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What's a good printer for minimal usage ?
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MarkS:

--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on February 05, 2023, 09:27:31 pm ---Yes, the only annoying thing it has developed is a tendency to warp paper sheets a bit (which it wasn't doing before.) Not sure what's the cause. Has the fuser temperature gotten higher maybe?

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Brother recommends replacing the drum unit every 12,000 pages. That may be it.
james_s:

--- Quote from: ejeffrey on February 05, 2023, 10:17:17 pm ---I've had extremely bad results with after market toner for brother color laser printers.  Random streaks, permanent bars on the paper edge, and one that appears to also break the drum unit, coating more to replace than it was supposed to save.  Some are fine and some are garbage, but the problem I have is that it's hard to tell which is which in a sea of fly by night rebadged vendors.  So I have pretty much given up buying after market toner

I still prefer laser printers, but if you buy OEM equipment at retail prices the cost per page of even a mid range SOHO laser printer is pretty high.  Even B&W is moderately expensive and color is much higher.

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YMMV but I know of a local business that ran aftermarket remanufactured cartridges in one of the small mono Laserjets for around 10 years and tens of thousands of pages without a hitch. They gave me the printer when the fuser failed, I put a new heater in it and sold it to a friend that is still using it as far as I know.

Personally I've mostly been lucky enough to find NOS OEM cartridges on ebay for about the price of aftermarket so I took that route. I've very rarely had to replace one anyway though, I print a couple hundred pages a year on average, one toner cartridge lasts me a very long time since they don't dry out.
james_s:

--- Quote from: paulca on February 05, 2023, 07:57:58 pm ---Laser photo printing isn't exactly great compared to an inkjet though.

I have photos printed by InkJet in frames on my wall and holding a similar print from the laser up beside ... there is no comparison.  I tweaked every setting I could, even ran it through various optimizers.

"Good", yes, the same quality as an Inkjet in photo mode on photo quality paper, no comparison.

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I can print out a demo page if anyone really wants to see, but I was stunned by the photo quality from the M254dw I have. I don't have any modern inkjets to compare it to, but it is definitely superior to what I could get from an inkjet printer on good photo paper the last time I had one, circa 2006. The old Xerox 6100 I had didn't do a great job at photos but this one really does look nice.
tooki:
They’ve gotten much better for sure, and for printouts onto plain paper, will certainly be more vibrant and sharp than inkjet.* The very best photo quality is still from dedicated photo inkjets onto photo paper, since they use many inks (light cyan, light magenta, and some selection of the following: one or more shades of gray, red, blue, green, violet, or orange). And inkjets can print onto a multitude of textured photo papers (or other coated substrate, like canvas or plastic film), matte or glossy (or my favorite, satin), which is why they’re so popular for art prints. Laser can only print onto smooth matte paper, usually not even glossy paper.

*For documents on plain paper, I’m still partial to inkjet because I hate how toner reflects light on its glossy surface, reducing contrast if light hits it at an inconvenient angle — I prefer the matte output of an inkjet. But that’s really a personal preference, not a quality criterion as such.
jfiresto:
I got 10 and then 20 years service out of my first two laser printers. The motor control electronics failed on the first one, perhaps from years of moderate mains over-voltage. I retired the second after the rubber rollers had hardened and no longer consistently picked sheets out of the main paper tray. Around year 18, I did not completely latch the top part after clearing a jam and "burned" lines into the imaging drum, but by then NOS drums and toners were going for cheap on ebay; 45 euros later and I had a new pair.

I am into the fourth year of my current P2040dn, Kyocera's second cheapest B/W, business network printer. An original, 7000 page toner cartridge works out to about 1½ cents per page, about what I spend on paper. IIRC, the drum is good for 100 000 pages so that should not be an expense – as long as I make sure the printer is latched after I muck with it. ::) Kyocera's cheapest printer uses a smaller, 3000 sheet toner that costs ca. 60 rather than 100 euros, which gives you an idea of where customer and manufacturer try to save or make money.

The new printer is considerably bigger than the two it replaced, with lots of internal, thin stiffening ribs to use less material.
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