I'm sick of ink jets - any decent cheap B&W laser printers out there? Or???

[Rich Engelhardt]

Bah!
My wife went to copy something on our HP J4500 All in One copy/print/fax this morning.
All it spit out was blank pages. I ran the cleaning routine and all the other stuff HP says to do and still nothing. The ink level for the black in the printer properties showed about 20% still left.
I went ahead and put a new black cartridge in anyhow. Still nothing.
I fiddled around with it for an hour and a half and still no black will print. Color yes, but, not black.
Then I got a communication error w/my laptop and the printer so I went through all the power off/power on, restart, unplug, uninstall from Windows, try it from another PC - the whole nine yards.
It's shot.
What ticks me off the most though is that I just wasted about $45.00 on ink cartridges.
It looks like the two brand new full cartridges I'm stuck with HP 901 - are only good with the 4500/4600 - which I don't believe is made anymore.

Here's what I'm after..

Something cheap to buy and cheap to feed to print B&W text.
Something cheap to feed (inkjet) that prints color AND has some sort of standard ink cartridge that fits more than one model.
Canon maybe?

Multifunction (copy/scan/fax/print) and wireless would be nice - but - not so much of a requirment for the color.

A color laser is out since they cost a bundle to feed and IMHO, don't make good photo printers.

[Matt Meiser]

In laser: I bought a Brother on clearance at Office Max probably at least 4 years ago for around $60 that's been great in my shop. I NEVER have trouble with it (knock on wood) Just a basic small laser connected USB. I also have a Brother AIO machine work supplied for my home office that's been great. I think they make a solid printer from what I've seen.

In inkjet. I just got fed up with the "DAAAADDDDD THE PRINTER WON'T WORK" errors I've been getting from our Kodak AIO as well as bloated junkware software that requires constant massive update downloads. We bought an Epson Artisan 837 (actually, first we bough an HP, more below.) We paid around $150 at Office Max after a $20 coupon and the sale price. Ink added another $100 though :eek: It gets good reviews though and in theory shouldn't be any more expensive to run than any other inkjet since it has more catridges and should therefore use the ink from each proportionately slower. The per-cartridge price is not much more than refills cost. The Epson also supports Apple AirPrint so now we can print right from our iPhones/iPads/iPods.

Last year my parent's got a Brother inkjet AIO that seems decent. They did have a little trouble at first with flaky network printing, fixed by a reboot of their ATT U-Verse gateway so that probably wasn't a Brother issue. Brother doesn't seem to rate as well as the bigger names in photo quality printing though.

I wouldn't buy an HP or even take one for free. We bought a 21-something I think? I tried for over an hour to get it on my wireless network. Finally it just worked. I went off and came back and the network light was blinking. Fiddled with it for a while and all of the sudden it just worked again. Went away, same thing. This time though I couldn't get it back on. The printer kept saying that the MAC address was blocked in my router, which wasn't true. Googling, its a common issue. When we got the Kodak a few years ago I had also first bought an HP that I also couldn't ever get on our wireless. I thought I'd give them a second chance. They won't ever get a third.

[Jacob Muldowney]

Here is a one that is a good deal, and shipping is $2.99. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828113690

[Gary Harmond]

I'd like to second what Matt said. I bought one of the inexpensive Brother B/W lasers (<$90 on-sale) and really like it. I got tired of feeding ink to my injet.

I still have the injet/multifunction. It's an Epson 8300? a cousin to the artisan that Matt mentioned. I like that fact I can feed it individual color cartidges instead of the big multicolor cartradges that I always felt like I was throughing away ink when a single color ran out.

Both of these printer have served me well. And with four kids in school they get used regularly.

One note is if you get the brother make sure to look up how to turn off the "feature" that stops the printer from printing when the low toner warning comes on. I just let the printer keep printing until the toner leaves white spots that can't be fixed by shaking the toner. usually get several hundred extra pages that way.

Gary

[Charles Wiggins]

Rich,

About a year ago I finally gave up on my old WinXP machine and moved up to my wife's old Win7 laptop, and BONUS! our printer and scanner weren't compatible!

