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| What's a good printer for minimal usage ? |
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| Gyro:
I agree that a cheap laser is the way to go for occasional use. My (I guess old now) Dell C1760nw colour printer has quietly sat there, attached to the router, for the past 10 years at least, waking up and printing whenever required, it hasn't skipped a beat. Photo quality actually isn't at all bad for casual use, putting in some smooth surface (high clay content) laser photo paper makes a huge difference. One tip, choose one that has readily available aftermarket toner cartridges. Cheap laser printers, like cheap inkjets aim to make money back on consumables. So far I've got through the original starter cartridges, a fresh set of official Dell starter cartridges, purchased cheaply on ebay, and am now on a set of remanufactured high capacity aftermarket cartridges, with no loss of print quality. A set of genuine high capacity Dell cartridges would have cost more than the printer, effectively writing it off. The aftermarket ones are very economical (and you hardly ever need to change them with low volume printing anyway). |
| kaz911:
my favourites are Brother Laser MFC's. Silent when not running and drivers are not full of junk (just a little bit of junk not a massive pile of sh*t like HP) |
| paulca:
Good point on checking the cost of consumables. I think I checked the brother cartridges existed in popular 3rd party form for £100 a full set of 4. The official ones are only about 150 anyway. Not that that appears to be a concern. My daughter has been printing full block colour drawings on it mostly what its been used for and it still reports 100% on all toners. It's a year old. |
| tooki:
--- Quote from: paulca on February 05, 2023, 10:29:28 am ---Cheap lasers are available. --- End quote --- I just think it’s important to remind people that the toner for cheap laser printers is very, very, very expensive, frequently more expensive than inkjet ink. So while they’re great for people who truly print next to nothing, with large gaps of time between print jobs, it only takes a few hundred pages of printouts to make it cheaper, long term, to get an ink tank inkjet. Their ink is so cheap that even if you waste fully half of it on head cleaning, you’ve still spent practically nothing on ink. |
| nctnico:
--- Quote from: kaz911 on February 05, 2023, 11:57:02 am ---my favourites are Brother Laser MFC's. Silent when not running and drivers are not full of junk (just a little bit of junk not a massive pile of sh*t like HP) --- End quote --- The trick with HP printers is to scroll down and download the drivers only. Their software is a pile of junk indeed. --- Quote from: tooki on February 05, 2023, 04:00:13 pm --- --- Quote from: paulca on February 05, 2023, 10:29:28 am ---Cheap lasers are available. --- End quote --- I just think it’s important to remind people that the toner for cheap laser printers is very, very, very expensive, frequently more expensive than inkjet ink. --- End quote --- I doubt that. I always buy the largest B&W toner cartridge that fits the printer and it takes me years before it is empty. In my experience an inkjet just doesn't work for incidental printing. Been there, done that. Heads get clogged and/or ink dries out. On top of that, the print quality just isn't as sharp as you get from a laser printer. BTW I always buy original cartridges. I don't want to mess around with crap. I can easely waste more time than the toner cartridge is worth. |
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