I print quite a bit (Black and White). No photo printing or anything. I like the 4 in 1 with fax, copier and scanner. These things are CHEAP but I have found that they get you on the back end when you need toner. I have tried after market toner and it seems to clog up the nozzles (it’s crap).
I don’t mind paying a bit more for my printer or 4 in 1 if the toner is not so damn much or lasts for weeks and weeks.
have there been studies done. about this?
thanks!
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nozzles? toner?
Are you sure you are talking about toner for a laser/led page printer? Because I’ve never heard of one of them having ‘nozzles’. Nozzles are generally on ink-jet printer heads.
There is a lot of difference between refilled ink-jet cartridges and refilled toner cartridges. Which are you referring to?
Have you tried consumer-magazines?
At work my toner is seemingly incredible. When I first started, in September '06, it started to go. It still lasted a good two weeks until I had to replace it. Next toner worked 100% for six months. That is making numerous copies (lets say an average of 40) everyday.
It is a Samsung SCX-4720FN (I think). The cartridge costs $110ish, but definitely worth the price.
There was a magazine (I don’t remeber which one) which did report the cost to run the printer (pennies per page).
You may be better off with a more expensive printer if the ink is cheaper.
Brian
I went through all this with a client that was complaining about how frequently they were buying toner cartridges. HP sell their toner cartridges (actually combo toner cartridge and drum kit) in two capacities - high and low - but supply their printers with the low capacity ones. They were buying the low-capacity ones because that was what was already in the printer. The difference in price per page can be significant.
It sounds like you’re talking about ink cartridges rather than toner. The cartridges cost maybe 50% of the cost of the entire printer and last a short time (weeks perhaps depending on how much printing you’re doing.) The toner goes with a laser printer and for domestic use they last a LONG time, however the printers are more expensive.
I have a very cheap scanner/copier/printer that I only use for scanning (i.e., no printing, therefore no ink cartridge expense,) and I have “borrowed” a laser printer from work which I use for all of my printing requirements. The toner that came with it is still going strong after about six months.
There are relatively cheap laser printers around. IMO, you’re better off spending a bit more on a laser printer and getting more out of the toner than you do from an ink jet cartridge.
I have an old Canon printer we use with our 98se OS for letters, maps and some pictures to family and friends.
It sucks at pictures and color stuff. Re filling ink cartridges with cheap stuff works fine but the pictures and color stuff are the problem, I would like better color printing.
Do I need to go ‘Lazer’?? What machine does the best picture printing on all kinds of paper?
The Canon has horizontal lines all through it from uneven ink spray(?) and no matter how fine I set it, or the scale of the of picture, it has those lines.
Any ideas or suggestions?
I print about 2 letters a day (2 pages ) and about 3 ( 6" X 4 " ) pictures a week plus about 1 (8" x 11" ) map for our exploring trips around the area per week.
What would be the best cost wise and quality wise for this level of usage?
Anyone?
Opinions welcome.
Well, I got tired of paying premium prices for Ink Cartridges, so I got an HP LaserJet Laser printer. Since then, my costs have gone down considerable. Sure, my toner cost is about $70 for each toner cartridge, but they last me 2 - 3 years. Well, I don’t print a lot, but the toner never dries out from lack of use either. I think it is the best solution for cost effectiveness.
It’s spelled “laser”. But I would definitely suggest that you get a laser printer, and use that for letters & other such text writing. You can print 3-4 pages on a laser for the cost of a single ink-jet page. And for such low use, laser toner will last longer than ink-jet ink, which tends to dry up when unused, and uses up ink on nozzle cleaning cycles. For your use, you don’t need a brand new laser printer, many of the older models will be just fine. Buy a new older model, or look on craigslist, etc. for a used one.
If you want to use this laser for pictures too, then you may need a fancier model. Check out the reviews available online, and see Consumers Reports*.
I would throw this away, and get a new color ink-jet photo printer. They are quite cheap nowadays, and it’s usually not worth the cost to repair an old printer. Use this just for color printing, and to the letters & text printing on the laser.
This sounds like clogged nozzles. The printer might have a “cleaning cycle” you can run to unclog the jets. If you don’t have the manual, you could try googling on your printer model number and “cleaning”.
You’re not going to find a budget-friendly color laser that really does any good at photos.