We ended up with a Canon ImageCLASS machine (http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/products/printers_multifunction/black_white_laser_multifunction), the D400, I think (I'm not at home right now). It does not seem to be available any longer, but the D420 (http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/products/printers_multifunction/black_white_laser_multifunction/imageclass_d420) is very similar. I'm really happy with it, which is saying A LOT. In my nearly 30 years of library work I've dealt with a number of crappy machines. The D400 is easy to use and has a lot of features (most of which I have not used) including duplex printing, which I've never had in a home machine before. The D420 is wireless capable, but we don't need that because we use a home network.

Pros:


It's simple to use. The fact that it has a lot of features has not made simple tasks more complicated.
Duplex printing is simple, regardless. If I am sending a multi-page document I just go into "Properties" and one click on the first tab and the job will be printed on both sides. If I want to print on the back of an existing document I just put it in the bypass feeder blank side up, and it ALWAYS takes from the bypass rather than the main tray (I've dealt with machines that could be very contrary about this).
Switching over to Scanning or Copying is done with a single button on the machine itself. No monkeying with software. The computer does not even need to be on to copy.
The scanner is OCR capable (It did not include the software, but my wife found free software online that is compatible.) We've used the OCR and it was pretty good. Very little correction needed.
The "starter" toner cartridge that came with the machine has lasted almost a year. The cartridge was clearly labeled as a starter but we have gotten a lot of use out of it. PLUS Staples carries an aftermarket replacement cartridge. I can't wait to see how long a full cartridge lasts. We are probably what you would term light to moderate printers. 30-50 pages a month.
It doesn't take an advanced degree in mechanical engineering to change the toner cartridge. In fact, you can open the compartment and take the cartridge out with one hand.


Cons:

Currently, the low toner warning light goes off after almost every print job, but the printouts are still coming out crisp with very solid blacks. You can often shake up a low cartridge and get lots more use out of it before you must replace it. The light is just obnoxious.
The default alignment for the scanner is centered, rather than in a corner. It sometimes makes it a little harder to be sure that you're aligned where you want to be.


I hope this helps,
Charles

[David Weaver]

I have an old HP 1018, it's been going for years and it does a GREAT job printing.

A relative runs a business and uses the low-dollar brother printers, figuring he'll wear them out and throw them out instead of buying expensive printers. I don't know if any of them have actually worn out.

A decent black laser printer is only about $130, the catch for HP at least is that they overprice the ink and toner to try to make sure people buying cheap lasers aren't doing it to get away from paying 4 cents a page for ink in the inkjets.

So, you do an end around and buy the generic ink and toner on amazon or wherever, and you're back to a half cent or so a page. The last time I got ink an toner, I got 3 HP 12a equivalents (generic marked china) for $38, all rated at 2500 pages, and the first one went about that. A single brand name HP 12A cartrige is $80, and they rate theirs at 2000 pages.

I've had a couple of tech guys warn me that I voided the printer warranty by buying generic cartridges (same guys work for places that will sell you branded supplies, though), and while it's possible for generic ink and toner to damage your printer, if you use two generics, you've already paid for the entire printer vs. name brand ink. At 5 or 6 years strong, my printer has not seen brand name ink and toner since its first cartridge, and out of a pile of generic ink and toner, I have gotten exactly one that was defective and left a line on the page.

Before the laser, I had two printers last less than a year, both stranding me with inkjet cartridges costing about $80. I haven't ever missed having an inkjet printer. If I needed, in theory, to have something printed in vivid color, I'd want laser color, anyway, and even laser color is no longer expensive.

[Stephen Cherry]

I've got two big hp laser printers. The ones the size of a microwave. They were 25 dollars each, used. I use one for work, and one for my home stuff. The one used for my home stuff is plugged into the router so that I can print wirelessly.

These printers can print thousands of sheets without complaint, and when the cartridges run out, they don't run out all at once. And rebuilt cartridges are available cheap. For normal home use, a cartridge may last forever.

It's really nice to be off the ink jet cartridges.

