Printer Recommendations Revisited

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Amy McCray

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
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Dec 3, 2002
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North Prairie, WI
It's been awhile since this has been discussed and there are so many printers (ink jet or laser) on sale right now that I thought I would bring this up again.

I'm not sure if my dinosaur ink jet printer will work w/ the new iMac, so just in case I have to buy new, are there any recommendations? I'm interested in the Why-Not-To's as the Good ones.

I remember that HP has dated ink cartridges so one can get burned with that. My Epson uses up the color cartidges even though I only select Black! And if any one of the cartridges (color or b/w) is out, the printer will not work at all. :fire:

I've had a Lexmark in the past and frankly, I don't recall if that was a good one or not.

Will use some color but mostly b/w. Would love to go color laser so could print out brochures, flyers and business cards, but not sure I would have enough volume to justify the additional cost.

Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!
 
Amy McCray said:
...I remember that HP has dated ink cartridges so one can get burned with that...
Click to expand...

They've made a change in the way outdated cartridges are dealt with. The printer will print. When you start up from power off it will warn you of a outdated cartridge and allow the option to continue anyway, with a warning that damage caused by the cartridge will not be covered by the warranty - an unlikely happening.
 
Ink

If you are going to print photographs, buy an Epson. If you are going to print lots of brochures, buy a laser. You can print color brochures on an Epson, too, but it may be too costly. The other thing is that you should make sure the Epson ink is pigment and not dye base. Epson pigment ink remains intact even if the printed page is submerged in water, which makes it good for labels, brochures, etc. Dye has some amount of water resistance depending on the quality of the paper used.
 
The printerboys know very well how to make money from ink and toner. The Apple -site gives you some info too;
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/mac_accessories/printers?mco=MTM3NTI3ODU
Noted prices are higher as you will find in other stores. But it helps to know what Apple recommends.
Do not forget that a new toner-cartridge or a set of ink-cartridcges do cost more than the basic-price of the printer. For that reason I bought two color-laser printers from Lexmark network-printer. The first cartridges only have about 30% of the capacity. So I had double and I have the fuser double. And when most users finish the end of the fuser, they mostly trow the printer away and buy a new printer. To save that costs.
Personally I think that all printers are OK now. But one offers some more software as others. That's the same as with scanners. I like Omnipage, but I should not buy it. Mostly a light version comes free with a scanner.
 
It all depends on what your going to use the printer for. With my POS it is a monochrome laser printer. These can be picked up this week for $49 from several vendors. If your printing photos, you should get a photo printer as I have never seen a office printer do a decent job on these.
 
I gave up on my money-sucking Epson printer and strictly use the HP printer/scanner/copier for all printing needs except photos which I have printed by a photo printer guy.

I found a great little local one-woman shop and she refills ink for half the price of buying HP cartridges, and for these simple needs, the ink is perfectly fine.

I gave up on trying to make art prints a LONG time ago.

Epson cartridges are not even refillable which is a crime in my book.

How many stacks of discarded printers are filling up your town's junkyard?
 
We have two Brother laser printers in the shop. Just replaced the drum unit on one after 25,000 pages. Up and running again for the next 25. I have a color laser (HP 2605dn) at home that I also like a lot.
 
We have an HP2605dn also and it has been a really good printer up until recently. The last few months, the color has been all over the place. We've tried printing the same files using different computers and different programs but it is very inconsistent.

I have a feeling it's starting to wear out. We've put it through some hard use over the years. I don't even know how many pages we've printed on it but we use it daily for printing contact sheets of photos, brochures, etc.

Right now, we are considering getting a newer one to replace it. We may switch to the POS computer since color doesn't matter there. The one we have on that computer has banding my brother-in-law who repairs printers says requires replacing parts to fix that aren't really worth replacing.
 
For inkjet use, I got rid of my Epsons and went with Canons, which I love. Unless you print constantly, the Epson heads will clog and you'll spend half your ink supply frustratedly running the cleaning utility. The Canons don't seem to mind how long it's been since your last print job.
Print quality is great and the interface is easy to use.
Both mine are Pixma models with separate ink tanks for each color, plus an extra black tank.
:cool: Rick
 
Just got my 2 brother laser printers from the Black Friday deals. I will keep one as a back up and the girls will be getting the other for Christmas.
 
All this talk reminded me that I needed to make brochures and needed a desktop color laser printer. Checked things out and ended up with a Brother HL3070cw digital color printer which is wireless as well, so i don't need it right next to my computer.
Now to rearrange my office area to accommodate the thing. I need to get rid of my Sony CD player as I don't use it anymore.
 
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