Effing Printers, how do they work!?

GnomeQueen

Hello darlings,

As we all know, printers suck a lot. I am about to start grad school, and I'm tired of stupid printers that I have to hump, chant spells, sacrifice goats to, etc, to get it to print something. I know that laser printers are probably the most reliable, but also the most expensive. I don't have a budget persay, I just want something that I can rely on to work for the next two years without magic spells and rain dances, that's hopefully not too expensive. Ideally, it should also have a scanner.

Do you have any suggestions, oh incredibly intelligent people of Icrontic?

primesuspect

I would highly recommend a cheap laser printer. I have a $150 laser printer that is TEN YEARS old and it still prints 100% reliably with no fuss at all. It's also WAY cheaper per page to print, and honestly - do you need color?

A cheap, $90 laser printer

Just as an example. If you need color, they have color lasers very cheap too.

Mt_Goat

Gnome Queen wrote:

Hello darlings,

As we all know, printers suck a lot. I am about to start grad school, and I'm tired of stupid printers that I have to hump, chant spells, sacrifice goats to , etc, to get it to print something. I know that laser printers are probably the most reliable, but also the most expensive. I don't have a budget persay, I just want something that I can rely on to work for the next two years without magic spells and rain dances, that's hopefully not too expensive. Ideally, it should also have a scanner.

Do you have any suggestions, oh incredibly intelligent people of Icrontic?

Brian is right, and you can also find great deals on used laser printers that are being replaced with newer models that still have lots of years left for even less.

BTW
There will be NO SACRAFICING OF GOATS!

GnomeQueen

Mt_Goat wrote:

Brian is right, and you can also find great deals on used laser printers that are being replaced with newer models that still have lots of years left for even less.

BTW
There will be NO SACRAFICING OF GOATS!

Apologies, I can use lambs instead.

Mt_Goat

Gnome Queen wrote:

Apologies, I can use lambs instead.

Yes, use all the lambs you want. They are the spawn of sheep. Goats are just kids.

primesuspect

Most printer companies give you "starter" toner cartridges with those cheap printers. My "starter" cartridge that came with my HP LaserJet 1200 last me five years.

Cyclonite

We just threw away a 13 year old HP LaserJet at the office because we finally couldn't get it to print consistently anymore. They're beasts.

I bought a Brother HL-2140 on sale 3 or 4 years ago and I'm still on my first toner cartridge. I haven't had an issue with it at all.

I'd recommend against a multifunction device, so I'd say get a separate inexpensive scanner if you really need one.

Leonardo

Brian is right, and you can also find great deals on used laser printers that are being replaced with newer models that still have lots of years left for even less.

No question about it - laser is the way to go for monochrome. If you are looking for a used one, get the exact model number first and do an Internet search for drivers if you intend run the printer form a Windows 7 box. Many older laser printers DO NOT HAVE Win7 drivers available....


and you'd be back to:

hump, chant spells, sacrifice goats to, etc, to get it to print something

Check out Craigslist. Also, the office stores have pretty good sales every now and then.

the_technocrat

Cyclonite wrote:

We just threw away a 13 year old HP LaserJet at the office because we finally couldn't get it to print consistently anymore. They're beasts.

I bought a Brother HL-2140 on sale 3 or 4 years ago and I'm still on my first toner cartridge. I haven't had an issue with it at all.

I'd recommend against a multifunction device, so I'd say get a separate inexpensive scanner if you really need one.

Look out, the old HP's were a lot better than the newer ones. We replace more 2-3 year old HP's than we do the 8-10 year old ones. They still make good enterprise printers, but they've been cheapened out.

FWIW, we have 4-5 Dells and they've never needed anything, ever. They're the larger workgroup printers, though.

the_technocrat

Also, since this is part of my jerb, we found the cheapest cost-per-page printer (considering toner/ink, fusers/printheads, etc) for a usage on the 500-sheets-or-less-per-month range to be the HP 8000, or if you need a scanner, the MFP version is the 8500 and sometimes cheaper (I know, odd.) Note I said 500 pages or less per month. When you get to the 4-5 ream mark, it's a different brand/model entirely, and then it changes again in the 20-ream range, and then again to a copy machine when it gets above that. (It's not cost effective to have 125 people using a deskjet, or to have a Sharp copy machine just for one person, etc.

It's not the best printer out there, but it's decent and was the best deal for the price for a printer we'll plan on rotating out in a few years. They have chronic paper pickup problems about 10% of the time with cheap 22lb paper that doesn't have a nice coating, we've done RMAs for the problem with no issue. (Based on the 15-20 or so we have)

TL,DR: it depends on how you're going to use it. How many pages per month (estimate), how long you think you're going to keep it, do you need a scanner to copy/fax/image to PDF, etc)

shwaip

heh. ream.