shopping for a printer

Factual Questions
21

A lot of computers come with free printers. What people don’t know is these printers eat a huge amount of ink so the person has to keep buying their real expensive ink refills.
That’s how the printer people get their money back.

Inkjet should have color refills about $12, Black about $5. Check before you buy. Refill yourself is okay, just don’t get that ink on your hands. Its stronger than that red ink that banks put in the money bags.

“I have gathered a posie of other men’s flowers, and nothing but the
thread that binds them is mine own.”

22

Also useful feature is a printer that goes on when you print something all by itself. Then it turns off later all by itself.

23

Hey Handy…
…also dont shake an ink cartridge to try and get a little more use from them. They tend to spray ink all over the wall, printer and your brand new Micky Mouse shirt someone just gave you as a present, not saying how I know, I just know…
B^D (<- Glasses, nose, Beard.)

Heaven…One to beam up!

24

Adding my own experiences to the mix:

I’ve owned inkjets, but always felt cheated because I’d always go through a long period when I didn’t need to print anything and the ink carts would dry out. Also, the last inkjet I owned had an (apparently) cheap feed mechanism such that I had to monitor it closely to ensure that paper went into the printer straight.

First thing I bought before starting law school was an HP LaserJet 2100, and I love the beast. Got it for a bit under $700 from Egghead. It print crisp, 1200 dpi text, very quickly. And, when I get around to updating my OS, I’ll be able to print to it via infrared from my notebook. Bye bye printer cable.

Other important considerations: if you’re printing hundreds of pages per month, you’re probably going through an ink cart per month. That’ll get old real fast. A laser will give you several thousand pages from one toner cartridge. Plus, with a laser, you can print in EconoMode and squeeze more life out of your toner. The downside, of course, is the cost of toner carts when they need replacing. Toner for my 2100 (since it’s ultrafine 1200 dpi stuff) is expensive, over $150 per cart.

Lasers also last damn near forever if they’re cared for properly. You’ll stand a better chance of being able to resell a laser than an inkjet when you graduate to something grander.

Another thing no one seems to have mentioned is PostScript. I have heard of inkjets that do PostScript, but their pricing tends to be pretty well in line with that of a laser. PostScript makes mighty purty graphics and curves to die for.

The 2100 has no problem with envelopes (pop 'em in the manual tray and slide the spacers to the envelope mark), and has other options you don’t often find in inkjets. For example, the straight paper path. If you’re printing something on heavy stock or on paper you otherwise don’t want to bend around inside the printer, just open up the back end, put it through the manual feed, and your job goes straight through without getting bent out of shape.

My recommendation: go laser. If the 2100 is more than you need, go for the 1100, which doesn’t do PostScript but is significantly cheaper.

25

I, too, would recommend Lexmark for use with Intel machines (and for most Unix workstations, too). I have both a B&W laser printer (Optra S 2420 [24 p.p.m.] with a duplexer) and a color inkjet (5700). Their low-price inkjet line contains virtually no electronics in the printer – all the work of rendering (figuring out what dots to print) is done in the main computer, which slows printing and makes them unusable under plain-vanilla DOS and (at present) Linux, but makes them very affordable for home use. Their better inkjets do PCL and PostScript, just like their lasers.

Lexmark doesn’t have a cheap model for Macintoshes, though, so my wife got an Epson Stylus 740i for her new iBook.

(Watch for competing claims. Both Lexmark and Epson claim to have the highest resolution. Lexmark has 1200x1200. Epson says their “1440” is better, but note that that’s actually 1440x720. 1200x1200 is 1440000; 1440x720 is 1036800; to my mind, Lexmark wins.)

John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams

26

You should try cnet.com . The commercials may be hokey (I like ‘em though), but they’ve done a really good job of transforming themselves into an internet buyers’ guide. I bought a printer for my dad for Christmas this year and did it all through C-Net. They make recommendation, post reviews, and then list online retailers and prices. It’s a good deal.