Advice On Printers Sought
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So the printer I’ve got on my home network is an HP 5440. I got it free with my PC, but oh my God it drinks ink like wine at a Roman orgy. It costs me $35 to replenish the black and white/color cartridges and that doesn’t last for very many pages. Anyone using a printer that doesn’t cost too much that doesn’t suck up ink like that?
30 Responses to “Advice On Printers Sought”
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HP Photosmart C5280; and don’t be afraid to use refills. With those, DON’T get the small well cartridges, IOW, DON’T replace the cartridges with ones like them. Get the larger one, the well is about 5 times as big, and it doesn’t even cost twice as much, new or refill.
Does photos, but also does well on regular printing. With the correct options, prints directly on CD’s, which is useful at times.
I’ve heard anecdotes about people who throw out their printers and buy new ones when they run out of ink.
I have a $50 Samsung ML2010 laser printer. It’s cheap, doesn’t blow through ink and does all right for my simple needs (black and white).
Investigate the various laser printers if you print alot.
Well, whatever you do, don’t get an Epson. Actually most printer companies rip you off for ink. Biggest scam EVER.
HP 4280 is pretty good
My buddy who works in IT gave me an old HP LaserJet 4 printer when he moved. It weighs a ton and prints slow (black and white only), but the toner cartridges last forever and he claims that you can’t buy printers like this anymore (hence the weight). You can pick them up cheap on ebay or craigslist. For black and white printing you’re looking at ~$.005 a page. Although I think any laser printer will be way cheaper than inkjets in the long run.
O-
I you only do black and white then I agree with the Samsung ML2010. I got mine for $50. If you want to do color, then I recommend any of the HP’s with the 6 ink tanks. You can then buy the replacement ink in a box for about $35 at any Best Buy. Stay away from Epson, Lexmark and Dell (which lexmark makes). The canons can be good based on their individual ink tanks, but the newer HP’s are more efficent. Also make sure you are printing in greyscale/black and white.
I’ve had a Canon Pixma ip4200 for just over 2 years now. It’s great – nice crisp, clean printing, doesn’t suck ink, and I chose it because the ink cartridges are individually replaceable and they’re relatively inexpensive.
My kids print a lot for school, and there’s a lot of waste, so I wanted to save on the ink more than anything, but I got a great deal on the printer. I got the printer NIB on eBay for about $45, the photo/color cartridges run about $10 each, and the larger b&w cartridge is about $15. Refills would be cheaper, but I don’t bother. I just order them off Amazon or buy them if I see them on sale.
It’s most likely been replaced by a newer model, but it’s my 2nd Canon printer in 9 years, and the other one was only replaced because Katrina got it.
You can also tweak the settings in the printer menu to print at “Fast Normal” which comes out looking good enough for day-to-day use and saves ink. Seems to save quite a bit for me.
Another suggestion (if you don’t want color printing) would be to look at the Samsung ML2851-ND. It cost about $100 at OfficeDepot a few months ago, but it prints two-sided internally – no manual switching. Saves me lots of paper. There’s a Samsung color laser printer with a similar look, but the four color cartridges will cost you as much as the printer. For the Samsung a cartridge will cost you about $60 for 2500 pages.
Epson printers still have a common problem of clogging printer heads, which are difficult to clean. I even bought a set of print heads with cleaning fluid to try and flush them on mine, and got no joy. For inkjets I still think HP is the best.
KC
i like my old reliable hp 970 — i print a lot — was a teacher then worked on a doctorate. i get refilled cartriadges on internet at carrot ink for about 1/3 of off the shelf price and they work dandy. also mine does both color and b w
HP7130 here. It has a port for a wireless printserver but it is not good with ink. RGB is like a sieve. B&W is better.
I agree with comment above the hplaserjet4 is a workhorse. B&W only and because I have only used it in an office I have no idea what a cartridge costs but that machine prints way more than my printer does. And when the ink fades you can shake the cartridge and get 10-20% more life out of it – no kidding!
I don’t know if there is a wireless port for it.
Aw, you guys are making me miss my old HP LaserJet 4. The thing was a trooper, I had it for about 8 years, and it was pretty well-used when I got it. I finally had to toss it when the paper outfeed mechanism irreparably broke down.
