Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Another Printer Dies...Help Me!

I'm fed up with junk printers! In the past two years I've had to scrap a fairly expensive Brother wireless printer because the paper feed mechanism was balky, and more recently a Canon printer that seems to have a dead power supply. Both required expensive ink that didn't last long. I've got to get a new one, but my criteria have changed. I want a durable printer that uses ink in a miserly fashion!

These printers were my "downstairs" printers. I have a small desk in the family room where I park my laptop when it's not traveling with me. Good Witch asked me to get it so I'd not be disappeared into my "upstairs" office for protracted periods. Now I check email and Facebook, and do my blog, while she reads her book in the chair not far away. It's TOGETHERNESS! But I digress.

My upstairs printer is an old HP K80 that I've had forever and put to hard use. It is super durable and takes huge ink cartridges that I seldom replace. Of course, HP is not foolish enough to be making that version any more, but I'd buy another one except that it's too large for my tiny downstairs desk. I need a tidy, unobtrusive printer that won't ask me to replace ink every month or two.

Any suggestions, dear readers?

6 comments:

thimscool said...

Ink jet printers are not cost effective, unless you want top notch photo reproduction in house. Even then, it begs the question why not outsource for that specialty.

Inkjet = $0.40/page for B&W, $0.90 for color. And they are slow. And when you try to conserve on printing to save money, the ink dries out (on cheaper models), which makes them more like $8/page.

You want a laser printer. But what kind, eh?

Do you need color? What quality of color? Do you need anything more than letter size paper? Do you need duplexing (printing on both sides)? Do you have a wired network jack available at the location of the printer? Do you also want scanning (and then why not copying/faxing)? How many impressions per month... less than 10,000? What is your budget.

Answer some of those questions, and I'll narrow it down to a couple of choices. But in general, look to Dell and HP (bought through newegg.com for the latter).

Anonymous said...

If you don't need color, then laser printers are definitely the way to go. I have a Canon laser printer that I'm really happy with: the print quality is excellent, and the toner cartridges last about five times longer than those little inkjet cartridges.

Lifehiker said...

Thanks to you both! I'm now the proud owner of an HP1006 laser, a tidy little guy that prints fast.

1138 said...

Lexmark Laser Durable and reliable

Jenn said...

portable printer. I have had one forever, have to goto Office Max to get the ink anymore and they have to figure out what kind. When I move all my stuff I will try to remember to look at the brand, I am thinking Cannon. It prints in color too but I just get the black cartridge (only one cartridge at a time so if you print black like letters with the color the color will go FAST)anyway, it is a portable laptop printer.

Jenn said...

**disregard, I just read the other comments.