably still be able to get cartridges.

[conflux.livejournal.com]

As others have said do you need colour? Do you need to print photos?

I found that the cheapest inkjet price per page were the newer Cannon ones when I looked into it 2 years ago. Also look for separate cartridge per colour so you don't have to swap the lot when one colour runs out. It has still just cost me £60 to refill all 6 cartridges after 2 years printing though.

I just gave my old HP LaserJet 4 to David M.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Just a minute - weren't we going to give that cartridge to David to go with the printer? Why would a Laserjet printer have a cartridge to go with it??? Or it it a toner cartridge?

[conflux.livejournal.com]

Yes I got an almost new Laserjet toner cartridge from work when they binned a HP LaserJet 6 printer that I thought might fit the LaserJet 4 we gave David M. So Paul could have that if he gets a HP printer it would fit, as I expect it won't fit the LJ 4.

[mr-purpleduck.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the sort of thing I wanted a printer for (we also wanted to print CVs for batswing. I ended up getting a hp 1022n (http://uk.insight.com/apps/productpresentation/index.php?product_id=HP1022N&nbs_search=C%3D105%26S%3D1031%26M%3DHP%26lang%3Den-gb%26K%3D%262713v%3D1) (link to Insight web site) at the start of last year an it's still on it's first toner cartridge.

Also it being the version with a build it jet direct card means that it work's with linux, MacOS and Windows with no problems. There is also a more expensive duplex version (and also colour other HPs that do colour).

BTW I've found inkjet cartridge's tend to dry out if not used very often.

[kimble.livejournal.com]

If black and white is acceptable, then I swear by second-hand higher-end laser printers. The used lexmark that cost me 100 quid in 2001 saw myself, 36, rho and indeed barakta through university is finally dying from perished paper-feed roller death. It's coming to the end of it's original toner cartridge, so the timing's about right.

barakta and I have just invested in a reconditioned Laserjet 4000 via ebay, for about the same cost (I've yet to collect it). Hopefully that should see us through several more years of not having to think about printers.

Ethernet, speaking postscript and sensible paper-feed arrangements aid the not having to think about printers process, which are the main advantages of an old higher-end pritner vs a brand new cheaper one. Specifically, for us, the ability to work with *nix without pain. YMMV.

If you're thinking inkjets, then go by cartridge cost. ink2u.co.uk (http://www.ink2u.co.uk) are a good source of cartridges. I'd probably steer towards a cheap HP or Lexmark - something which has the print head in the cartridge, so the whole printer isn't written off when the nozzles clog. The way inkjet prices are going, the printer is more-or-less disposable. I have a bad track record with Epson inkjets, though I hear they're well supported in Linux...

[oilrig.livejournal.com]

Lexmark? Cheaper to buy a new printer last time i looked!

Would go for an older HP (my Laserjet 6 is still going after 7? years) Freecycled an old 4000 model that was indestructable too. will have a look round at work and see if there's anything suitable if you like?

[kimble.livejournal.com]

Like I said, our Lexmark has just died after 5 and a half years of faithful service (it would be foolish to buy toner for it even if it was working perfectly, given the age), and I've just bought a Laserjet 4000, with toner, to replace it.

[lovingboth]

The other question is what do you want to do with colour? If it's photos etc you want to keep, look at the fade-resistance - PC Pro's website should have the good articles they've done on this and the cost of printing (including the different papers necessary to get the best results).

Cheap maintenance printers...

[ablueskyboy.livejournal.com]

Buy a pen and a jotter notebook? :)

I think the laser printers are expensive but seem more durable than any of the inkjets I've come accross lately. Either way, you get whipped by the cartriges more than ever these days that buying new printers every time the ink runs out seems more affordable.

[reddragdiva]

I have an expensive six-colour photo printer to print nice photos. I recommend people who aren't printing photos really shouldn't bother with one. If money is an issue, really really don't bother with one.

[thargol.livejournal.com]

As others have said, get a mono laser printer. The extra up front cost will be more than covered in a very short period of time by the extra ink cartridges you won't have to buy with for it. I'd recommend mine (a Lexmark Optra E312), but they don't seem to make it any more, or indeed have much comparable in their current range. Perhaps the E120n, but that's PCL only where the E312 was PostScript as well (important to me, but perhaps not to you). Avoid the basic E120 model, as it's a winprinter.