What's wrong with this picture?

[Balog]

My printer is out of ink. I goto Staples to buy some new ink, and it's significantly more expensive than the freaking printer was! Something is wrong about that....

I'm no hippie, but it seems horrifically wasteful to buy a new printer every time the old one runs out of ink. 

[mgdavis]

It's the same as buying refills for your razor. Get 'em hooked on your brand, then charge an obscene amount when they come back for more.

[Balog]

I don't even like this printer! 

[K Frame]

I've not had a working printer at the house for well over a year now.

I got sick and tired of playing that dance.

I print so little that my ink was always drying out anyways.

So, I just bring stuff that I need to print into the office and print it out on the lasers.

If I get another printer, it will be a laser.

[Manedwolf]

This is precisely why I got an HP laser for $65 after rebates.

It's laser. If you leave it for a year, it will still print.

I got sick of playing the "dried out ink cartridge/won't print black without all five colors loaded" game, too.

Also, inkjets are the loss leader for ink sales.

[Balog]

Inkjets as a loss leader for ink sales..... My God, that's so true! How did I not see that.....

Note to self: buy laser printer....

[Firethorn]

My printer is out of ink. I goto Staples to buy some new ink, and it's significantly more expensive than the freaking printer was! Something is wrong about that....

A lot of the companies provide 'starter cartridges' with their printers; they only contain a third to half of the ink of the normal cartridges.  Still, I agree with Mike.

I'm looking at something like this:  HP LaserJet CM1312nfi CC431A MFC / All-In-One Up to 12 ppm 600 x 600 dpi Color Laser Printer

$399 with free shipping.  No ink to dry out.  Hugely expensive for the amount I print, but I'd likely to never need to replace the toner in it.  Each toner cartridge is ~$60, but rated for ~22k pages.  11 cents per full color, 2.7 per black.

[Manedwolf]

Inkjets as a loss leader for ink sales..... My God, that's so true! How did I not see that.....

Note to self: buy laser printer....

Check the specs on those, too. HPs are pretty low-cost. Some Brother models are horribly expensive, they need a replaceable $125 drum on a $100 printer.

HP is still pretty much the best plug-it-in-and-print laser, plus the toners are cheap whenever Staples runs an instant savings thing.

Many stores run specials on this little HP, which is 600dpi and fast as hell, actually, for $50-$65.

[Kwelz]

Kodak makes a series of printers with refills that cost 20 bucks. 

[AZRedhawk44]

Also, RE: Inkjets -

There are different designs to the print heads.

Epsons typically have a series of micro-tubes going from the ink wells to the permanent print head.  Guess what happens when ink congeals in the tubes?  Yep.  You run a bunch of purges to get it out, wasting your ink supply.  If the head itself gets badly clogged, your printer is dead.

HP's, on the other hand, have print heads directly attached to the ink cartridges.  While this allows for print alignment problems, HP drivers are typically kind enough to include alignment software to take care of this.  The distance from reservoir to print head is shorter, and there is no gasket or air leak to aid in ink drying out.  If a print head does go bad, just buy a new cartridge and voila! you have a new print head, too.

Lasers kick butt compared to inkjets, though... unless you want to print high-resolution color or do fancy graphics on irregular media like CD's.

[MillCreek]

I have an old Canon S900 photo printer, a cheap Brother laser and a Canon MP all in one.  I use the laser most frequently followed by the faxing, scanning, copying and color printing functionality of the Canon MP.  I hardly ever use the Canon S900 anymore, but it still works, so I have no reason to dump it.

That HP color laser all in one looks interesting.  I have had some form of all in one machine for about 10 years now, and boy do they come in handy.  

[AZRedhawk44]

Check the specs on those, too. HPs are pretty low-cost. Some Brother models are horribly expensive, they need a replaceable $125 drum on a $100 printer.

HP is still pretty much the best plug-it-in-and-print laser, plus the toners are cheap whenever Staples runs an instant savings thing.

Many stores run specials on this little HP, which is 600dpi and fast as hell, actually, for $50-$65.

Disagree.

HP used to be... until their drivers got clogged with bloatware and their lower end consumer grade lasers moved away from PS/PCL compatibility to proprietary language host-based printing (Mac and Linux incompatibility).

I consider Dells to be the best consumer grade laser printers out there right now.

[Kwelz]

Dell printers are (or at least used to be) just lexmark printers with a different branding put on them. 

[mtnbkr]

I have a Canon Pixma IP4300 inkjet.  It has been pretty good and was inexpensive at about $80ish a couple years ago.  If I had to buy all of the ink at once, it would set me back about $60, but with all of the colors separated into discrete tanks, I can replace the ones that are out.  I buy singles if I only need one, but if I need two or more colors, I buy a multipack and replace the colors that are out, saving the others till they too are empty.  Even if one color is out, it will let me print B&W, though it does complain.  Performance is good and it works with Mac, Linux, and Windows.

