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Pillar Of The Community
United States
1510 Posts |
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HP ink cartridges just went up another 10% to 15% again.  They just got a GIANT corporate tax break and the greedy #@*%# raise the price of the ink. HP has got to STOP GOUGING their customers.  I hope everyone write HP and complains and complains hard! |
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| Edited by Timm - 02/26/2018 11:31 pm |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
1951 Posts |
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They give you free cartridges when you buy a printer. One time, I bought an HP on sale and it turned out less costly than just buying the cartridges!
Jack Kelley |
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Moderator
United States
12330 Posts |
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I posted this a week ago... Quote:
Years ago printer manufacturers figured out that the real money was in the consumables. They began lowering the cost of the printers (some to levels of break-even or even loss leaders) and concentrated on the much more profitable after market consumables.
I am with Al, unless I had a specific reason to buy an ink-jet (like photo-quality or other specialty printing), I would avoid them like the plague. Laser printers are far less headaches and lower cost over the life time of the printer.
I recommend buying a refurbished workhorse laser printer; one designed for company or group use and not one designed for personal use. There is significant differences between these including cost. My current home color laser printer is a beast, it weighs over 90 pounds and takes a lot of real estate; it was also a $2600 printer when it came out in 2002. But I purchased a refurb for less than $300 in 2005 and it has been printing daily ever since without any issues. Like most workplace printers, this thing has never missed a beat, handles all kinds of paper sizes and weights and has all kinds of features. And because of they are targeted to the business environment, the manufacturers tend to keep the drivers and updates going for many, many years.
Considering a 'planned obsolescence' consumer printer which requires constant purchase of consumables, losing driver support within a year or two, and delivers less than ideal printouts was a decision that made buying a high quality refurbished printer an easy choice for me. Don |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
772 Posts |
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Yes, I recently switch over from a Inkjet to a LaserJet printer and, so far, I'm much happier.
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
1624 Posts |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
713 Posts |
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I think Don has the right idea. If you calculate how much ink costs and how much of a headache it is to always have enough, buying a used business model laser printer is a winner. Of course you do need room for it. |
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Forum Dad
USA
2055 Posts |
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Quote:
They give you free cartridges when you buy a printer. One time, I bought an HP on sale and it turned out less costly than just buying the cartridges! Most cartridges that come with new printers are only about a third full. I've had this Lexmark laser for about 6 years. Still on the cartridge that came with it. I think it was about $250 brand new.  |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
4426 Posts |
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Laser toner cartridges do not dry out. Inkjet ink has a finite shelf life and often if you do not print regularly the heads can gunk up and the ink dries out. If you do not use it, you lose it. I would only use them for high quality photos. |
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Al |
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Moderator
United States
12330 Posts |
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One of the great things about a commercial quality laser printer is that you can easily identify the amount of usage the printer has seen in its lifetime. (They all keep detailed usage logs internally.) So rather than just trust a refurbish company to send me a random one, I took a trip to their facility and looked at a number of them. They had printouts on top of each one which summarized the maintenance history, components which had been replaced, toner levels, and the total number of pages printed.
Don |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
770 Posts |
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Years ago I bought a used Apple laser 16/600. Basically a rebadged HP. I believe it had a service life of 400,000 pages. We bought it cheap with 70,000 on the odometer. It served us for 10 years. |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
770 Posts |
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Currently I use an HP 2035n which I bought used on Amazon. I picked it because it has an optional pass through paper path which can be important if your want to print on heavy weight or cover weight paper. It doesn't curl or cause jams. |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
1510 Posts |
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I use a HP F4480 printer
It will Not print anything including Black only unless I have a color cartridge in it with ink.
Even though I don't print anything in color the printer still goes through a full color cartridge every 6 months.
It will not print black only pages if the color cartage is empty.
Just another rip-off from HP
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
611 Posts |
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I use a Canon MG7720 inkjet printer for all my pages. I considered using a laser printer, but I have documents printed with commercial-grade laser from 20 to 30 years ago that are now stuck together while in regular storage in a filing cabinet. I don't want to risk that with my stamp pages, so I chose the inkjet route and will stick with that. My printer handles 110lb cardstock well and prints nice, crisp pages. Just my 2¢. |
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Valued Member
United States
75 Posts |
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Yeah I considered laser printers but changed my mind when pages I had printed with a laser printer a few years ago showed signs of fading due to (I suspect) the toner not fusing to the 110# cardstock I like to use for album pages. As for ink jets being more costly, I'm finding that my new Epson handles large volumes of printing, is doing a fine job and the cost of the cartridges are far less than those of the HP printer I was using. One thing to consider is that the amount of printing you do for the average album page is far, far less than an ordinary page so you can print at least two to three times as many album pages as you can regular pages of full text. I'm up to 750 pages on a single black ink cartridge and it still continues to print. The initial cost was far less than even a refurbished Laser printer, it doesn't require its own zip code in terms of the space it takes up and at $16 apiece I can buy multiple inkjet cartridges before it adds up to a single toner cartridge. I've read in several posts advocates of the laser printer approach and more power to them, but I just suggest this as a very viable and cost effective alternative. It works for me, it might work for you as well. |
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Moderator
United States
12330 Posts |
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The last two opinions surprised me, in the 25 years that I have been involved with IT this is the first time I have ever heard of fading or sticking issues with laser printouts.
For anyone who is considering a new printer, you should Goggle 'laser vs. inkjet' for hundreds of articles on the pros and cons of the two print technologies. Most are written by those who have significant experience with both print technologies.
Don
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
4426 Posts |
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I recall seeing issues from photocopiers like that but that was 30 years ago. |
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Al |
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Replies: 17 / Views: 4,175 |
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Posted 02/26/2018 11:27 pm
