Time to buy a new printer.

[autowasherfreak]

My old HP finally bit the dust, and it need to get a new one. What brand and models are you using. I've always had good luck with HP, but I've been thinking about trying Canon or Brother.

 

[launderess]

Went With A Commercial Laser

Printer, Xerox Phaser.

Prior to that had a commercial Canon N1000.

Thing with domestic printers is they are sold on the cheap but they get you on the ink.

 

[maytagmark]

I just got a Canon Pixma Mp280, Happy with it so far, It was in the price range I wanted to spend, It was 38.00 at wallyworld,I went in for the cheapest one,it was 29.00,That one only printed,this one is a three in one, so worth the extra nine dollars, I seldom use a printer so the problem with ink is it dries up before I use it all. At that price I figure if ink is too pricy I'll just buy another printer. I don't have a throw away way of thinking but these things are just disposable at these prices these days.

 

[lordkenmore]

A printer choice depends on a person's particular requirements. What is one printing? How much is one printing?

I use older printers, bought used. I'm cheap. Plus once it seemed like they were built to last more or less forever. The only limitations are:
-Color wasn't that great. (I only use black and white, so this isn't an issue for me.)
-Connecting to modern computers might be hard (wiring and driver issues). (I have a special cable that connects old printers to a USB port. Since I use Linux, driver support remains pretty good.)

As for modern printers, the rule I've heard is that cheap printers have the worst per page cost for ink.

The cheapest per page costs are with laser printers. But cheap laser printers are black and white only.

I have heard of many happy Brother laser printer owners. A former roommate had one of their cheapest models, and used it pretty heavily for business use. Printing was pretty good (although I think my older Personal LaserWriter had sharper text). That Brother was also really, really fast--by my standards at least. My roommate printed a page here and there, and the printer never seemed to slow the work flow down.

For inkjets, I have no recent experience. But I've heard of a number of happy Canon owners in recent years.

 

[supersurgilator]

I love my HP, best printer I have owned. I have a color inkject that is about 12 years old now. I always wanted a laser printer, so went online and picked up a used HP laserjet and have had that for several years now. Both operate without any problems.

 

[docker]

A laser printer makes an excellent laminator! Place the document in its sleeve, drop in the printer & open up a blank MS Word document. Hit print and the heat sets the laminate. I usually turn the sleeve over & redo the print.

 

[qualin]

We have three printers which we use.

In my office, I use a Canon multifunction device. It has a B&W laser printer, a scanner and can act as a copier and a fax machine. Does pretty much everything I want and was very reasonably priced.

I also occasionally use a very old 9-pin dot matrix printer when I want to print off very low quality prints on thin paper. The cartridges for it are a little hard to find, but I can order new ink cartridges almost literally a dime a dozen.

My wife is much more demanding. She owns an HP colour laser printer and an HP Inkjet printer. She uses the Inkjet for very high photo-quality prints and uses the Colour laser for everything else, including draft prints.

Here's been my own personal experience...

If you absolutely want the lowest cost per page and I mean the LOWEST cost per page, Dot Matrix printing is the only way to go. However, it's also slow (In comparison to everything else on the market), very noisy, the print quality is crap (Unless you go 24-pin dot matrix, then it's not too bad) but it is REALLY cool to watch...

Barring Dot Matrix, Laser Printers have the lowest cost per page out of all of the printers out there. It doesn't matter if you are printing a little bit or a lot, they still have the lowest cost per page. The only disadvantage laser printers have these days is that they still have a warm up time.

Laser printers have one massive advantage over Inkjet printers, they don't clog up if you don't print for a while. They don't run massive ink-wasting cleaning cycles every few pages and the best part, the toner cartridges, while expensive, usually last around 5,000 pages as opposed to Inkjet cartridges which last 1/10th of that.

For the least amount of fuss and trouble, laser printing is the only way to go.

However, if you like printing photos, then Inkjet still provides a much better amount of quality over Laser printers.

But I'll give you a hint... professionals only use Inkjet printers for two things, large scale plotters and extremely high DPI photo printouts. Laser printers are used for pretty much everything else.

 

[qualin]

Actually, believe it or not, there are companies which still manufacture these..

It's really strange to see a Dot Matrix printer with a USB port on it...

In comparison... for about the same price you can get a laser multifunction device..

http://www.superwarehouse.com/Ricoh_Aficio_SP_1200SF_Multifunction_Laser_Printer/406827/p/1663997

In saying that, I'd buy the Ricoh.. They're a pretty reliable brand.

http://www.superwarehouse.com/Panasonic_KX-P1131E_Dot_Matrix_Printer/KX-P1131E/p/1629158

 

[mattl]

I look at the ink costs and the number of cartridges.  I will NEVER buy a printer with the triple color cartridge, what a waste if only one color is empty.  My current printer is a Canon all in one, and I'm very happy with it, it a Pixima MX860, I'm sure it's been superseded by newer models, but I'm sure they are comparable.  I can get all 4 ink tanks for $20 or so from Swift Ink, pretty good price.