[Dan Hintz]

I picked up an Epson Artisan MFP for my wife a couple of weeks ago, but once I looked into how easy it is for Epson's cartridge's to clog, I decided to return it a few days ago... I went through that mess with several HP printers and told myself never again. I'll be replacing it with a good color laser.

On laser printers, I normally suggest HP for a good quality machine. However, for lower end machines, I have to echo the sentiment above... Brother. They used to be a no-name years back, but their build quality skyrocketed within a few years and I now consider them quite good... definitely on par with what HP used to be known for. The biggest advantage to Brother machines is not (just) their low buy-in price, but the low cost of supplies. Toner for them is quite cheap (for most models, anyway). If I was going to purchase an inexpensive B&W laser right now, I would consider a Brother as my top choice.

[Prashun Patel]

I'd buy a cheap bw laser (like a Brother model). Buy yr toner from AMZN; get the 'compatible' toners, not the branded ones. They'll be 1/3 cheaper and they work fine (in my experience).

Everytime you want to actually print in color, take the job to your friend's house and pay him $10 to print it for you.

BW laser is very much the way to go. We've converted all our printers at work to various Brothers, and Oh, Brother, what an improvement over the inkjets of yesteryear.

[paul cottingham]

Old hp4. They will give you a million prints, if you do a rebuild, they will then give you a million more. I had clients with hp4's that probably had 4 or 5 million prints on them. I bet you can find them used for a song.

[Lee Schierer]

I agree with Matt, buy a brother and don't worry about your printer again. We bought one 5-6 years ago and ran out of our first toner cartridge last summer. It has done lots of printing and never fails. We used to fight the inkjets clogging all the time. Now when we want to print we just turn it on and print what we need no fuss no mess. You can get a HL2230 for less than $70 from Amazon. If we want color, it is cheap enough to get it done at the office supply stores or get prints made at Wally world.

[Brian Elfert]

Almost any color inkjet will have problems with clogging if not used regularly. I think some are better than others on this.

I used to have a color inkjet and a B&W laser. I finally got rid of both and just bought a color laser on clearance. I don't print photos where I care about quality. They are good enough for what I do. I know that for amyn they want to print nice photos to display or give to someone so a color laser won't work for everyone.

[Jerome Stanek]

Konica has some nice printers I have an HP and my daughter has a konica and she has less problems and prints more than me. Both are color lasers.

[Ryan Mooney]

+1 on the Brother. We're on our second one in ~10 years. The only reason we're on the second one is that the Toner ran out on the first one and we decided that for the price (I think $100 for a full toner at the time) we'd just double down and upgrade (wanted a scanner as well, so an all in one was attractive space wise).


They have some color ones under $300 so if I was upgrading again I'd be tempted.. although the B&W has some operating cost advantages.

[Larry Frank]

I would guess that your print head is bad and you need to replace it. Or preferably buy a different printer.

I have a love hate relationship with HP printers. I have an all in one L7780. It does a pretty good job but goes through the print heads and they are not cheap. The last time, I got really irritated and finally noticed that the print head had a warranty date on it and I still had time to go. I went through a million different people at HP and who knows where else but did get a warranty replacement.

I hope that you will post what you buy as a replacement and let us know how it works. The one thing I really like about my HP is the ability to scan and also to enlarge copies.

[dennis thompson]

I have 3 Brother laser printers, an all in one and two that just print,they are all great. I have an HP color inkjet and it eats cartridges and is forever giving me trouble. I recommend Brother
Dennis

[Myk Rian]

We have a Samsung color laser.
Cheap, and toner is reasonably priced.

[Curt Harms]

Almost any color inkjet will have problems with clogging if not used regularly. I think some are better than others on this.

I used to have a color inkjet and a B&W laser. I finally got rid of both and just bought a color laser on clearance. I don't print photos where I care about quality. They are good enough for what I do. I know that for amyn they want to print nice photos to display or give to someone so a color laser won't work for everyone.

I think that's the key with inkjets. Print something, maybe the test page at least once a week. We have a couple Brother inkjet AIOs and they've been pretty much trouble free. Wireless printing & scanning were easy to set up. HP & Brother seem to have the best linux support which is important to me. But yeah the Brother inkjets don't get great scores for printing photos. If I need GOOD quality color photos I'll take the camera memory card to a place with a self serve photo printing service.

