Peripherals forum: I'm sick of ink-sucking printers, buying advice needed

I bought my wife the Kodax 5250 all in one printer/scanner/copier. It comes with two inks , color and black. It uses 50% less ink than my HP photo printer.

I recently purchased a Epson artisan 710 with a continuous ink flow system all together $195. the price was steep but so was my $50 Lexmark after adding in the cost of cartridges

I've been using HP 1000-series laser jet for maybe 10 years now (my current one is a 1200, don't know what the latest model is). It only prints so it is not all that expensive, and the cartridges last a very long time even though I use it pretty routinely.

I have a second multi-function machine for scanning and faxing and for the very few times that I really need to print something in color. Inkjet printers cost next to nothing because they want you to buy the ink.

When I have a big job, like Xmas letters to 100 people, I take it to Kinko's which costs $100 but no more than a full set of color cartridges.

I would suggest the HP photosmart:

http://tinyurl.com/4a5m5gu

(that link will take you to officemax page)

They have a great price on it, as well as they can refill the ink cheap there for it as well.

I own it myself, its very easy to use, doesn't use a ton of ink, and works great. If you were getting a printer, and wanted one with a great price and a great brand; as well as the extra copy and scan, look no further. It even has the cool new eprint technology.

I have an HP p2015dn, it has both USB and ethernet ports, as well as expandable memory. We paid ~$75 for it about 3 years ago, and we've only had to buy one cartridge for it, even though we've gone through many reams of paper. We easily printed over 4500 pages on a single cartridge, and the new cartridges can be had for $75 to $100. The print quality is amazing, it does double sided printing, and it has a "warm idle" state that allows it to start printing in less than 6 seconds from the print command being issued. nevermind that it can do dozens of pages per minute, compared to the slow trudge of an inkjet...

Shop around and look for "clearance" items at big box stores, and pay heed to what the toner replacement costs. The $100 toner cartridge for my printer boasts and impressive 7,000 page printing capacity, and i certainly believe it after the smaller cartridge did over 4,500 pages.

You didn't say it, but from your comments I assume you're using an inkjet printer. Your color ink may not be lasting as much probably because your printer is setup to use the colors to make gray scale when your black ink has been exhausted. Some inkjets don't even have a separate black cartridge so the only way it can make dark/black ink is by combining the colors. Since most of the time you're only doing gray scale printing I recommend an inexpensive laser printer. Take a look at this one from HP (under $100):


http://www.amazon.com/HP-LaserJet-Printer-CE657A-BGJ/dp/B0036TGGVO

If you find that you do need the occasional color the there are inexpensive color laser printers, take a look at this one under $200. The initial investment in inks might be a bit more than the inkjets but in the long run, they will last longer and will give better quality printing.

If you don't want to go for HP printers there other brands that could be cheaper so shop around.

Bottom line, laser printers are always the better bang for your buck. the only reason a lot of people were buying the inkjets is because they were cheaper - you couldn't find a laser printer for under $300, now a days it doesn't make sense to use injets.

My two cents

-Fabio

They've been getting away with this robbery for ages! Where's the regulation for hapless consumers? In two months, you've already bought another printer with the amount you've spent on ink for heaven's sake!!!

Dear Allison - I have three multifunctions. An Epson 810, a Canon 870 and an HP7780. The 7780 uses huge tanks and the generic ink costs $8 and does 1500 pages. The other two, use tanks that cost $28 and do 500 and 600 pages ... The HP costs me $45 a month, the other two over $300.... and they do fewer pages. But, I would not recommend it. It took far too long to set up and has given me problems. Mind you, the Epson and Canon both failed and had to be replaced!!
When I got the HP, I looked at all the reviews and noted that, although it got excellent reviews by the professionals, many of the user reviews noted serious problems. However, looking at the dates indicated that those were becoming fewer, I thought. So, given how cheap it would be to run, I bought it. MISTAKE! It took 27 hours on the phone to HP to get it to work properly and it keeps losing its settings and I have to spend an hour or so to get it to run again. grrrr!
There are some good laser printers and, if you get the high capacity toner drums, they can be down around 2 cents a page. Lexmark has the Pinnacle 901 pro, and it is rated highly by users, and the ink cost is just over a penny a page, and it has a 5 year warranty. My advice? Consider the total cost of ownership (cost of inks, cost of machine, give it a lifespan of 3 years), look at the reviews, narrow down the ones you will consider and then look for ALL the user reviews you can on the machines you are interested in. Ask the salespeople in no-commission stores like Staples about returns. They told me that the Brother multifunction machines were great for people who wanted good results but did not do much printing, but, the printheads often failed if they were heavily used. Good luck!

All of the answers above will be good answers, but each happens to be more costly than my suggestion.

Laser printers are good for monochrome printing (black and white only). The only problem is the printers cost a good bit more and the toner cartridges are very costly and don't last as long as two black cartridges on an ink jet printer.

