Of the more-than-a-dozen printers I’ve owned in the last nine years, only two were bought new in the carton.

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.

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.

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 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

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.

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!

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.

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 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.

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.