Printers [NA]

Let'sgoflying!

Let'sgoflying!

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Dave Taylor
I want to buy a new printer, seems like I have bad luck with every one I buy - or maybe I am buying junk and don't realize it. I spend way too much time 'helping' the thing guide the paper, or dealing with recalcitrant printers that decide they are going to be offline without warning.

I would like a laserjet, color, and wireless (we have an 802.11 router in the house, for two laptops; one Dell, one Toshiba which connect to the internet through it).

Any brand suggestions would be welcomed. Except for HP.
Thanks.
 
Dang Dave - I was going to say that we were VERY happy with our recent purchase of an HP Photosmart 2710, but it's an HP, and it's an inkjet.

Well heck, I'll say it anyway. It's a GREAT printer, and very fast for an inkjet. We love it.

It just doesn't meet your needs. :eek:
 
Ditto for me - I was gonna recommend the HP 3500N printer. You could easily add a wireless network box.

We have one. It's a bit pricey - $1000 (though they have a cheaper version now).
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
I want to buy a new printer, seems like I have bad luck with every one I buy - or maybe I am buying junk and don't realize it. I spend way too much time 'helping' the thing guide the paper, or dealing with recalcitrant printers that decide they are going to be offline without warning.

I would like a laserjet, color, and wireless (we have an 802.11 router in the house, for two laptops; one Dell, one Toshiba which connect to the internet through it).

Any brand suggestions would be welcomed. Except for HP.
Thanks.
Click to expand...

Color Laserjet, HP instantly comes to mind (and of course, LaserJet is actually an HP trademark ;) )

Without some more information on what exactly you'd be printing (pages per day, % color pages vs b&w, etc) and what sort of budget you had availabe, it wouldn't be prudent to recommend any particular brand over another. Prices run from under $1000 to the price of a small plane ;)

Assuming this is just for general home use, I have heard good things about the Konica Minolta offerings of late, and the Xerox Phaser series are also pretty robust. HP is always a mainstay, but you probably have had a bad experience with them before. Samsung and Epson also offer pretty good color Laser options. Generally expect to pay between $400-$600 for an entry level model. Also, take a look at the consumable costs, some are MUCH higher than others for the same expected page count - you'll need to estimate what your usage will be, and whether that cost will become a factor in the future.

I cannot think of a single model out there that has built in wireless connectivity (at least not at the entry level), but there are a number of $100 boxes out there now that instantly turn any USB-interface equipped printer into a wirelessly connected device (for example, Here ). Depending on your current wireless hub, you may also be able to connect it via a normal network cable, or parrallel port (SMC hubs have a built in print-server in a number of models).

Hope that helps !
 
What Steve said and....

Laser color printers tend to get pricey and toner costs a flippin' fortune. I've got four color laserjets (HP) at my company. Toner ranges from $95/cartridge (three required) to $150/cartridge (four required). Duty cycle is typically 2500 pages per cartridge for the smaller ones ($800 HP 2500's).

I absolutely HATE HP drivers for a home environment. I've got print servers set up in my company so it's considerably easier but those stupid "I've got to have five to seven processes running to tell you stuff you don't really care about" type drivers irritate me.

I went with an Epson RX500 for my home printer and added a USB wireless print server similar to Steve's link. Ink capacity isn't great but cartridges are only $18/black, $13/color (five different colors) from Epson directly. Not bad. Quality is excellent and it's fast. No jams so far. Drivers are low impact, too.
 
To be honest, unless you are doing high-quality presentation type printing in any sort of volume, most users would find a good qualilty Inkjet printer more than adequate for their needs. B&W print speeds rival Lasers in many cases, and consumable costs are a fraction of their coherent-light bases bretheren.

At home right now, we use a small Brother Laser for bulk printing, and an Epson Photo Stylus 950 for color/photo work. We don't generally print a lot of Full Page heavy color stuff, so big block color capability isn't that much of an issue.

Cartridges are about $25 a pop, and last a 1000-2000 pages depening on color, saturation and time.
 
okay let me rethink it.... I dont do anything out of the ordinary with it.
I've had two HP inkjets that have been torquing with me, maybe I need to think higher-end HP.
The whole problem may be the laptops (or the enduser).
 
It has been my experience with printers, monitors, and video cards, that when one goes cheap, one gets cheap.

This is true of HP printers as well as any other brand.
 
If you have the room, I have come to the conclusion that you should use a laser printer for volume black & white printingm and a decent inkjet for color printing.