[Stephen Cherry]

http://cleveland.craigslist.org/sys/3469227727.html

Something like this could be connected to a router. These things spew out prints like there is no tomorrow.

[Harry Hagan]

I grew tired of my HP inkjet printer and the $75+ bill to replace a set of cartridges years ago. Ninety percent of my printing these days is to PDF files which are free and much more convenient to e-mail, file, and find when needed.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

[Rich Engelhardt]

I'd thought about getting an older HP laser jet.
The only problem w/that is that I really need something with a USB connection instead of parallel so my wife can use it w/out having to ask me to get involved.
I have a couple of old Win PC's w/LPT ports I could easily set up as print servers, but, walking her through how to troubleshoot that when she can't just hit "print" isn't worth it.

[paul cottingham]

There are network boxes that convert USB to utp so to speak. I also believe you can get parallel to USB converters as well. Or get a jet direct card so you can connect the printer to the network.
We found even realtors couldn't break old hp laser printers.

[Matt Meiser]

HP has had built-in print servers available for years.

[Stephen Cherry]

I'd thought about getting an older HP laser jet.
The only problem w/that is that I really need something with a USB connection instead of parallel so my wife can use it w/out having to ask me to get involved.
I have a couple of old Win PC's w/LPT ports I could easily set up as print servers, but, walking her through how to troubleshoot that when she can't just hit "print" isn't worth it.

The one I posted could be made wireless- plug it into a router. Others are parallell only, which would need a converter to ethernet or usb. Just a few bucks. Others come with USB. And there are variations of them all. Mine are parellel only, and they needed little gizmos to make them work. In operation, just set the printer as default, and when you hit print, the page come out.

The big advantage of these is that the cartridges are available as rebuilds, cheap. And they hold A LOT more toner than the smaller printers. (I mean a vast amount more). IT all depends on what you print, but my guess is that you can get at least 5 boxes of paper (25000 sheets) out of a cartridge. I print a lot for work stuff, but for personal use, that is effectively a lifetime supply.

These come up all the time used on craigslist, auctions, etc. If they can't print some test sheets, I would skip it and look at the next one.

[Matt Meiser]

Those aftermarket print servers are iffy at best in my experience both personally and professionally. I've had my butt in a plane seat a number of times dealing with a barcode printing issue that turned out to be one of those print servers. They swapped to the OEM print server (which had been on backorder) and the issues they were blaming on my software magically disappeared.

[Stephen Cherry]

Those aftermarket print servers are iffy at best in my experience both personally and professionally. I've had my butt in a plane seat a number of times dealing with a barcode printing issue that turned out to be one of those print servers. They swapped to the OEM print server (which had been on backorder) and the issues they were blaming on my software magically disappeared.

I agree- in a money making setting, you would buy the best and hope it's good enough. That said, the parts that I have have not missed a beat. If I were to buy again, I would consider printers with built in print servers, but the older hp printers are super reliable. Lots of the parts in the newer printers are plastic where they used to be metal.

[Brian Elfert]

Any of the HP printers with an 'N' at the end of the model number already have a network print server built-in.

PDF creators are great if you are printing stuff just to file it. I use my printer for things like printing copies of stuff for meeting attendees. Unless everyone has a tablet, or I bring a projector we still need printed copies.

[Rich Engelhardt]

I've had a lot of bad experiences with too many of the third party print servers too.
Jet Directs are ok, but, I don't want to spend that much on one.
The pity there is I tossed three of them away at a customer location a few months before I retired.
They were older Jet Direct externals that needed the old Jet Direct software (Dos/Win) running IPX to set up. Bah!

[QUOTE][We found even realtors couldn't break old hp laser printers/QUOTE]LOL!
That's too funy...
Yeah the old HP LJII and LJII are tanks. Not much to fix on them either. Transfer corona and pickup assy and once in a great while a formatter.
Does Win 7 support the LJII and III?
I guess I can look eh ?

