Additional, if I might

by Steven Haninger - 6/2/12 3:24 AM

In Reply to: HA well in this day no one is buying the Ferrari ! by AFMomXs2

Some further research suggests that vellum papers don't do well with laser printers and can have mixed results with standard inkjets. I've not experience with that paper. As for cost of laser cartridges, you are correct. To replace a full set of color cartridges in my laser printer is about 400 bucks...OUCH!...but I'll get thousands of pages of print from a set. I have an inkjet that sees limited use and 70 bucks worth of ink might get me 150 pages due to the number of cleaning cycles required to keep things from clogging. The math tells me I'm still far ahead with the laser printer. I have a third old B&W laser printer that costs me $75 per cartridge. It tracks pages printed and I've gotten about 2500 or more per cartridge over 10 or more years of use. This means about 3c per page versus over 40c for the inkjet.

Downsides of color laser printers are as follows. Paper is important and the best quality comes with the higher priced paper...but the same goes for inkjet. Laser printers don't do that well with photos. They are fine for other graphics artwork but inkjets can produce better photographs.

The bottom line I think is that you won't find one printer that will fit all your needs. You will need one with a straight line paper path for heavy card stock. That's very important. You might even need more than one printer if you want to do it all locally. As for vellum, if you do a lot of that I'd do a google search for advice on the best type of printer...maybe some dye sublimation type...but it might be a good choice to farm that out. Again, good luck.