The value leader for lasers is the tiny Konica Minolta 1350W, which is frequently on sal e for $90 or so, either at Staples or on lien from various retailers. I have two of them in pretty heavy use at my office, and they work great. Very simple, very straightforward.

For the color printers, you just cannot beat Epson.

And for the wireless, there are all sorts of wireless prinet servers.

Have at it.
 
Two printers hooked up to my computer.

1. HP 950C Deskjet. It has a few years on it, but, in typical HP fashion, it just keeps on doing its thing. Replace the ink cartidges now and then and it works fine. 2 cartridges - black and 3 color.

2. Epson Stylus Photo RX600. Flatbed scanner and printer in one. Straighter paper path than the HP, so thicker picture stock feeds better. If you are willing to use the ink, pictures come out looking like a photograph. Actually, the HP will do that, as well. This unit has an adapter that allows me to scan 4 35mm slides at a time to archive 30+ years of slides. Not fast, but it works. At least for the normal rectangular format. My wife had a camera in the early 70s that took a square format slide on 35 mm film and I have not been able to convince the overly smart software that I want to do something other than a rectangular format. Oh well... 6 cartridges. black and 5 individual colors. This is a nice, heavy duty, unit that my wife gave me for Christmas. Its primary purpose is the scan slides, so I keep the HP on-line as my default printer.

Both are connected via USB.
 
SJP said:
To be honest, unless you are doing high-quality presentation type printing in any sort of volume, most users would find a good qualilty Inkjet printer more than adequate for their needs. B&W print speeds rival Lasers in many cases, and consumable costs are a fraction of their coherent-light bases bretheren.

At home right now, we use a small Brother Laser for bulk printing, and an Epson Photo Stylus 950 for color/photo work. We don't generally print a lot of Full Page heavy color stuff, so big block color capability isn't that much of an issue.

Cartridges are about $25 a pop, and last a 1000-2000 pages depening on color, saturation and time.
Click to expand...

IME the real world B&W throughput on any inkjet pales in comparison to even an inexpensive laser printer. In terms of advertised specs, you might be right, but for some reason the speeds quoted for inkjets are often an order of magnitude faster than they really print, whereas every laser printer I've owned was as fast as advertised.
 
lancefisher said:
IME the real world B&W throughput on any inkjet pales in comparison to even an inexpensive laser printer. In terms of advertised specs, you might be right, but for some reason the speeds quoted for inkjets are often an order of magnitude faster than they really print, whereas every laser printer I've owned was as fast as advertised.
Click to expand...

One of the quickest way to get sucky performance from a lot of inkjets is to print a 99% B&W page that has one hyperlink on it in blue. In a lot of cheaper inkjets, this will result in the color cartridge being used to print the page, including the black parts. Page speed drops to the same as color pages, and your ink use goes through the roof !

Also, most people dont bother to check the quality or DPI settings on the drivers - 95% of the B&W text you print really doesn't benefit from 1200x1200 DPI. 150DPI will handle text just fine, and make a huge difference to printing speed. Most entry Laserprinters these days run 600 or so DPI, 300DPI was the norm for a long long time.

Lastly, the ultimate test is how much time you have to wait for the page. Most laser printers claim a 16 page per minute rate. Thats based on page to page prints (so essentially, 4 seconds between pages hitting the out-bin). It does not include the time for the laser printer to come out of sleep mode, warm up it's fuser system, spin up the mirrors and start feeding the paper. In general, Inkjets are much quicker for 1 or 2 page jobs, as they have very little startup time. After that, the faster page to page time of the laser will start to work off the startup debt, and would overtake the inkjet. My Epson can print 4 pages of black before my laser throws out the first page! Companies used to state the "time to first page" numbers in their literature, but it seems to be a hidden value these days !!
 
lancefisher said:
In terms of advertised specs, you might be right, but for some reason the speeds quoted for inkjets are often an order of magnitude faster than they really print, whereas every laser printer I've owned was as fast as advertised.
Click to expand...
Speeds quoted for inkjets are based on text only with less than 5% coverage on the page (typical typed page, double-spaced, iirc). Lasers don't care since the drum and feed speeds don't change based on coverage.
 
Back to the HP ad that you got ...

I'd consider the HP 2550, but I'd want to see one. HP does have a tendency to go cheap (read: problems later) with it's cheaper printers.
 
MSmith said:
Back to the HP ad that you got ...

