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A good, low maintenance printer?

S

Sly

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Aug 17, 2004
Messages
5,749
Printer noob here.

I don't use the printer very often, probably months in between prints. The annoying thing is that every time i do need to print, i end up either with a dry or almost empty cartridge. Most of my printers have been HP's. I picked them because of bad experience with epson printers with print heads that keeps clogging up, rendering the whole unit useless (You'll use up most of your ink clearing it, if it works at all).

So it's either fixed print heads that are prone to clogging, or disposable cartridges that dry out after a few months in the closet.

Any advice for someone that rarely uses his printer would be appreciated.




PS: I just finished 'refilling' the cartridge. WTF??? It only took less than a quarter of the squeeze bottle to overfill the cartridge! How many pages was i supposed to get out of this?! I've refilled someone else's printer before and that one took the whole bottle! Is this why they were drying out so fast?

Current printer is a 2660, it's fine for my needs if it weren't for the fact that it doesn't actually work when i need it. If i wanted a printer that was really compact (easy to store/take out), only has to print black and white, and can last a long time in storage, what would it be?
 
A quality laser will not have its toner dry out as fast as a bunch of the inkjet cartridges do.
 
Get a laser printer. Mono (black and white) laser printers are very inexpensive these days.
 
Yeah, laser printer or just force yourself to print a test page once a week on your inkjet.

Newegg and Amazon both have a very good selection of cheap ones. Newegg has some around $80, and Amazon even has one at $60.

If you prefer brick and mortar, Best Buy, Staples, or other office supply type places have a large selection. You may also want to look into refurbished business grade ones. My grandpa has an HP 6p and he prints about 20 to 30 pages per day. Unlike the 5 or 6 printers my family has gone through in the same period of time, his worked with very few problems since he got it new in the last millenium. I suspect a properly refurbished laserjet will work similarly, and you can find cheap toner online as well.
 
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I almost never used my inkjet printer back in the day, and whenever I needed it I had the same problems you are having. It use to drive me efffing insane. I went mono laser like others have suggested and have never looked back. If you don't need a color printer these are the way to go for infrequent printing.

I ended up buying the Brother HL-2140 from NewEgg during a sale they had on them frequently. I paid $65.99 +tax w/free shipping at the time, best $71.43 I have ever spent. I purchased it 12/13/2009 and I have had zero problems with it, prints each time I need it, havent replaced the toner, hell I haven't even reloaded the paper tray. I noticed this exact model is deactivated at NE, but I have seen them at some B&M stores on sale from time to time as well.

Perhaps this Brother HL-2220 is its successor? FWIW Amazon has it today at $79.99 w/free super saver shipping, I will leave researching it up to you as I have not read up on printers since December '09 :p

If you do not need color do your self a great favor and find a decent mono laser printer and you will be a happy panda.
 
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I will say you have to be careful with some of the real cheap lasers. Their toners last as long as an inkjet's and are a lot more expensive. I saw this on some of the cheaper samsung color lasers a few years ago. Do some research first on toner costs and the amount of pages they will print. I'd stick with a black and white if possible to save some cash.
 
swatbat brings up a good point, I remember I had read in some peoples reviews on my printer that it would be cheaper to keep buying the printer new on sale (sometimes it was like $55 or so) vs. buying the toner.. albeit my printer IIRC normally sold for ~ $120 when not on sale. But if you print as infrequently as I do you should be fine.

As for color laser printers, they don't seem crazy priced for the unit.. but check out how much the toners are and you'll choke, and they have four individual cartridges IIRC, black, red, blue and yellow. $$$$ :eek:
 
The only time i've ever used color was when i'm printing out resumes. Other than that, the only other times are when i'm doing test prints and head cleaning.


How about refills? There are ink stations in the malls that you can send your ink cartridges to, some of them may refill toners too. With HP inkjets, even if they botch the refill, it wouldn't ruin the printer since the printhead is disposable. Anything i should watch out for in toner refills?
 
Scour your local craigslist for a HP Laserjet 4100, parts and toner are cheap and they go forever. If your lucky you'll get one with a hp jetdirect print server in it(Its dual capable). I got mine with 2 615n print servers, and 2 toners for 100 dollars from a local business that was upgrading to color lasers. Best investment ever.
 
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