Computer printer ?

[sberry]

I need a new printer. I don't use it very much, the occasional office document mostly. I see a couple choices in Wally world, they carry Cannon and HP. I forget the model numbers, 3 or 4 in one units. One was 79$ and I believe the same thing maybe a HP4500 was 99 at Sam's. I was tempted to snag one up but thought I might ask here first as to whats a real deal. Not a piece of equipment I am familiar with and it will see limited use. The fax could be OK I guess although I rarely use it.

 

[Tscott]

A printer is a printer is a printer. They are all about the same and the only real difference is the cost of the ink refills. I would not get one because it doubles as a fax, as most folks use email nowadays. However those with fax capability usually have the ability to scan documents and this can be very handy for storing useful documents without taking up much space. When it comes to printers, the cheaper the better in my opinion. my wife found an inkjet at Walmart for something like $30 once. The ink refill cost more than the printer itself so she would just get a new printer and give the old one away.

Tom

 

[mojo_13]

I agree if you are just printing documents and not worried about pictures and don't need anything real high quality just get a cheap printer that gets good reviews. Also as far as ink goes I get all mine from www.4inkjets.com They have remanufactured ink and it is all I buy. They have a great return program and you can usually find a coupon code for them floating around on the net.

 

[Gary S]

If you don't use it often, forget the inkjets and take a look at the cheap laser printers. Inkjets will dry up if you use them or not. Lasers will sit for years and wait to print that occasional page you need.

 

[CrashTestDummy]

All-in-ones _tend_ to throw all the cheapest parts in a chassis to make a certain price point. That said, there are some decent ones out there. Check some of the online computer hardware vendors for their reviews. The problem with many of the all-in-ones these days are that they tend to have several expen$ive ink cartridges. Our latest all-in-one uses 5 cartridges.

As others have said, if you use them only very occasionally, and don't need photo capability, look at the low-end lasers. The only issue I see with the lasers is you need to run it, then turn it off, as the printer will want to keep the fuser heated, which will eat up power.

If you want photos, you'll have to look at the photo printers, inkjet will be MUCH cheaper here. We have a couple of Canons in our house, one was a gift all-in-one, which seems pretty good, although the setup was long, and the other is just a photo printer. Both print pretty fast from both Mac and Windows XP, and the all-in-one is wireless. The all-in-one replaced a very old HP inkjet (pre-2000) that just quit printing.

If I were looking for a cheap inkjet for mostly text and not-photo-quality picture printing, a HP inkjet is hard to beat.

Gene Beaird,
Pearland, Texas

 

[Kilo70]

1 way I use to judge Quality vs Price is to go on the Newegg website and read the reviews for each product available.
Just my 2 cents.

 

[rodm1]

Get a HP 4, 4+, or 5 with some toner in it. My printer has had low toner for 5 years + and it still printing on occasion. You should be good if you find a working one under 200,000 prints.

 

[loj]

Get a HP 4, 4+, or 5 with some toner in it. My printer has had low toner for 5 years + and it still printing on occasion. You should be good if you find a working one under 200,000 prints.

This is my recommendation as well. Several years back I bought an HP 4M with a network card for less than $100 shipped from eBay. That thing is built like a tank.

They're built to be serviced on-site, so if anything goes wrong there's a ton of information on the web to fix them. They're kind of fun to work on, too - not that you need to very often.

 

[Intel]

Our family has had one laser printer from HP the 2150dn and it is a tank and is super cheap to run. No worries about inkjets running out or drying out from lack of use and it prints thigns out a lot faster.

Had an HP all in one in college that was cheap and good for what it did. The scan/copy feature is used a lot for receipts from autozone/sears/home depot so I don't have to keep them in paper form.

 

[mrb]

i cant remember the last time i bought ink / toner. I buy used quality laser printers (HP 2200TN, HP 8150DTN, OKI C6100 color is what I have right now) use them until the toner is gone then sell them and repeat. Net cost is much less than even buying toner. The color laser, for what im into it I can just throw it away when it needs toner and my per page cost would have been around $0.05

 

[Falcon67]

I just replaced a dead HP 932c with a Canon MP560. Very nice, wireless, easy setup on the house systems, prints nice, easy scan - like it. Was like $100 at Walmart. It prints some nice near-photo quality prints on 4x5 paper and a decent image on 8x11. We print our real photos on an PIXMA Pro 9000. Nice pics, not cheap.

 

[nehog]

I use Xerox 5400 Phaser printers. Laser, 45 PPM, duplex (print on both sides), USB/ethernet/parallel port interfaces.

The first one was from Xerox. I got two more on eBay, one for $45, which has a new toner cartridge (20K copies) and works great. Another for $25 (again eBay) with no toner, and doesn't seem to work (but I got it for parts...)

Look for a company that sells surplus (used) office equipment and supplies. Also eBay, and for big things like big printers, near to you (I picked up the $45 one as it was near to me...)

Sure beats the pants off those plastic Chinese POS ink jet printers that everyone seems to have. Me, I've some ink jet printers still new in the box, and don't expect to ever use them either.