[John Coloccia]

FWIW, My HP LaserWriter 1300 has been going strong for many years. It sits on the network with the network attachment....and that's it. It works, it's reliable, it's fast, and it's available used on Amazon for about $100 or less. It's one of those purchases that I'm completely satisfied with, and I'd buy another one if this one broke.

[paul cottingham]

HP has had built-in print servers available for years.
Yes, jet-direct cards are one of them.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Ok - I weenied out and picked up yet another cheap ink jet.- for the time being.
The price was too good to pass up - $39.00 @ WalMart for a copy/scan/print Canon MG2120.

I need to print a good number of color pictures in the next month and it makes more sense to use this for now.

W/any luck, maybe there'll be a sale on laser printers after Christmas.

[Myk Rian]

39 bucks eh? I have one. It does a good job of printing. Got mine for $29.99 at WallyMart a couple months ago.
Right now it's back in the box. No problems with it, but I needed one that would print directly on DVDs.
Got a Canon iP4920 at Amazon for $50 on a Black Friday deal. The next day it was $89.

[Rich Riddle]

I have two laser jet printers, both HP products. The 1200 is a simple black and white laser printer. I cannot remember the last time I replaced any "ink" in it, but it's easily been more than five years. The cartridges are cheap and the darn thing never breaks. The one I purchased last year during Black Friday has gone through several cartridges and broken once. If I could survive with only black ink, I would only use the HP1200. It's like an old car that won't break.

[Mark Patoka]

We picked up an HP 1600 color laser at Staples a few years back, on clearance and with some coupons so it was probably around $100. Love it, have no problems and don't miss the inkjets at all.

[Brian Elfert]

I have two laser jet printers, both HP products. The 1200 is a simple black and white laser printer. I cannot remember the last time I replaced any "ink" in it, but it's easily been more than five years. The cartridges are cheap and the darn thing never breaks. The one I purchased last year during Black Friday has gone through several cartridges and broken once. If I could survive with only black ink, I would only use the HP1200. It's like an old car that won't break.

A new HP printer comes with starter toner cartridges so they don't last very long. Replacement toner cartridges should last much longer. The 1200 may be from the days when a new printer actually came with a full toner cartridge.

[Brian Tymchak]

I've decided to finally upgrade the home desktop (7 years old, XP, embarrassingly slow..) with a Win 7 machine, lots more RAM, nice big monitor :). I anticipate that the HP all in one inkjet I have will not be supported so I've been watching this thread, noting there are quite a few Brother supporters. I found several comments on the Staples site (I think) that mentioned the Brother lasers were quite noisy. I can put up with a bit of noise, but has anyone found them to be overly annoying?

Thanks, Brian

PS: Sorry Rich, I guess this does represent a small hijack of the thread..

[Chuck Wintle]

I've decided to finally upgrade the home desktop (7 years old, XP, embarrassingly slow..) with a Win 7 machine, lots more RAM, nice big monitor :). I anticipate that the HP all in one inkjet I have will not be supported so I've been watching this thread, noting there are quite a few Brother supporters. I found several comments on the Staples site (I think) that mentioned the Brother lasers were quite noisy. I can put up with a bit of noise, but has anyone found them to be overly annoying?

PS: Sorry Rich, I guess this does represent a small hijack of the thread..


no I have a brother laser and, while not whisper quiet, the nose is not intrusive. For the price I paid plus the fact that refilling the toner cartridge is inexpensive.

[Matt Meiser]

I never thought to complain about the noise of either of mine. Now you have me worried. :eek::D

[Peter Stahl]

no I have a brother laser and, while not whisper quiet, the nose is not intrusive. For the price I paid plus the fact that refilling the toner cartridge is inexpensive.
Which Brother printer do you have and is it a AIO?

[Chuck Wintle]

Which Brother printer do you have and is it a AIO?

its a model HL-2240 and is not an AIO. For my modest printing needs it works and as i previously mentioned the toner cartridge can be refilled inexpensively. I had the previous model which had a problem with the heater and was too expensive to repair when compared to the cost of a new one. The problem with brother was the starter cartridge which runs out of toner very quickly. Luckily there is a kit that can be bought to continue using the starter cartridge after refilling it.