Low Maintenance Multifunction Printer

[silverwolf0]

I am a college student and need a small, compact printer for my dorm that can also scan, thus multifunction. I have looked at cheap multifunction printers such as the canon mp130 / mp150 and hp officejet 4315 printers. As I am on a budget,a cheap printer with cheap ink is preferable. My biggest gripe is that all the printers I've owned have died a premature death in about a year or less. My old HP died after transporting it lightly from one floor to another. My previous Canon MultiPass died after I changed the ink cartridge and was also printing funny, probably due to a bad printhead. My old Lexmark had a bad printhead and I never knew about printheads in the past so its been sitting somewhere collecting dust. My cheap Canon i250 has currently developed a bad printhead. Its either I move it slightly and it dies on me or the printhead dies out of nowhere. Printheads are VERY expensive and they cost as much as a new printer so I might as well get one instead. I know the printer companies are out to get me but it's not like I have much of a choice.

I am looking for something that has low maintenance and is reliable. I don't print very frequently but when I do, I want it to work and work right, without taking 5 minutes to warm up and act posessed when I decide to print something, die on me, or print light/dark crap from bad printheads. I don't need too much ink as my old canon i250 used 9.5ml black cartridges and I would probably go through two at the most in a year. I am currently leaning towards HP even though people say they are more expensive. I've read that their printheads are attached to their cartridges so that I don't need to worry about screwed up printheads anymore. My previous two printers were Canons and they both liked to play games before printing and ruin their printheads in a nice fashion.

As I am not versed in printers, can someone recommend me som inexpensive multifunction printers that will give me the least problems? Canon will also work, but I will be a bit more wary about them.

 

[TechLarry]

Personally, I'd get the best Canon individual-cartridge model I could afford.

Canon historically is the cheapest to run, and out of all the Epsons, HP's and Canon's I've had the Canon's lasted the longest.

I'm still using a 4 year old i950 that can sit for weeks and print perfectly first-sheet any time I need it. My Pixma i8500 is even better.

-Larry

 

[djnes]

The HP PSC line has been pretty impressive, in terms of price and reliability. I believe the print heads are on the cartridges, like you said. I have a 1210 at home, and my parents have a 1410. Both works very well, all the time, even printing photos. I also have 4 1410s at work that give us absolutely no problems at all.