I'd consider the HP 2550, but I'd want to see one. HP does have a tendency to go cheap (read: problems later) with it's cheaper printers.
Click to expand...
I've got two 2500's in my corporate network. Not bad quality but they eat up the toner cartridges. I just checked HP's site. Cartridges range from $74 to $99 EACH (takes four to six, depending on models) and the image drum is $174!

Here's the bad part: when the cartridge hits the end of its duty cycle, the warning starts going off. You can get a few more out of it but then it just shuts down until you put a new cartridge in it. Doesn't matter if you just want to print b&w and your yellow cartridge is dead. Keep spares on hand because there is little to NO warning when it stops.

It's a heck of a lot cheaper to keep spare inkjet cartridges than toner. Less space, too.
 
Dave,

I have two HP color printers at home and there are several here at the office.

The machine I use at the office cost the company about $130 and it is about 6 years old. The machine is dedicated for my use only and so I figure it gets the same number of duty cycles as a home machine. I use it for color and B&W text printing. Mostly I print power point presentations in color. It is a Deskjet 950C, I don't know if it is still on the market.

The oldest machine at home is about 4 years old and has provided great service. The kids print a lot of heavily saturated color documents using this printer (for example, everything on starwars.com) and my wife used it to print hundreds of color photos. I'm not 100% sure of the model number but I think it is a 5650. In looking at the HP.com website it looks similar to the 5740. Note that there is a 5850 model that is advertised as wireless.

I bought the newest machine at home as a Christmas present for my wife. The idea is that this would be her dedicated printer and that it would be used mostly for printing pictures. Typically it is loaded with high quality photo paper. The model number is 8450. I have it connected via USB but it is networked enabled and I think there is a wireless option as well. While we have not had this machine long my wife and I like it a lot. We probably have run through 2 sets of ink cartridges and have not had any problems. The machine came with some newer photo and scanning software from HP and the install software automatically set us up to get driver and application updates which is neat. The machine has some other neat features like the ability to accept any memory stick. The pictures can be printed right from the memory stick using a small color screen right on the printer or the data on the memory stick can be passed through to your computer. I would recommend this model if it is in your price range. I see HP is listing it for $229 which is what I paid for this machine at Christmas time so you can probably find it cheaper in stores. When I was shopping I found it cheapest at Staples where I'd bet it is under $200 today.

Note that I find it amazing what $200 buys when it comes to technology. Just goes to show the leverage in numbers. It is a shame everyone who has a color printer doesn't want to learn to fly.

Len
 
Len Lanetti said:
Note that I find it amazing what $200 buys when it comes to technology. Just goes to show the leverage in numbers. It is a shame everyone who has a color printer doesn't want to learn to fly.

Len
Click to expand...
I know what you mean, but after spending about 20 minutes yesterday flying around in a circle trying to get a chance to contact the tower at a busy Class D, I think there are sometimes quite enough people flying.
 
Ken Ibold said:
but after spending about 20 minutes yesterday flying around in a circle
Click to expand...
Hey Ken, did you get to do any other aerobatics besides that? :)

(Someday can we get a separate aerobatic forum? After the Hops & $100 Hamburger forum?) ;)
 
And if you go with inkjets, be aware the HP, Epson, and some of the others are now putting chips in their printers to keep you from refilling the ink cartridges - or from byuying the ink cartridges from anyone other than the printer manufacturer. In some cases it's cheaper to buy a new printer than a set of ink cartridges. HP has gone even further and made the chips region-specific, meaning that if you have an HP inkjet printer and take it to Europe, the cartridges that you purchase over there will not work (even if they're the right make and model).

Having said that, and knowing you want a laser, I bought a Samsung CLP-500, color laser printer last year. I have a wireless/wired network interface card. The printer does DOUBLE-SIDED (duplex) printing, which saves a lot of paper when I print DUATS "briefings" (wonder why they're called "brief" - I'd hate to see "long"), and when printing approach plates. Supplies are not cheap, but they're in line with other manufacturers. If you order from Page Computer or NewEgg, you can save a bit of money.

I ordered mine online w/discounted shipping special. I know that the Sam's & Costco around here were carrying them for a while.

For photo printing, I also have a Canon S9000, which works out very well. Again, the supplies are pricy ($11.00 or so per ink cartridge times 6 for each change).
 
What is the DPI, and language used to operate it?
 
After many years of using ink jet and ink jet all-in-ones and finding the ink cartridges dry out and cost more to replace than buying a whole machine, I moved to a LaserJet All-In-One and have been VERY HAPPY.

I ended up with an HP MFP M477. It is a higher end one, but when I got it, Staples had it on sale, so it was cheaper than the next step down.

