Which Printer Should I Buy? - Comments

I have a Lexmark 640. I love it I paid $15.00 for it at a local store.It was brand new in the box. I refill cartridges. I get about 3 refills per cartridge

Have you seen any of these clips on memjet?
http://www.memjet.com/media.aspx -- These are only prototype machines, but there performance is incredible!

You mentioned a Lexmark model; I don't know if it's the same model as mine, but my Lexmark is a piece of junk! It says that both my color & black cartridges are still around half-full, but when I print something, I either get nothing at all, or faint blue & red lines. I have tried cleaning it according to the instructions as well as going through the Help section troubleshooters & test pages. It still doesn't work. I bought it new from the store about a year ago and am very disappointed.

HI Bob. I enjoyed you review and would like to point out just one thing in relation to Ink Jet printers. If you don't use an ink jet very much, you run the risk of clogged jets which causes loss of use. It's been awhile since I worked with HP Ink Jets, but in the case of Epson with their permanent print head, it is a serious problem. It will cost about $55 at a factory authorized repair facility to get the print head cleared after failing the 'cleaning procedure provided. If I remember correctly, HP Ink Jets had the print head as part of the cartridge. If it clogs, the fix is simple, replace the cartridge.

I used to be a big fan of Epson but if you don't print with them periodically, the print heads had a bad habit of drying out. Cleaning the heads would waste huge amounts of ink. And sometimes it wouldn't recover. Our office still uses one for printing on white faced CD's but the rest are retired. At the office we have an HP LaserJet networked with a print server. At home I've ended up with 2 printers - both cost effective Brothers. One is a B&W laser for the usual text stuff. The other a multifunction inkjet for colour work.

I would also comment that photo printing at home is great. But if you have any volume to do its a LOT cheaper to take the files to your local shop.

You omit the cost of drums for laser printers. The drum on my Brother MF Contraption 7820 went bad. So I took the one from my Brother HL-2070N printer and shoved
it into the MF Contraption. It works fine. [The HL-2070N was my home printer; I set it aside when I got the MF Contraption. I also have on Okidata printer I had at my former office that's now hooked up to the computer I brought home from the office.]

The HL-2040 uses the same drum and toner cartridge as the MF Contraption that I have; the toner cartridge that comes with the printer is only good for 1,500 pages vs. 2,500 for the regular ones. So a drum at $89.95 less 5% and a starter toner cartridge at 60% of $26.95 less 5% would come to $100.81. But I got both a drum and a 60% toner cartridge for $66.59!

Another alternative for both inkjet and laser printer owners is recycling their cartridges. There are retail locations that will reuse ink cartridges and rebuild laser cartridges for less than even the compatible type. I use rebuilt cartridges in my home laser printer and am very pleased with both the quality and the price, around 40% below retail.

Good article. As you point out with the Lexmark, many of the cheaper inkjet printers are now "disposable"; it can literally be cheaper to buy a new printer, and throw away the old one, rather than buy new cartridges.

Some of the low-end (thinking here of the HP 2600 series of color lasers) "personal" laser printers are also nearly disposable; it can actually be cheaper to buy a whole new printer on sale, than it is to purchase four new toner cartridges. Just as Epson has become extremely proprietary about their inkjet cartridges, HP is becoming a bit stinky about some of their LaserJet toner cartridges; some now seem to have chips that require reset.

We have owned HP Color LaserJets for years, and have been quite pleased with the not only the price per page, but also the overall excellent print quality, and the durability of the equipment.

Last note: While inks have come a LONG way in being fade-resistant, and water-resistant, you still can't beat a color laser print for long-term color stability and safety. I recently discovered several inkjet prints that I thought I had archived carefully (away from sun, etc.) had faded to a point that they were nearly unrecognizable.

Hi Bob, The Officejet Pro L76800 is new and the series is the first I've seen that HP claims has the convienience of an Ink Jet and the quality and price per page of a laser.

I've been using it for a month now - and am deeply impressed - so (particularly for a home office business) it's well worth looking at as part of the mix when you're making a buying decision for a new printer (and copier, scanner & fax).

I agree about the clogged jets problem. The theory says that if you only print small quantities, then it is cheaper to get an inkjet. But in practice, printing in small quantities means that the print head solidifies and becomes unusable. OK, you could print test pages every few days, but then you use up all the ink on testing. This makes the few pages you do want to print very expensive.