Chris

[Manedwolf]

I have a Canon Pixma IP4300 inkjet.  It has been pretty good and was inexpensive at about $80ish a couple years ago.  If I had to buy all of the ink at once, it would set me back about $60, but with all of the colors separated into discrete tanks, I can replace the ones that are out.  I buy singles if I only need one, but if I need two or more colors, I buy a multipack and replace the colors that are out, saving the others till they too are empty.  Even if one color is out, it will let me print B&W, though it does complain.  Performance is good and it works with Mac, Linux, and Windows.

Chris

The Epson I had and got rid of would not even print black if one of the color tanks was out. That's why it left.

[AZRedhawk44]

Dell printers are (or at least used to be) just lexmark printers with a different branding put on them. 

Used to.

Dell stole several of HP's designers about 3-4 years ago and their recent products have been outstanding.  HP's?  Meh.  Not so much anymore.

[roo_ster]

I have had wonderful results with two Samsung desktop laser printers
ML 1710 Laser
SCX-4x21 Laser ("x" is some number)

ML is a printer-only.  Bought for less than $100.  My wife tried to wear it out, replacing the toner 3 or 4 times.  Thousands of pages printed.  Printer is still alive & operable, just needs a new toner, as it has become superfluous since we bought..

SCX-*, which is one of those multi-function jobbies: print, copy, scan, fax.  Bought for less than $200.  Only replaced toner once, so far, but it has been a rock.

Drivers for both are great and they are easy to operate.  Also, they come with linux drivers.

BTW, my wife is in school and prints out all her lecture slides & notes.

[Nick1911]

The absolute best purchase I may have ever made was for this beast:



It's an HP LaserJet 5Si.  It weighs about 200 pounds.  It just barley fits in the backseat of a 1995 Honda Accord, with the front seat pushed all the way forward.  The toner costs $140, and lasts for 15,000 pages.  I bought it used, with 350,000 pages on the internal counter for $35.  I have used it for about 5 years, and have not had to put toner in it yet.

When the toner eventually does run out, I won't hesitate to buy more, even at $140.  It's been a fantastic printer.

[AZRedhawk44]

The absolute best purchase I may have ever made was for this beast:



It's an HP LaserJet 5Si.  It weighs about 200 pounds.  It just barley fits in the backseat of a 1995 Honda Accord, with the front seat pushed all the way forward.  The toner costs $140, and lasts for 15,000 pages.  I bought it used, with 350,000 pages on the internal counter for $35.  I have used it for about 5 years, and have not had to put toner in it yet.

When the toner eventually does run out, I won't hesitate to buy more, even at $140.  It's been a fantastic printer.

The old HP's are workhorses.

Anything with an EX/EX-II/EX+ engine from HP (LJ 4 and 5 series, various models) can be counted on for at least 2 million pages with proper maintenance.

The older SX series engines (HP LJ II and III, Wang, Apple LaserWriter, etc) can be counted on to run until Ragnarok.  Unstoppable.  They only print at about 6 pages a minute and only at 300dpi, but they are almost bomb proof.

My very first IT job was a part time gig in college, rebuilding laser printer fusing assemblies for HP series printers and clones.

[Nick1911]

My very first IT job was a part time gig in college, rebuilding laser printer fusing assemblies for HP series printers and clones.

Do you know a good place to get parts for them?  Several of the rubber rollers are drying out on mine, leading to intermittent feeding issues from tray 2.

[Manedwolf]

Laserwriter IIg Ethernet printers with the Canon engines will also work forever. Staples even still has toner for them, and they're almost twenty years old! (Plus the toner refills are like $20)...and yes, they support PostScript. It's why they were insanely expensive when introduced.

[AZRedhawk44]

Do you know a good place to get parts for them?  Several of the rubber rollers are drying out on mine, leading to intermittent feeding issues from tray 2.

http://www.printerworks.com/

This was my old parts vendor for the work I did.  Rubber rollers, plastic drive gears, fuser elements, teflon rollers.  They got it all.

[Nick1911]

http://www.printerworks.com/

This was my old parts vendor for the work I did.  Rubber rollers, plastic drive gears, fuser elements, teflon rollers.  They got it all.

Thanks! 

I'll have to talk to the wife, but they have a $90 kit that looks mighty nice.

My wife, (being a teacher) uses the heck out of that thing.  It would be nice to get both trays feeding again.

[Marnoot]

Check the specs on those, too. HPs are pretty low-cost. Some Brother models are horribly expensive, they need a replaceable $125 drum on a $100 printer.

I couldn't be happier with my Brother printer. Various family members HPs all got bad rollers, and even after replacing them, they didn't last much longer. The drum on the brother has a life of over 25,000 pages, and the price (for my model anyway) for a new drum is less than half the cost of a new printer. The comparable HP units have the drum in the toner cartridge and the toner cartridges cost more, so after a few toner changes the cost difference between HP & Brother toner/drum replacement is a wash as you're paying extra for the HP drum replacement every time you change the toner.

[HankB]

A lot of the companies provide 'starter cartridges' with their printers; they only contain a third to half of the ink of the normal cartridges. 

Yep. In fact, IIRC, HP got sued a number of years ago over this exact issue.

They won, as their ad didn't say "Comes with a FULL ink cartridge" but only that "a" ink cartridge was included.