 

[boiler7904]

With basic inkjet printers my dad has gotten to the point where he just buys a whole new printer instead of replacing the ink cartridges because it's cheaper. Takes the old printer to a electronic recycling dropoff by his house and buys whatever is on sale that week. Typically gets 15-18 months out a printer and ink before the cycle starts over.

 

[m289271]

In your case the cheapest printer is the best printer. I bought a $59 HP 7 years ago and it just pooped the bed this week. So I went out and bought a $49 HP.

 

[Scout Driver]

1 way I use to judge Quality vs Price is to go on the Newegg website and read the reviews for each product available.
Just my 2 cents.

+1 on Newegg.

Scott

 

[krooser]

Just bought a new iMac and need a new printer... I'm looking at a $99.00 cheapo (with Bluetooth wireless) with a $99.00 rebate... can't get much cheaper than that.

 

[Hip2u77]

If you're just wanting to do black and white documents then a laser is definitely the way to go.

I bought a Brother-Remanufactured-HL-2170W for about $45 yesterday from Staples. I saw the deal on Fatwallet.

It's got great reviews, cheap toner refills and built-in wireless.

(If you want one then make sure it's in stock and if so then go to e-junkie and buy a $25 off $75 coupon for a couple bucks first.)

They go in and out of stock so be patient.

 

[ddawg16]

I have to vote on Laser as well.

I will NEVER buy another Epson....ink cartriges had about 1/3 of the ink left and it said they were empty....we bought new ones (about $60 worth)....used them once...didn't use the printer for a few months...dried up....

I have a Samsung ML-2010...works great...we have had it 5 years and have only now replaced the toner cartrige...

I do give the HP's a top notch vote if you HAVE to go inkjet.

But there are also some really good deals out there for wireless all in one's....Costco had one for about $130....scanner, printer, fax....and almost all of them have mem card readers....

 

[sberry]

Looks like its not a great loss to just buy one off the shelf at Walmart. I see that 560 there for well under 100 and the HP/s for 79. I have done pics on my old Lexmark, good enough for what it is. Its rare I do a photo though.

 

[GarageEnvy]

+1 on the old HP 4 stuff.
I bought an HP 2800 all in one and it *****. Print quality is good enough but software is horrible. Scanning was so bad I gave up and bought a little Fujitsu Scansnap (excellent by the way). My older HP 3700 was far more reliable.

 

[Wingnut65]

We had a chance for a Lexmark printer for only $20 when we bought a new camera. It had WiFi capability. We already had 3 working printers at home, but I thought the WiFi could be helpful and so we got one. We now print to that one all of the time from laptops around the house.

I'm not trying to sell the Lexmark line as being the best, but the WiFi feature is something that has been a big help in our house. Something else to consider...

 

[Scotto]

If you don't care about color, get a cheap laser. I picked up a cheap HP Laserjet online for about $90 and it's worked flawlessly. When you change the toner it's only about $20 for a no-name brand online (and you get 2000 pages out of it) and it replaces all the internal working guts of the printer. Def the way to go.

I got sick and tired of replacing inkjets that dried up on me.

 

[JerseyJim]

I agree with this. I have several Brother Lasers. One at home in NJ. One at the house in Florida, and one in the office. All are set up identically so that my Mac always thinks it's hooked to the same printer. These Brother lasers are bullet proof. I have benn using them for five years now.

At this price, you can't beat it. No other lasers including HP stack up against the features this printer offers. If you just print in black and white, this is the way to go.

If you're just wanting to do black and white documents then a laser is definitely the way to go.

I bought a Brother-Remanufactured-HL-2170W for about $45 yesterday from Staples. I saw the deal on Fatwallet.

It's got great reviews, cheap toner refills and built-in wireless.

(If you want one then make sure it's in stock and if so then go to e-junkie and buy a $25 off $75 coupon for a couple bucks first.)

They go in and out of stock so be patient.

 

[Kevin54]

I bought an HP PhotoSmart C4640 at WallyWorld for right at $110. It is a printer, scanner, copier, and photo printer. The cartridges are around $15-$20 a piece I think. I use the printer quite a bit, but second to that, I probably use the scanner 50% of that time.

I have always used HP products and have never had a problem with any of their printers or have had any problems with buying them from WallyWorld.

 

[kaffine]

Look on Craigslist for a used HP laser. If possible get a printout showing how much is left of the consumables and page count.

I got a 8500DN color laser printer for $200. It is a large printer took 3 people to move it. Came with a bunch of paper and a few other things. It had only printed 60k pages. I have a need to print 11x17 pages otherwise I would have gotten a smaller printer.

 

[C G]

You never said if you need color or not. I did a Craigslist search in your area for HP laserjet. Tons of good printers for cheap.

HP 4 and 5 series are getting pretty old and they are darn slow. Saw some really good buys on HP 4000 and 4050 series. These would be your best bet. Cheap to run, pretty quick, and parts are readily available. I worked on one the other day that had over 2 million prints ran through it...crazy. The most I had ever seen on a smaller machine by far. But I do see this model with over 500k all the time.

The newer series of HPs have the gray covers. Decent machines, fairly cheap, but they just dont build em to hold up as well.

There are lots of decent brands of printers, but if you end up needing help with one, HPs will be the easiest ones to get serviced.

Been a copier/printer tech for 30 years.