I’ve got an HP color LaserJet 2605dn that does a great job at text, and really good at “business graphics” but photos are merely decent. The main reason is inkjet photo printers are using six colors of ink, but color lasers are using four colors. The comparison is a color laser’s photos will look like color photos in the daily newspaper, but a photo inkjet printer’s prints will look very similar to photos from the drugstore.
One thing my 2605 does very, very well at is print cheaply. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but when I was shopping for a printer, the per-page cost of the printer and the toner that came with it was cheaper than ink alone for a comparable number of pages.
Let that roll around your head a while. It was cheaper to buy a $500 laser printer than it was to buy ink cartridges to feed my existing inkjet printer, and to consider the 60-pound printer a consumable item for printing the same number of pages. The laser printer is also cheaper on paper as it has a built-in duplexer.
I bet you have never replaced the Drum Kit, either. Laser printers are great, toner lasts, etc, but the real consumables (like the Drum Kit) really, really cost.
I went to buy cartridges for my HP960c - £40 for the colour, £35 for the Black. I walked out with a brand new Canon Pixma printer with high-volume ink cells for £85. It’s faster, more reliable and better, and the ink should work out cheaper too. When that gets too expensive to run, I’ll replace it.
Si
The HP LaserJet 1000 has an integrated toner and drum cartridge. No extra cost for just a drum kit.
I am wrong about my terms. What I bought was a generic Drum and it leaves streaks on my paper and jams up paper. It wasn’t a cartridge it was a Drum.
ad
Let’s backtrack a bit. If you have a laser printer there are three basic sets of consumables:
1 - Toner. This is the stuff that actually forms your printed output.
2 - Developer. Also called the drum kit. An image of the output is formed on this which is electrostatically transferred to the page via a charge on the corona wire. HP printers typically combine this with the toner kit. The drums of developer units are light-sensitive and should not be left around. The chemicals on drums of old developer units used to be carcinogenic; I do not know whether this is still the case.
3 - Fuser. This is the bit which melts the toner onto the paper. It is usually very expensive to replace but lasts a long time. It’s the bit which gets very very hot. It’s a consumable because the rollers wear out and the toner pickup roller gets clogged with an excess of surplus toner.
If you have a laser printer and are getting streaks, it’s usually pretty easy to determine where the fault lies. If the streaks are horizontal and regularly spaced down the page, then you have a problem with either the developer or the fuser. The spacing will tell you which. If the streaks are vertical then the first thing to do is clean the corona wire if possible. Next, physically look at the developer and fuser (remember that the fuser will be HOT if the printer has been on) and look for marks.
I just bought 4 black and 2 of each color (cyan, yellow, magenta) for my Epson 4 in 1 on Ebay for less than $40 including shipping. I have bought from this seller before and the ink cartridges all work great. The cartridges are about $26 each at Walmart, $5 each on Ebay is fine with me.
Hummmmmmmmm Thanks guys.
For the OP, if you really only need black and white, and aren’t concerned with printing photos etc., then i heartily support the recommendations to get a cheap mono laser printer.
I was sick of the price of inkjet cartridges, and even more sick of the fact that i seemed to lose half the ink in each cartridge to cleaning cycles, and even more pissed off by the fact that my fucking inkjet wouldn’t let me print in black and white if my color cartridges needed replacing. I hardly ever print color anyway, so i went for a cheap laser printer, very similar to this one (i got the Samsung ML-2010; the one i linked is the ML-2510).
It’s awesome. It prints over 20ppm, and the cartridges, while expensive, seem to last forever. In a cost-per-page equation, it’s far cheaper than the inkjet. The printer comes with a “starter” (i.e., not full) cartridge that does about 1,000 pages, depending on print quality and density of text and graphics. The full cartridges cost about $60-70, but will do between 3,000 and 5,000 pages.
The only thing i don’t like about my Samsung is that it has no mechanism for automatic double-sided printing. You have to print the odd-number pages, then turn them over and put them back in the paper tray before printing the even pages. Apart from that, it’s been excellent.
My office mate services printers regularly and recommends B/W laser printers over color inkjets as far as bang for buck and reliability. I’m leaning towards a color laser printer as it’s actually under $300. My most recent inkjet printer had an unfortunate accident involving being thrown at the wall, and I’m inclined to follow his advice if you don’t.