Its Time For A New Printer

[walking wallet]

My old Lexmark has gone bang, i used it for B&W letters, and replaced / refilled the cartrages but now its time to buy a new printer, some one has told me you can now get a B&W Laser printer at a very good price...? as I don't know too much about Laser printers, can some one offer me some advice / comments as to Laser " V " Ink printers...?

Thanks ....... WW

[Tywais]

Canon, Fuji, Brother, HP all have laser printers in the 6-7K range. Of course these are all black/white. Color laser, 26k and up.

I only buy HP laser printers at the university. Quality, reliability is great. Toner cartridges between 2K and 5K baht.

Edited September 16, 2005 by tywais

[rio666uk]

"I only buy HP laser printers at the university. Quality, reliability is great."

couldnt agree more - i work in a large hospital with about 3000 staff and about 2000 PCs.. all of our printers are HP for the same reason.

as for advice, not much to say - they all do the job its a case of which are cheaper to run in ink for the same quality...

[Firefoxx]

Inkjets: Expensive ink, clogging, cycling (ink wasted to auto-clean heads), mediocre output on plain paper, great output on expensive paper, graphics not so crisp, slow, great photographs on photo paper, versatile (cd printing, small paper, etc)

Lasers: Low TCO (total cost of ownership... 1 toner costs a lot, but can print a *lot* of pages), great output on plain paper, great graphics, so-so photo output (for color lasers), fast

Prices of mono lasers are now comparable (~5000 baht) to low cost inkjets. Color lasers can be had for less than 20k baht. Keep in mind that color lasers cannot produce "lab quality" photo prints, unlike inkjets. Their TCO is also quite higher than monos, because of their added components (transfer, coating, separate drums, etc).

In the end, it depends on your needs and usage habits. If you do moderately high volume document printing (5-10 pages/day), get a mono laser. If you like printing photos, get an inkjet. If you want to print color manuals, get a color laser.

As for HPs, they don't *always* get it right. Their low cost lasers have been outright junk, and will have problems within a year (I've seen too many of them to count). Their inkjets are *still* the highest in TCO, because of their embedded heads and combined colors (it's starting to change, but only for new office models).

With the relatively (compared to a few years ago) price of both, you can have the best of both worlds... get a mono laser and a nice inkjet. Costs less than what I paid for either a mono laser/nice inkjet a few years ago.

Edited September 16, 2005 by Firefoxx

[spacebass]

Just bought a Samsung ML-1610 (b/w laser) from Tuk com in Pattaya for 3900bht!! the only USB printer that has so far behaved itself I have used, the dealer told me toner cartridge 3000bht Samsung, 1800bht copy, might be able to get it filled for less.

I bought it because I have been paying 500 bht a month to refill ink jet color cartridges because of cleaning, when I never print a color page.

Edited September 16, 2005 by spacebass

[bkk_mike]

It's all a matter of what you use the printer for...

If you're printing photos - get an inkjet though. - Even colour lasers don't come close to the quality you can get with GOOD paper from even the cheapest inkjet.

The unspoken issue with inkjets is, if you don't use them for a while (i.e. 2-3 weeks), you can often find they've clogged, and you either use up half the ink cleaning the cartridge, or end up buying a new cartridge altogether.

Lasers, on the other hand, can sit for months without problems, and when you switch them on they'll work. And you can print a lot of pages from a single toner cartridge, especially if you're only doing the odd letter. (i.e. I have a Brother HL-1250 I bought back in 2001, that's still on it's first toner cartridge... - where it seems like my daughter's inkjet is forever needing me to buy a new cartridge for it).

[spacebass]

Is it not true that lasers were designed as workhorses for the office environment where cost is seriously monitored and inkjets were designed for the consumer with the consumption of ink being the main overall revenue provider, given that in the UK at least you can buy printers with cartridges for little more than the price of a set of genuine replacement cartridges.

Therein lays the answer.

I think you are better off getting your photos printed off a card at Kodak or similar.

Edited September 16, 2005 by spacebass

[simcity]

after three month of h.e.l.l with my epson ink printer , i just bough a laser ! if you just need a fast print a the touch a click go for it ( laser ).

With the hot weather here , the inkjet clog every time for me .

perhaps if you use it everyday , you will not have this problem ( ink jet ).

Edited September 17, 2005 by simcity