If you can find one, the Brother MFC 8800 series printers will work fine with Win 7 (64-bit). The cost of the ink cartridges are low and are readily available both On-Line and store front. They last about as long as the other ink jets but are easier to replace and usually less than half of mote other cartridges.

The MFC is an All-In-One printer with fax, etc., BUT, it has a copier function and a scanner function with accurate OCR software bundled. It is remotely controllable from your Desktop and is Wireless (WIFI) so no cables. Because of the WIFI,you can have the printer located in a room seperate from where you decide to take your laptop and still be able to print.

Cost of the printer is also low. All things considered, the TCO (Total Cost of Operation) for the Brother MFC 8800 series made that the printer for me.

PS. You never know when the other features on the printer will be useful.

1. I used Epson Inkjet Printer couple of years back (2002 to 2004) soon to learn, as they say, what is cheap need not necessarily be inexpensive.

Like many others, my first purchase of printer was an inkjet printer only because it had cost less than a expensive sounding laser printer, which in those days in my view, were meant for offices only.

Soon my printing needs began to increase and I felt the pressure of running cost being so high that it began to surpass my original investment in the inkjet printer.

2. In 2004/2005 I bought HP Laser Jet 1010 (black & white) printer and till date I use it happily with progressively moving from Win XP Pro to Vista to Win 7 now.

3. A few years down the line I felt acute need for a scanner and all those salesmen convinced me to buy HP F380 all-in-one which is a scanner, printer, copier (with now seemingly a senseless argument that I could have a standby printer in case something went wrong with laser jet printer).

It was probably 2007 and now that I had paid for another printer in disguise (an all-in-one) I needed to use that printer as well to avoid my ink cartridges from drying out.

So, I started to use F380 for printing soon to find that black cartridge finished but color stayed.

So, I changed black ink cartridge but eventually color dried up, and when need arose it was useless. So, I had to buy another expensive color cartridge which, when I used, hogged color soon and became empty.

So, I learned that when I needed a scanner, I ought to have ignored all those sales advices, and bought only a scanner, not all-in-one.

4. Finally I decided never to use the all-in-one for any thing other than scanning.

As for copying I scan the document first and then print it using my laser-jet printer.

5. I used all original manufacturers cartridges for Epson ink-jet / HP all-in-one because I found refills were total waste of money.

I use original HP Laser Jet HP Print Cartridges (Toner) for printing high class press material and good quality toner refills for day to day use by changing HP Print Cartridges (Toner) as per need.

Hope this narrative helps.

Allison I was in the same boat I paid $50 bucks for a lexmark x1100 and the cartridges cost $40 needless to say it got to where I could not afford ink . My brick and mortar computer guy showed me an Epson Artisan 710 with a continouis ink feeding system , I've had it a month and I have yet had to refill the resevoirs. Of course I had a back log of family photos I printed everything I could find . Now there are some down sides with the product I find it will paper jam in a heartbeat and thats it . oh and to tweak the photos appearances go into your pict mode . My guy tells me if Epson thinks you have used this system the warranty is void . you can google this printer and the ink system

I have had HP, Lexmark, Canon, and Epson. The Lexmark jams. Friends who have had Lexmark had problems with paper jams, too. I gave it away to charity. I currently use a Canon multifunction printer with 5 cartridges. I replace only the cartridges needing changing. I buy ink online in bulk at a lower cost. Using draft quality is good for most printing and saves ink.

Printer makers mostly make their money on ink. In fact, they sell the printers for a little less to make money on the ink. That being said, I have found 3 options. I'd love to hear everyone else's response.

The first option is to buy a printer where you are paying full price for the printer and cheaper ink thereafter. Kodak is an example. The problem is some of these don't work as seamlessly with your computer as the other brands.

The second option is to buy a printer you like and use a third party's ink refill program. Their ink tends not to be as good, however, the probability is that you're not printing a document to keep forever unless you're printing pictures. Also, most printers have a counter built in to try to prevent you from reusing cartridges. On my HP, for example, I have to use 4 cartridges. The count expires after 3 cartridges.

The third option is to buy a printer with much larger capacity cartridges. They are MUCH cheaper per unit of ink. For example, the black HP 40XL cartridges claims up to 2100 pages. Even though that's overstated, they claim up to 700 pages for a standard black cartridge. So that's 3x as much ink for only about 50% more in price. Much more reasonable!

And of course, you can still use option 2 - refilling the cartridge - along with the third choice.

Hope this helps.

I despise inkjet printers. I've had ink cartridges dry up on me, which is a non-existent problem with toner. Also, laser print jobs look sharper and more professional than inkjet. In regard to cost, I just buy generic toner from ebay.

When I was in college, inkjet printers were a nightmare; I never knew when my cartridge would give out. I'd have a paper due in the morning and if I ran out of ink in the middle of the night, I'd have to find time to go to a library or lab to print. With a laser printer, if I'm running low, I take it out and give it a good shake. I then have enough toner to finish my print job. If I need to print in color (photos), I just get them sent out to get done. Maybe one day I'll splurge and buy a color laser printer.