shopping for a printer

Factual Questions
1

For home use, which is cheaper, more reliable, and less maintenance to operate – an inkjet/bubble-jet type printer, or a laser printer? Which is a better deal in the long run? (Let’s assume that I want to print only black-and-white text, say a couple hundred pages a month.)

All I’ve ever owned are inkjet printers. The one I have now uses cartridges that run about $18-20 a pop (for new ones, not refills), and they don’t seem to last too long. Maybe I get 200-300 pages (less?) out of one black-and-white cartridge before I have to replace it. It doesn’t take long before the money spent on ink exceeds the cost of the printer itself. On the plus side, the print quality is good, it’s a snap to print on envelopes and other odd-sized things, and replacing a cartridge takes about 10 seconds. Never had a paper jam or other such problem, either.

What about a laser printer? The initial outlay is more than for an inkjet printer, perhaps twice as much (?) for a low-end model that’ll print maybe twice as many pages per minute. But what about the toner? How does it compare cost-wise, in terms of ease of use, etc.? Is a laser printer more likely to give you maintenance problems (paper jams, etc.)? I’ve always avoided buying one simply because of the cost, but I wonder if it’s a better buy in the long run. Anyone?

2

Laser printers are nice…however they are only black and white…at least for a price you want to spend…
Toner Cartridges run around $65-100, but will print upwards of a 1000 pages. Laser printers quality is cleaner and sharper than inkjet as well. Laser is usually a little faster 8-10 PPM compared to 4-6 for inkjet.

Inkjet has one main advantage…Color.
The are also cheaper, but the ink carts. dont last as long and they can smear.

What ever you do, DO NOT buy a Canon. I have owned two in a row, both broke with in the first year. I also work in a tech support center for a computer manufac and have seen a lot of trouble with them there.
Buy HP or Epson…in that order. The HP 812 is pretty nice, followed by the 832. Avoid the 610.

Heaven…One to beam up!

3

I have an HP LaserJet 4 Plus and and HP LaserJet 3100 on my machine (the 4P is a straight printer, the 3100 is a fax/scanner/copier/printer). They both wear like iron and never jam or smear. The cartridges are expensive but they last forever.

I have an HP color inkjet on my wife’s machine 'cause she likes to do graphics. The machine was a lot cheaper but the cartrides have to be replaced more often. Text print quality is good but not as good as the lasers. She’s had several HP inkjets and they seem to be somewhat more prone to jams and lockups than the lasers.

HP customer service is very good. I had an HP LaserJet Fax that went belly up a year after it went out of warranty. I called them and got a new machine expressed in the next day at no charge. Can’t beat that.

JB
Lex Non Favet Delicatorum Votis

4

PC magazine has or had - I haven’t checked for a while - a comparison of costs per page on their site at: http://www.pcmag.com
As I recall, the inkjets are cheaper as a rule.

5

I have Canon Bubblejets. they work fine. There was a design issue with one because they forgot to put a plastic cover on a part.

Some of them can use a high capacity cart that can do about 1400 pages. But a page isn’t like a full page when they quote stuff like that…

I have a Brother laser printer too, that I haven’t hooked up. It’s carts are only $34 each.

Some of the BJ’s are so cheap they cost about as much as the ink carts they use.

6

We’ve got an HP Laserjet 4L that came from my brother, so I don’t know it’s age, but in the two years+ we’ve had it,it’s been flawless for black and white.

The HP712C that came packaged with our HP 6470Z has done very well with color too.

I’d buy HP again.

7

I’ve got an HP Deskjet 670C, and it’s great. The text quality isn’t as good as a laser printer, but I like being able to do color graphs. As for cartridges, the black ink cartridges last a long time, but the color ones run out faster (especially if your asshole co-worker prints four copies of his 100-page PhD disertation with a large color header on top of every page :mad :slight_smile:

–It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats.

8

Darn. That should be :mad:
I was most certainly NOT amused.

–It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats.

9

I have had printer woes, so I clicked on this thread with interest. I noticed royalbill’s comment to avoid the HP 610. Well, I got HP’s 612C. It worked for a few months, and then crapped out on me. I still don’t know if it was a software or hardware problem (the software started weirding out on me a week or so before the printer stopped working.) When I returned it to Best Buy for repair (still under warantee) they just replaced it, did not fix it. I wondered about that. I hooked up the second HP 612C - and it didn’t work! Said it was out of paper. Shit. I threw in the towel, I am dumping the 612C and am in the market for an Epson Stylus 740 (?). (I want a printer that can be used with my Mac and PC anyway.)