Since you already have the 5440, why not keep it around for when you absolutely need to print in color and get yourself a cheap B&W laser printer for your default printer. I have a HP LaserJet 1020 – works great, print quality is solid, and it cost about $100, new, as I recall. The cartridges cost about $65 and they’re good for a couple thousand pages. It doesn’t have a wireless port – I believe there’s a printer that’s essentially identical that does and costs about $50 more but I’m not sure what the model # is.
Any inkjet printer is gonna blow through ink and they charge you a fortune for refills – that’s the business model.
Inkjets work like razors, the blades cost more than the razor and the companies make their money on the inkjet cartridges. Get any laser printer and you’ll be OK. They cost more up front but it’s sure worth it. I have a Brother HL-5250DN that can be networked and it works great. I then suggest getting a mega toner cartridge instead of the wimpy version that comes with it. Then you just forget about it. Also, toner cartridges don’t dry out like inkjets with non-use.
Midderpidge has it down — only change I’d suggest is to get 2 $50 black and white laser printers, and you’ll never run out of toner again. Samsungs are workhorses for the money.
If you decide to stick with inkjet, make sure you can turn off color printing on B&W pages… by default, many will drain all 4 wells to print plain text.
Since I have no idea how much color printing you need to do, I second just getting a laser for BW and then using the color when needed. You cannot go wrong w/ the HP Laserjets mentioned up thread. I’ve taken the same Laserjet 4 to the field, in hot, cold, wet, dusty, and sandy conditions (sometimes all in succession). I’ve hauled it in trailers and the back of HMMWVs over roads that were nothing more than a line on a map, and have never had it fail to perform. It is also stingy w/ the toner when you use the right setting. I’ll get about a box and a half of paper our of a cartridge.
1) Use ink refills. They work fine. http://www.myinks.com
2) Set you printer to black and white draft quality. When printing text, it makes almost NO difference, and uses a LOT less ink and prints a LOT faster.
Modern technology works like that: they give you the stuff free and GOUGE you insultingly for accessories. $35. For a piece of plastic filled with ink. It’s actually insulting.
A new stylus for a PDA is 7 bucks (actually a package of 3 for $21 – 7 dollars each). It’s a plastic stick. 7 dollars for a plastic stick. This is what McDonald’s gives you to stir your coffee, and they are charging 7 dollars for it.
Screw them. Use ink refills.
I’ve got a 12 year old HP LsaserJet 5 and it still is WONDERFUL!
When I was a Management Consultant I wrote two books on Labour Relations and Human Rights and as they were ordered I’d print them off on my HP LJ5. I’ve printed countless thousands of pages on the thing. The toner cartridge is chi-hue-mungus and cost about $80 bucks or so and LASTS for freakin’ near ever!
Black and white only – just like Obama and me!
I concur with previous comments that you should consider a laser printer if you print (mono) on any kind of regular basis. Price out the toner cartridges based on how many pages they’re supposed to produce.
I’ve researched a bunch of the “all-in-ones,” or multi-function printers, and a lot of them come up lacking as far as the other features (like resolution of the scanner, etc.). If you don’t do much scanning, you can always just use a flatbed scanner (which is better for photos) and go for the best printer deal.
Otherwise, look for a multi-function laser printer with an auto document feeder AND and a flatbed scanner. Good luck.
I agree with the above fellow devotees – if you can find an HP LaserJet 4 (the 4MP is a little better) in good condition, buy it. It only prints 12-15 ppm, but it’s a sweet, sweet beast. I scavenged one from a failed networking experiment at work in 1997 and retired the thing last spring – still in perfect working order. My office changed and I didn’t have room for it anymore. The toner cartridges still cost around $100 brand new (you could save $20 on a reloaded one, maybe), but you can get 5000 – 6000 pages out of one. In twelve years, I think I bought three, and I printed a lot of papers, pamphlets, handouts, exams, book chapters, and the like.
I have to say I’ve never had the same luck with the LJ 5′s, but most of the ones I’ve had to troubleshoot were hooked up to Macs with crappy USB-to-parallel cables. The LJ 5′s didn’t have a USB port. Neither do the 4′s. If you have a Mac or a new laptop, you’ll need to get a printserver, or find an LJ 4 with a JetDirect Ethernet card. Hook it up to your home network and you’re good to go.
The newer printers, like the Samsung I mentioned earlier, will be easier to set up, and faster, but they are not nearly so … robust as the 4′s.
KC
but oh my God it drinks ink like wine at a Roman orgy.