Toner replacement is expensive, but I went over 5 years on the original cartridges. And for replacements, I went with extended capacity.

One thing is, do not pay attention to the warning messages about running out of toner. I ran almost a year after a couple of them started telling me to change them. Look at your prints. If they look good, tell it to tell you again in 100 pages or so.
 
I find the main advantage of the laser jet, (I work with big inkjets daily), is they are perfect for people that only print occasionally as when you don't print for a month or 3 months and send a job to it, it is going to print where as the Ink jet will either be out ink from servicing printhead that it requires even when you are not using it or the printhead will be dried out especially if you turned the printer off.

The laser jet and supplies or usually more expensive, but you don't waste as much supplies when printing low volume or occasionally.

Brian
 
I think this is a candidate for necro-hall-of-fame :D
(On that note I really do need a new printer b/c my stupid HP won't use any of the 20 cartridges I have for it since I cancelled my InstantInk subscription... electronically disabled all my cartridges that i paid for... bastards)...
 
Could an older thread be revived.??

Funny, I am in the market for a couple printers.
 
I have been using Samsung laser printers both b&w and color for many years now and I’ve been pretty happy with them.

I wouldn’t buy an inkjet unless I had to and with all of HP’s scummy business practices lately I wouldn’t touch them with a 10’ pole.
 
Pinecone said:
After many years of using ink jet and ink jet all-in-ones and finding the ink cartridges dry out and cost more to replace than buying a whole machine, I moved to a LaserJet All-In-One and have been VERY HAPPY.

I ended up with an HP MFP M477. It is a higher end one, but when I got it, Staples had it on sale, so it was cheaper than the next step down.

Toner replacement is expensive, but I went over 5 years on the original cartridges. And for replacements, I went with extended capacity.

One thing is, do not pay attention to the warning messages about running out of toner. I ran almost a year after a couple of them started telling me to change them. Look at your prints. If they look good, tell it to tell you again in 100 pages or so.
Click to expand...

Ironic, my wife and I just made the same jump from inkjet to laser.

Staples and Amazon have this full color laser Canon on sale for $309 right now. We like it so far.

 
I got sucked into an HP inkjet a couple years ago simply because we needed one RFN for an office and it was the only thing available. Will never touch an HP product again - ever. At home I have an Epson Ecotank all in one, and it's been a joy. After I don't know how much time (but over two years) and a few reams of paper, we STILL haven't needed to buy ink, and it prints perfectly. Scanning is effortless as well. Love the thing, it's been worth every penny we paid for it.
 
I'm kind of torn. I have an HP MFP laserjet that does everything great except work reliably over a wireless network. I realized that at the location where I set it up, I had run a network cable back to the router which predated the Xfinity wireless router. I plugged the hard connection in to the printer and all became good again.
 
I have an old HP Laserjet 4100 and also an HP Laserjet 4050. These things are indestrutable.
 
Get a Brother printer. My laser printer/scanner has been working great for years. Can use aftermarket ink.
MFC-9340CDW is the model I have. Probably newer versions of that out now. Reasonably priced and reliable.

Edit: whoa, they're asking a lot for them now. I didn't pay anywhere near the current asking price for mine.
 
If you need to print, get a press. Otherwise use a pen. The entire thing is nothing but a scam (I might be a little (read: EXTREMELY) biased).
 
kgruber said:
If you buy this printer from Walmart:
Canon PIXMA TR8622a

You can buy VERY CHEAP but great aftermarket cartridges....$11 for all five (5) here:
Ink for Canon Pixma

HINT: NEVER buy an HP....never, never, ever
Click to expand...

I use an older Canon MG2520 Inkjet in my office. It was cheap to buy has been bullet proof. I only print a few pages a week and only print in black. If I need color I use the color printer (wi-fi) that the CEO has ...

 
Nothing wrong with Brother printers, they are cheap and work well. But they are light duty.
 
I bought a HP 9015e all-in-one inkjet printer for my wife's (home) business. It has been very reliable, and she does not worry about the cost of the ink cartridges. She (and I) like it a lot.

-Skip
 
I confess that even though I am the OP, I haven’t the faintest idea of the outcome, of my choice at the time.
I do have all lasers but no color.
 
I’ve got a crappy Hp inkjet at home but I don’t do much printing. We print a crapload at work and I was getting tired of buying cartridges all the time so I bought a Cannon G3270. Thing is awesome. Ink levels have barely moved on it. Can print like 7,000 pages on a full tank.
 
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