I have heard that when HPs go bad, they really go bad. I wouldn’t know - I hear so many good things about HP. But, it seems to be what has happened with my 612C…though maybe it was software-related. Whatever the reason, I think I am off HP printers for a while.

10

As a network admin, I have the joy of dealing with printer problems all the freakin time, simply put I hate them.

Anyhow, when I have to purchase a new one here are the things I look at.

First, the user. If 70% of their printing is word processing and spread sheets, I purchase an HP laser. If you are a heavy user of a printer, then you are far better off to purchase the best HP (HP is a great company for printing needs) you can afford. The most recent purchase of a laser was the 4000 series for one of the contract admins. The page output is 17 pages per minute. The DPI is the highest I have seen of 1200 dpi, which I think is the highest you can get. At work I have the 2100 series because my use is far lower than hers. My 2100 series cost around $600.00 and prints at 10 ppm with a dpi of 1200 too.

The ink jets I usually purchase are the 895 series. The quality is good for what most people print and the price is pretty good at around $400.00. The page output is around 10 ppm in black and white according to the information, but I think it’s slower.

The problem I have with ink jets is, they are a maintance nightmare. Laser printers on the other hand are easier to keep clean and trouble shoot. I have several ink jets that we probably will throw out or donate to a local tech school that are around a year and a half old. The laser printers on the other hand seem to hold their value much longer and is probably why the pricing hasn’t changed a lot over the years.

We still have some HP LaserJet 4s that have been in the company for at least 3 years that get extremely high usage.

Me, I don’t have a printer right now at my home office. I made the mistake of transporting my Okidata laser (purchased in 95) forgetting to take out the toner cartridge. My next purchase will be a professional series ink jet because of the spin my business has taken. Although I hate the maintanence of an ink jet, my needs are that I have the best color printer I can afford.

11

Allow me to say a good word about a local company – Lexmark (formerly the typewriter division of IBM).

I recently bought a Lexmark Z11 inkjet. At Wal-mart. For less than $60. It offers 1200x1200 dpi resolution and excellent color imaging. B&W carts run about $27 at Wal-mart and I haven’t run out of my first one.

But, I stress, it’s more for personal use. Speed is 2.5 ppm full color, 4 ppm black and white.

But, for the price and resolution, I don’t think you can go wrong.

12

If you have a choice between two models of the same brand, go for one that stacks paper horizontally. The ones that stack paper vertcally are eventually going to start jamming paper, more easily.Why not use gravity in your favor, not against you?

13

yosemitebabe, almost every printer I have seen, except the applelaser writer, & some canons, has a self test function. To see if the printer is working fine, don’t connect it to the computer [although I had to buy a new printer cable as the old cable became crap & I can’t print]. The test is almost always push line-feed & turn the printer on at the same time. Or form-feed. Works well.

14

I tend to prefer the inkjet style of printer. We have several Laser printers at work (many models of HP from the original Laserjet to the 4000 and the 5SI “Mopier”. The inkjets use less energy, the print quality is outstanding (although it depends greatly on the paper used, which Lasers don’t seem to care about), and the maintenance is pretty cheap. I still have an old HP Deskjet 500 that I refill the cartridges myself, for a few bucks. You can get the refill kits from just about anywhere.

I would not buy a used Laser printer. Some of our older HP Laserjet III printers are starting to have problems with paper jams. Repairs to the pick mechanisms and the roller are expensive.

I bought a HP 882C so I could print dirty pictures from the Internet, oops…I mean pictures from my digital camera. I’m happy with the quality and cost-effective nature of the beast.

15

If your “home use” includes greeting cards, photos, envelopes, banners and such, I think inkjets are better suited. You’d want color for those uses, and many laser printers don’t even accept cards and envelopes. Our Epson (LP8300) doesn’t, at least.

However I still think laser printers produce better quality black & white output. The stated resolution (DPI) may not be very different, but that just defines how accurately you can specify the location of each dot. If each dot is a 1/200 inch wide fuzzy dot, 600 DPI is no better than 300 DPI. I’d choose a laser printer if you only print documents.

I don’t think there is very much difference in reliability. Neither is immune to jamming. Whichever type you get, I will second the recommendation of HP - my 5-year old Deskjet 850C is still working well. On the other hand I hate our Epson laser printer - one section of the paper path is completely inaccesible, so if you get a torn piece of paper stuck there you need to send it in for repairs. I hear the current models don’t have this problem, but it still doesn’t inspire confidence in the company. The Canon at work is almost as bad.