 

That said, if you are doing only B&W I'd get a good basic laser unit, faster print times and often sharper too.

 

[qualin]

Always buy Inkjet printers which use separate tanks, like the CMYK models. It's more cost effective that way. (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black)

 

[autowasherfreak]

I don't do as much printing as I used to. I print mostly recipes from the web, occasionally pictures, job applications, resumes and other stuff. I found one on my local FreeCycle Group and it within walking distance from where I live that I'm going to check out today. It's a Canon multifunction can't remember if it's a 3 in 1 or 4 in 1.

I had a used HP laser jet that I got off of eBay, it worked perfectly for about 2 years, then it developed paper feeding problems.

 

[whirlcool]

I have a HP 1020 Laser printer that I picked up on offer from Office Depot about 4 years ago for $99.00. It's a ultra fast printer, very compact size and has great print quality. We don't have a need for color so it fits our needs perfectly. We are still on the original cartridge!
One thing we like about it is the "warm up" time is about 30 seconds from when you turn it on and when you print something it starts printing within 5 seconds. I think it prints 12 pages per minute. It also prints both regular, A4 & legal sized paper.
You can find them on Ebay for about $40-60.00 or so. [this post was last edited: 4/18/2012-17:01]

 

[marthalover4eve]

KODAK

Get a kodak printer ink is cheap for kodaks i have a esp310 all in one its very good

 

[oldskool]

Recently Got a Kodak 6.1

...which was cheap at Wal-Mart - an all in one. Yes the ink is less costly. The document handler is great - doesn't seem to jam - 2 sided printing and copying - good fax and scanner.
Previously had a HP Laser Bl/White - got new computer - no parallel port - so new printer. We have a Brother Laser color at work multi function device - does a good job but the cartridges are higher than giraffe _____. Bought a HP ink jet all in one two years ago - with wireless capability - a POS. Jams, ink dries out quickly, small capacity, must be re-booted frequently - would never do it again. We just use if for a copier now.

 

[mattl]

Having a wireless printer is great if you have a number of computers around the house as I do.  That is another nice feature of the Canon I own.  I'm able to print from my laptops or any of the various computers at home with out giving it a second thought.

 

[autowasherfreak]

My New Printer

I just picked this up today from my local FreeCycle Yahoo Group. The owner said the print quality wasn't good enough for her small business. She only lived 7 blocks from me so I walked there, and she gave me a ride back home. I probably could have walked it back home, but I've been known to trip over the smallest crack in the sidewalk, so it was probably a good idea to accept the ride, LOL.

 

[perc-o-prince]

I love my Lexmark Prestige Pro 805. Between a price match guarantee and a trade-in allowance, I got it for $100 ($299 retail). It's wireless, has a document feeder, and has a touch pad for easy copying and other functions. Black ink is $5 a cartridge, or $10 for the XL. Best I can estimate, the XL is the same as a regular HP or similar black cart. Color carts can be bought separately or in a 3-piece set.

Chuck

 

[autowasherfreak]

That Lexmark Prestige Pro 805 looks like a nice printer. Maybe when I'm working again, I can upgrade to that.

 

[mattl]

Looks like the little brother to my MX860, I think you'll like it.  If it needs ink try Swift ink they have a 10% off coupon almost monthly.  Very happy with the quality of their products.

 

[passatdoc]

HP 1020 and cheap toner source.

My "daily driver" printer at my desk at work is an HP 1020---we have two of these in the office, which are five and eight years old, with perfect service. The five year old machine is the one at my desk. We have a very cheap source for the cartridges:

www.supermediastore.com

 

which sells toner cartridges for as little as $20 each.  We've never had a bad cartridge in eight years. The store is located in California, so if you are out of state (e.g. Allan in Texas) there is no sales tax, with free shipping on larger orders.

 

At home, I needed a machine that would fit in a 17.5" wide space in a hutch above my computer desk, and I wanted an automatic document feeder so I could scan multipage documents. I bought an HP J4680 all-in-one. I do very little printing at home, once in awhile I have to print a photograph or something high quality, but at my volume the ink costs are reasonable. I am more likely to use the scanning or photocopying features. It also serves as the home fax. It has a document feeder (not huge, like 20 sheets) that lets me scan and then shred documents (which are then stored on a PDF file). It has WiFi, which I use so that I can print from it using my laptop anywhere in the house, but it's also hardwired to my primary desktop computer. I think the non-Wifi version goes for under $99 and I paid $129 for the WiFi version. By now the WiFi version may go for $99 as well, not sure. Pretty good feature set for the price.

