Printer

[wilson steer]

It is time for me to buy a printer, once and for all. I want a good quality B&W printer, laser quality almost certainly. I will have to buy it here in Pattaya.

I was looking at a (good?) one in Carrefour at 6500 baht, laser. What are the pitfalls? I am a novice really with printers. I had a Lexmark in the U.K. the size of a double decker bus, but the cartridges (ink) were 35 quid, so I stuck it in the loft.

What is the score regarding ink with laser printers?

Any advice, gratefully received...

Wilson Steer.

[Firefoxx]

Laser printer toner (not ink) is expensive, since one toner cartridge can last for thousands of pages. The cost per page, for text, usually comes out to less than a baht per page. Of course, if you want crisp black and white text on normal paper, then the only way to go is a laser. A laser printer is also much cheaper in terms of TOC (total cost of ownership=printer cost+consumables) than an inkjet.

The cheaper laser printers usually skimp on a few things. They might not have a good paper tray, and have some kind of fold-down feeder that leaves paper exposed and can't take more than a 50 or so sheets. They might not have a parallel port, only usb, but that's less of an issue now. They might not have their own processor, and rely on the computer (a "windows" printer) to do the image processing. Their toner capacity might be low, and so you have to buy toner more often. Their speed, per page, might be low, but for home use that's not an issue. A lot of the cheaper printers are also the "vertical" type (feed from the top, output to the top), which tends to leave paper curled. You might not be able to share it in a home network.

Toner cartridges can vary in cost, but you generally get more ink for more money. Consider that you can print thounsands of pages before changing a toner cartridge, compared to only a couple hundred for an inkjet cartridge. You're actually saving money when you fork out 35 quid for that cartridge (compared to inkjets).

Having said this, you should shop around and find any models you're interested in, and tell us the models in this forum for more advice.

[Wash]

I had a Lexmark in the U.K. the size of a double decker bus, but the cartridges (ink) were 35 quid, so I stuck it in the loft.

Any advice, gratefully received...

Wilson Steer.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Wilson,

My advice would be to get the double decker bus sized Lexmark from the loft in England and bring it here. It is likely a very good printer and when you read the other reply you will find that the toner cartridge is not expensive at all when you compare it to the cost of ink refill.

Good luck.

[Phil Conners]

1) Don't buy a printer in Carrefour, what do they know about anything if it stops working. Head over to Tukcom and get a much better deal.

2) If you intend to buy original cartridges (@300-600 baht each) by all mean, pick your favorite, but if you intend to have cartridges refilled buy a Canon. My refiller station tell me they are by far those with least problems. The worst is Epson, they have a chip in the cartidge that decides for you whether it should work or not. The refillers can reset the chip but after 2nd refill mine fried and had to buy a new cartridge. Also Epson printers are famous for clogging up the printhead if you don't use original Epson color.

[francois]

hi'

my 2b here ...

choose a canon, the cheapest ink cartridge refill on the market.

the latest serie of pixma is very fine.

choose between i3000 and i5000, the i5000 is the most evoluated one, and should be around 8 or 9,000baths( 190euros). the i3000 is only 125euros on the net.

they have all separate ink cartidges, 4 for the i3000 and 5 for the others.

they can print almost anything, even cd

francois

[OldAsiaHand]

I'm a heavy used of laser printers and have been for many years. My best advice is this: don't try to cut corners and save money. Get a good one from a top manufacturer. You don't want to fiddle with a printer. You just want it to sit there and do the job when you call on it.

Don't worry about toner costs. Yes, toner isn't cheap, but unless you're trying to print books on your printer, it's not going to be a huge cost for you on a day to day basis.

I just bought an HP 1320 in Bangkok a couple of months ago to replace an older HP and I am very, very happy with it. Small footprint, fast, and high qualitity output. Check the web for detailed specs.

The coolest feature is that it has automatic duplex (printing on both sides of the paper) which works perfectly. Saves like heck on paper costs and gives much better output as well. I think I paid about B15,000 for it and it's worth every single baht.

[bkk_mike]

Personally, how much you want to spend is really based on how much you want to print.

i.e. If you've gotten by without a printer for a while, you probably don't print a lot, in which case, I'd recommend pretty much any cheap laser that has a proper paper tray (simply so that when you do print, the page isn't covered in dust).

I've got a Brother HL-1250 I bought 4 years ago, and I print so infrequently that I'm still on the original cartridge... and I've had no issues whatsoever with it.

If you're printing a LOT, then you start looking at pages per minute, and how many pages can be printed from a single cartridge (and the cartridge costs). I would also then recommend probably going HP, if only because you know for certain you'll be able to buy the toner cartridges virtually anywhere. (i.e. If you only order a toner cartridge every 5 years, it's less of an issue if you can only find it on-line. If you're buying a new one every couple of months, you want to be able to find it in a nearby shop).

Cost-wise, any laser is cheaper to run than any inkjet, partly because you get good print quality on cheap paper. (Don't get me wrong, inkjets absolutely slaughter lasers when printing photos, but the ink costs a lot, and for good pictures, the paper does too...)

Edited March 16, 2005 by bkk_mike

[Phil Conners]

Canon MPC190s, all-in-one (scan/print/copy), under 5k in Tukcom, small footprint, acceptable speed for my occational use. Happy with quality of both with printed documents and photos (using cheap copier paper for documents, photo quality paper for photos). Use two toner cartridges, black and color, original replacement set about 700 baht, InkTec (Korean "copy") 350 baht, refill about 200 baht. One set probably good for about 500 pages of allround printing. Doesn't break the bank.

[johng]

A couple of days ago I ruined my Epson 830 by messing around with the print head.

So today I went Tukcom in Pattaya to look for a new printer...they don't seem to have a very good selection but in the end I bought a Canon IP4000 as it's had good reviews.. 7000 baht OK it's not the cheapest , but cheap isn't always cheap in the end.