We don’t do a lot of printing, but occasionally we would like to run more than ten or twenty pages, especially to make it convenient to read stuff off the web.
Currently we have an inkjet, an Epson which will only function on
Epson’s twenty dollar cartridges. It makes me pause if I’m planning to run twenty pages which I will probably only read once.
So I’m thinking of getting a cheap laser printer, used or otherwise. They sell them
here for a reasonable price.
What is your advice?
Well laser printer cartidges are not cheap either, at least for the HP’s we have at work. Can’t you get refilled cartridges for the Epson printer that you currently are using? I refill my black ones all the time and they work real well.
Compusa.com lists the number of pages a cart prints. You can compare how much it costs to print per sheet for your present printer and a laser.
Unless you print an awful lot, a don’t think you’re going to make up the initial cost of a laser even if you don’t do refills.
We have an NEC 860 at work, it’s about 5 years old. The cartridges aren’t cheap ($150), but they are rated for 5000 sheets at approximately 5% coverage. Printing in draft mode will almost double that. It is a great machine.
I like it so much I tried to find one for home. I ended up with an even older model, SuperScript 660+, from eBay for $40 delivered. The cartridges cost around $75 for this one. I got updated drivers from the NEC site. Works like a charm.
When we update at the office we will look at the new NEC machines first.
Buy a new Samsung 1210. It’s an amazing product, and should only cost you about $100-150. Best purchase I ever made.
If you print a LOT of black and white documents, a laser printer is definitely the way to go. An HP4 will get thousands and thousands of pages out of one print cartridge. In the long run it’s the cheapest printer you can buy.
I’ve had 3 HP LaserJets. The oldest is 11 years old and it still runs like a top. I’ve never had anything to complain about with HP printers.
Be sure to check the price of the toner first. HP printer have pretty nice prices on toner carts & some are rated 8000 pages… Also look at bargain sites on the net that might show you some pretty nice deals on a new one. Skip the used ones on ebay. They may be cheap but shipping sure isn’t. Toner is cheap on ebay, great place to buy toner.
When you buy a new laser printer, some of them only come with starter carts, these aren’t full. So they sometimes expect you to buy expensive carts, which is how they make their money back.
Do they all have refillable toner cartridges? How much do you save?
Thanks for all your ideas.
I have an Okidata 810e that I got for free. It is really and LED printer, not technically a laser, but for text you cant telll the difference. It came with a 1/2 full cartridge and I have printed about 1,500 pages and it has no signs of running out of toner yet. The cartriges for it cost about $25. The printers with expensive cartriges incilde the drum or other parts with the cart. For this printer, it is just a tube of toner.
Anyway, it is much faster and much much cheaper for black text than an inkjet. If you can get one with a good drum for less than $50 I would go for it.
I’m with Flymaster I just bought a laser printer yesterday. I got sick of printing a 10 page doc, then 3 months later when I went to print again (obviously I don’t print all that much! 
) the ink cartridge is all dried out.
I picked up a Samsung 1430 and it shoots out the pages like a fake TV printer! Plus now I don’t have to shell out $15 every time I want to print. I can shell out $60 and have all the toner I’ll need for 10 years! The actual printer was $180 or so.
So if I go through 2500 pages per cartridge that would be 3 cents per page, and with inkjet it is $1.50 per page, for me at least.
“Do they all have refillable toner cartridges?”
No, they don’t. If you input the model number at ebay.com or search the web with the word ‘toner’, you can find out if yours have a kit.
Toner is risky stuff to deal with says a poster we have on the wall at work.
HP Laserjet 2100. Expensive upfront, but I wouldn’t trade mine in for anything. I’m just a regular home user who prints things off at random every once in awhile like you (sounds like anyway). However the inkjets are just frustrating and expensive. Think about the long-term…
Sorry to burst your bubble, but toner expires…
From http://www.comhq.com/support.htm
HP also confirms this number…
http://www.hp.com/cposupport/printers/support_doc/bpl02955.html
Myself, I just picked up a laserprinter for home that has a 65,000 page per month duty cycle, 2 paper trays and 17 page per minute output. I’ll most likely re-sell it, but for now I’m printing in style