 

There are fancier, higher powered all in ones in the HP line-up, but remember I needed a printer that didn't exceed 17.5 inches in width, and the J4680 was the only all in one with a document feeder that met this requirement.

 

For fast, cheap, high volume use, nothing beats a laser and my HP 1020 is a workhorse.

[this post was last edited: 4/19/2012-09:17]

 

[whirlcool]

Thanks for that link. That is a great price for the toner cartridge for the 1020.
I should pick one up as the one I have is the original and it certainly won't last forever!

 

[mattl]

Yes, great prices at the provided link, beats Swift ink by a good margin.  Will bookmark for future use.  Thanks!

 

[jerrod6]

I have a Canon MG8120 color printer/copier/scanner. It will also scan old film negatives.  Very satisfied with it as it can print multiple pages on one page, and on both sides of the paper if you want to.   I  print to it over my home network(Wifi) and can also send information from my phone directly to the printer without the PC being powered up.

 

[passatdoc]

@whirlcool and MattL:

We have four printers in my office: two are HP 1020s, one is a 3015 all in one, and one is a 3030 all in one. Because they were all purchased within a two year period, they all use the same toner cartridge, so toner inventory is greatly simplified. If you buy in lots of three or four, the price can be as low as $20 each, shipping included. Their prices for ink cartridges are also the lowest around.

They are also an excellent source for blank CDs and DVDs. I have a DVD recorder with built in tuner (actually, it also has a VHS slot and was intended for conversion of tapes to DVD for preservation, plus it can record tv channels to a DVD (say for a movie that you want to keep/share). It has a built=in tuner for recording. It can only record on DVD-R (not DVD+R) and no higher than 8x speed. Originally it was 4 x but there was a firmware upgrade that boosted it to 8x. Although DVD-R disks are easy to find, most in the stores are 16X, but SuperMediaStore.com has them in all speeds, at very low prices. Without their source I would not be able to use my DVD recorder.

I first discovered them when I was co-chair of my high school 30th reunion. We were doing a photo CD with scans of all of the class photos from grade school (Kindergarten thru 6th grade) plus scans of the two middle schools, plus scans of the three local parochial schools (many of the parochial kids ended up in our public high school). We didn't scan the high school yearbooks because of file size/complexity, plus the belief that people had hung on to their yearbooks more than they hung on to third grade photos).

One special feature of the CD was the inclusion of a home movie of our graduation ceremony, which was interrupted by two dozen streakers from the junior class:






 

It was caught by accident by several parents with Super 8mm cameras, and we converted one film for the reunion CD. We had hired a company to manufacture the disks for us, but when they saw the streaker content, they refused. The result was that we had to make them ourselves. One of our classmates, A CAPTAIN AT NORTHWEST AIRLINES, had an inkjet printer that could print the tops of the disks, so he designed the artwork and printed 250 blank disks, which I had shipped to him from SuperMediaStore.com. Then, on the weekend before the reunion, three of my classmates joined me at my office to burn 250 disks, using three computers with burners in my office, plus five laptops with burners brought by the others, plus two non-burner laptops that served as quality control testers: each disk was tested before it was packaged in a case.  I'm surprised we didn't blow out the local power grid.

 

The link to the infamous video is below:

 

[whirlcool]

I wonder who that Captain was? Maybe I knew him..

 

[brisnat81]

I've got a Xerox DocuPrint C1110 Colour laser. It cost me $300AUD about 3 years ago.

I've now printed over 6000 pages with no maintenance other than Toner and I can buy each colour rated at 2K pages for about $50AUD.

Its photo quality is ok, but its real forte is printing washing machine service manuals and such. Its 20ppm in B&W and 10ppm in colour.

Its replacemenat also comes with the option of a scanner bed as well now, turning it into a mini MFD

The best part is, most Xerox stuff comes with full toner cartridges, rather than a starter toner thats only good for a couple of hundred pages.

 

[launderess]

Xerox DocuPrint

Good stuff.

Was going to be my first choice but the color laser came at too good a deal to pass up.

In general many "business quality" printers excel at one or the other. That is printing reams of text quickly,or photo heavy documents rather slowly.

Many businesses around here are going to simple black/shades of grey printing with perhaps just a bit of colour to save money.

For a small or home based business a good quality "business printer" can save much on printing costs. Providing one has the time and skills to design and layout whatever,they can trim printing costs for newsletters, brochures, menus, etc...