It’s supposed to – HP isn’t the same company post-Fiorina as it was, and they need to make some cash, so they went to the system of giving the razors away and making money on the blades. Of course, if they’re doing that, they can tweak settings to make it eat more ink per page.
Anyways, I am with everyone above: if you do a lot of non-color printing get a B&W laser. The old pre-Fiorina HP’s were excellent, so snagging one those used would be cool, but for the price of a working HP model, you can snag a Brother HL-5250. I have a 5140 (the newer version is the 5240) and it’s great, except for the duplex printing. (If I had it to do over again, I would’ve gotten the 5150 and had the duplex printing.) Quality like old skool HP. I printed a foot-and-a-half thick manual with it (about 2500 pages) and ran out of toner, so I got online and got a double-size toner refill (6k pages) and have been printing away ever since. That was three or four years ago.
Goes real fast; hooks up to any OS or connector you care to name. If I had a an old Amiga or some other old 80′s box with a parallel port, I could almost certainly print with it. Emulates HPs and postscript just great.
max
['Best piece of computer equipment I've gotten this decade.']
I have found that buying for a B/W laser printer pays off in the long run. Try a used computer store for an old HP – refill cartriges are pretty cheap, last a long time, and you are going green by reusing.
HP Photosmart 3180 with the saturation turned down a bit seems to give me quite a bit more pages than I got with the Canon I used to use.
The only problem is that printers that roll the paper over instead of drop it through have trouble with heavy stock.
But if you don’t do any artsy fartsy stuff you would be fine.
ive got a HP 4-n-1 free…cost bout 80.00 for cartdriges
hate to give up…..i’ll have to dig it out of the Garage..give me a few days…lol
steve
Just print everything out at work and let Brock pay for it!
I don’t have any good advice, I have an HP that also is horrible. It is one that has the mulitple color cartridges (light cyan, dark cyan, light magenta, dark magenta, yellow, etc) – and what a pain! It quits working when one is out too. So there is no printing text in b&w when you run out of light freaking cyan.
Anyway, I’ve seen the infomercial for the kodak printer that is supposed to sell cartridges for only about 10 or 12 bucks a piece. And the printer is only $99.00 or $129.00, something like that. I’d like to get one and see if the quality is any good. Anyone know?
The website adversited on the infomercial is http://www.kodakoffer.com – I also read on a thread somewhere that it is $99.00 at sams club. I’m going to get one and try it out after Christmas.
Get a Brother black and white laser printer. Use the HP for any color you want.
If you can wait until we get up there for Christmas I’ll bring you my HP. I don’t use it anymore since I’ve got all these other printers for my biz. It works fine and isn’t bad on ink. It’s just sitting here, collecting dust.
OW, surely you’ve heard of the MarketPro Computer Shows that are held in the DC/VA/MD area, just about every week. You’ve prolly even been to one. There’s usually a number of vendors who sell remanufactured ink carts at great prices.
They’re in Upper Marlboro this week, and at the Timonium Fairgrounds next week. You can do a search on “MarketPro Shows” for the website.
Also, selected Walgreen’s stores have a cart refilling service: $10 for black, $15 color. They don’t do Epson carts, however (dammit).
I just bought a Canon Pixma MP140 all-in-one from a thrift shop for about $7. The color cart was empty, so I bought a Dataproducts “automatic” refill kit from Office Depot. That worked beautifully, and the print quality is great. That, and an older HP all-in-one, are my main printers now after a LONG succession of Epsons.
And Farris: kiss mine, too.
Why would you even screw with inkjets any longer than you have to? I just bought a Samsung CLP-315 full color laser printer at Office-Max for less than $200. It also had an instant rebate of $50.00 on it making my total about $150. You get lots of pages from the drum etc. and you’re not getting screwed by ink that evaporates as the printer just sits there. The black and white laser is around $120.00. Anybody who keeps an inkjet around is throwing away money.
I know, Chuck. But the sad fact of life is that I (and many others) simply can’t affford a laser printer right now…not to mention the replacement toner carts. That’s why I pick up inkjet printers dirt cheap at thrift shops, and occasionally come up with a few gems, like that Canon Pixma or the old Canon BJC-6000 (which I’ve never seen with a USB connection).
Of the more-than-a-dozen printers I’ve owned in the last nine years, only two were bought new in the carton.