Printers

[Jerry Bruette]

Well I've finally had it with the inkjet cartridge merry-go-round.

I'd like to buy a laser printer but the trouble is I know more about nuclear fission than laser printers.

What's the difference between a laser and laserjet printer?

Any other advice or opinions would be appreciated. We don't print much but when we do I want it to work and look good, color would be nice.

[Jim Koepke]

Well I've finally had it with the inkjet cartridge merry-go-round.

Having cartridges refilled at Costco cuts the cost. They also have a good price on the cartridges my printer uses.

My quick consult with Dr. Google indicates "Laser Jet" is a marketing name for a laser printer. Maybe it prints faster, maybe someone else has a better explanation.

jtk

[David Bassett]

Pretty sure *Jet is just HP branding for their printers. Last I recall HP was making everything from all but disposable cheapies to high-end print-on-demand services printers. What you'll find at retail will be in their lower end of that broad range.

BTW- find a review evaluating current models. Price per page is interesting and favored ink jet printers in the home office size when we were last shopping (despite the annoying cost of the ink cartridges.)

[Aaron Rosenthal]

Jerry, I've had 2 laser printers from HP, one a straight printer, the other a multi function, network enabled colour unit which I still use:
HP has a bad habit of discontinuing support as soon as the warranty is over.
If you get a HP printer and need their included support,make sure you write EVERY step of their trouble shooting process to get all the value for years ahead.
My wireless printing works great, scanning is superb but somehow I lost the ability to fax in & out. There's no way to get help for setting up with a "smart" ring system outside of HP's on-line help system, and it doesn't exist for my printer any more.

[glenn bradley]

My toner cartridges last many times what my ink jet cartridges do. No surprise there just based on capacity. I do have a nearly 20 year old small form factor black only HP laser jet but, newer HP's have left me cold. My current long running trouble free beast is a Canon MF210. Autofeed copy and scan. Toner carts are long lasting (current one has bee in pushing 2 years) but, I use black only for general printing. A color printer is a special use machine and is used as such around here. Using a color machine for B&W work or as your only printer has never proven the smart choice for me.

[Brian Tymchak]

Several people here on the Creek have endorsed Brother brand printers in the past. I too am about to start printer shopping and the Brothers will be at the top of the list.

[Mike Soaper]

Some printers rely on the pc to do the printing processing which can tie up/slow the pc when printing.

Other printers have their own processers which free up the pc from some printing tasks, and typically cost more than non processor printers.

If it matters, check for printing speeds.

[roger wiegand]

We just bought a second HP color laser/multifunction machine. The first one broke at a critical point in one of DW's big projects so we acquired a new one to hold us over while we had the old one fixed. It was the first serious malfunction in 15 years and about 80,000 pages, so I forgive it. It's repaired now and gone to live with our son.

For service definitely find a local shop rather than going through HP. Our old machine was "unsupported" for many years, I never found that to be a problem. Plenty of repair parts and supplies available; third party software was much better than HPs'.

The new multifunction printer, a M479dfw, is flat out amazing. Prints are stunning, it does duplexing, which our old one didn't, allow multiple trays so I don't keep printing on her label stock and you can load a whole ream of paper at once, both wired ethernet and wireless connections work perfectly simultaneously, unlike other printers I've struggled to set up. It's wicked fast, billed at 27-28 pages per minute and it actually seems to produce at that rate. One of the things that originally drove us to a small office type printer was cost per page; using real HP toner we're down in the $0.02/page range for toner for b&w printing.

The only downside to a printer like this is the sticker shock when it comes time to buy a full set of jumbo toner cartridges, it is considerably more than the cost of buying the printer. The new guy has done about 8000 pages in the last three weeks and looks to be a keeper.

I don't see any downside to using a color printer to print lots of b&w pages and having color capability when you need it beats the heck out of paying Kinko's prices for color prints. A lot of Jean's stuff uses spot color to liven things up and the cartridges last a long time used that way. A little color used tastefully greatly improves the presentation. I'd get a b&w as a backup/overflow printer, but not as my primary/only one for the way we use it.

Lasers are not particularly good as photo printers, though fine for the odd snapshot. I've got a great local service where I send photos for high quality printing (not that my photography warrants it).

[Jerry Bruette]

Having cartridges refilled at Costco cuts the cost.

jtk

That's not an option, Costco is about 70 miles away.

[Jerry Bruette]

Jerry, I've had 2 laser printers from HP, one a straight printer, the other a multi function, network enabled colour unit which I still use:
HP has a bad habit of discontinuing support as soon as the warranty is over.
If you get a HP printer and need their included support,make sure you write EVERY step of their trouble shooting process to get all the value for years ahead.
My wireless printing works great, scanning is superb but somehow I lost the ability to fax in & out. There's no way to get help for setting up with a "smart" ring system outside of HP's on-line help system, and it doesn't exist for my printer any more.

This good to learn, having support is pretty important to me.

[Jerry Bruette]

All good info so far, now I need to digest it.

[Dave Lehnert]

Ill just add my $0.02
I too had ink jet printers. Printing very little I got sick of cartridges drying up when needed, and they were expensive.
Purchased an all in one BROTHER laser (Black and White) $89 from Amazon at Back To School time. Best thing I did. A cartage is about $35 and last me around two years. It is about 6 years old now. Use the scanner a lot. It works flawless 100% of the time.
I do miss color at times but my plan for that,if need, I would send to Office Depot (just down the road) and pick up.

[Jim Becker]

I switched to an Epson EcoTank printer...I still needed inkjet because of photo printing, but didn't want to continually pay for print cartridges that never even gave half of their intended life because of timeouts or something. I'm at a year and a half with this printer and have barely used a quarter of the ink based on a visual look at the visible tanks in the front of the printer. I'm twisting Professor Dr. SWMBO's arm to get one, too, to replace the HP "ink pig" she's continually having to feed, albeit with third party refills.

[Jim Koepke]

HP has a bad habit of discontinuing support as soon as the warranty is over.

My HP inkjet stopped printing years ago after 2-3 years of use. The techsport at HP was atrocious. It became clear they were reading from a book. They thought it would be best if a new printer was purchased.

What was weird is this was to print a black and white page. This had been done many times in the past with an empty color cartridge. Figuring it wouldn't be much of a loss a new yellow ink cartridge was inserted and every thing was fine.

Later it was discovered that most color printers will not print without a yellow cartridge. The yellow cartridge is used to print data on every printed page for Homeland Security purposes.

B&W printers just use micro dots of toner.

jtk

[Larry Frank]

I have had numerous HP printers and they were ok but the inkjet were expensive for the ink. I got very frustrated with them.

I switched to Brother Laser printers. I have a simple one to just print and a multi function one. I really like them and had zero problems. I did call support once to get help connecting the Wi-Fi and they were great.

My multi function works very well. My experience is that the software that comes with most printers is not very good. I do quite a bit of scanning with mine and use a program called Vuescan. It works extremely well with all scanners.