The best thing, of couse, is to have both. Can’t you keep your old inkjet and buy a laser printer in addition? If you can use an USB interface, it’s easy to connect two printers to one computer.

16

I’ll agree with the praise of the HP model’s.

Currently have an HP812c, and it works great. Photo quality pictures, and great text as well. Worth the little extra we spent. My general rule for buying things, is to go for the one in the middle. In other words, the store we went to had the HP 9something or other, and an HP6something or other, so I split the differance and took the one they had in the middle…the 812c.

17

If you need to get the best color photos at the lowest per page cost (~$1 for glossy photo paper and ink), I really like the output of the Epson Stylus Photo 750 (or 1200 for wide carriage). Epson’s lasers are bad news though.

18

As a person who sells printers, I can give you a little advice.

Inkjet printers print at about 3-6 cents per page. Generally.

Laser printers are at about 2-5 cents per page. Generally.

If you are looking only to do black (and white, some people say) printing, then buying an inexpensive laser printer would be the way to go. A Xerox P8 or P12 are around $200 - $300 and the toner for them are somewhere between $60-$80. With a yield of about 1500-2000 pages. Of course, that’s at 5% coverage (how everything is rated.)

If you need an option of color, by all means, go with HP. They have the best photo quality out there. Epson is very close, but not quite there. I recommend the 832C first and then the 812C. There isn’t a whole lot of difference between the 812, 832 and the 882, but the 832 uses the higher capacity black cartridge and the 812 uses the 21mil. black cartridge. These cartridges are about $35 for color, and $30 for black. These are retail prices, and are pretty consistant throughout the US. If you buy online or mail order, you will probably get them cheaper.

As for the laser printer, if you’re only planning on printing 2-300 pages per month, you should not spend more than $300 on the printer. HP has a nice one (1100se or 1100xi - different software, same printer) at $300. But, you put the paper in the back standing up, and most people don’t really care for the paper to have a curve in it, which invariably happens. The P8 and P12 I mentioned have trays at the bottom of the printer and cause your paper to be straight.

Also, just a note here, use laser paper in laser printers or inkjet printers. Use inkjet paper in only inkjet printers. The inkjet paper has more water content, and therefore when the image is burned onto the paper, the water causes the paper to ‘roll.’

I hope that helps you!

“I dream that she aims to be the bloom upon my misery”

  • I Miss The Girl Soul Coughing
19

>>Well, I got HP’s 612C. It worked for a few months, and then crapped out on me. I still don’t know if it was a software or hardware problem (the software started weirding out on me a week or so before the printer stopped working.) When I returned it to Best Buy for repair (still under warantee) they just replaced it, did not fix it. I wondered about that.<<

+++++

When all is said and done, it is cheaper to replace than repair (they do not even bother to test or debug … just replace).

Also, in the inkjet printer business, the manufacturers have determined that it is more profitable to sell the inkject printers as a loss leader (sold at a loss) and make their money on the sale of replacement (proprietary) ink cartridges.

Sign moi …

1990 = Hewlett-Packard LaserJet IIP
1998 = NEC Silentwriter SuperScript 660

Both are laser printers.

Nothing really against inkjet printers.

Laser printers are just a better fit for my needs.

Terence in Marietta, GA
" … Be someone’s hero … "

20

Thanks, everyone, for all your input! I never would have guessed there are so many happy HP customers out there – or rather, so many people who would so strongly recommend HP. Good to know.

I posted this topic more or less out of a sense of impending doom. My Epson inkjet has been working perfectly fine, cranking out the pages for the past 2+ years, but I can’t help but think that one of these days she’s just gonna to conk out on me. (I tend to be pessimistic when it comes to the lifespan of computer-related goods, in case you can’t tell.)

I suppose the wisest thing to do would be to buy a laser printer (you all got me sold on HP!) before the inkjet does conk out. I almost never print in color, but it sounds like it’s a lot easier to print on envelopes with an inkjet than with a laser anyway, so it’d be good to have around if only for that.

The most annoying thing about this Epson printer is that I have to replace the friggin’ color ink cartridge once in a while even if I don’t use the color ink. I guess it saps off some of the color ink when it automatically cleans itself, and it thus eventually goes dry. I suppose that’s not just an Epson thing, though.

And in defense of Canon (well, not really, but…), I have to say that I have an ancient Canon bubble-jet printer that, while dormant most of the time now, is still ready for duty on a moment’s notice. It’s survived amazingly well and still prints like a charm – if you can stand to wait 30 seconds for a page to come out!

Anyway, thanks again for all your replies. Much appreciated.