Honestly the printer racket to the home market is 100% BS. They sell you a cheap $70 printer and then get you to buy ink that costs $140 for a full set. Hermm... Then it either dries out, or won't let you print with one colour defunct, or says your empty when you have lots left. This is almost criminal. Do your self a favor and get a Laser, they are superior in many ways, one is ink won't dry out!
Heck if I needed a printer I would try and get an old HP 4 or 5 series. You know the cube looking things from the 90's. Find one with between 100,000 and 200,000 pages and you are good for another 300,000 pages which should last most normal people ages. Baring that the HP 2, 3 or 4000 is a good printer but costly new. What you should do find a good suspect on Craig's list and check out the manual before you go to view it. Know how to print a status page that can show number of pages printed. Most mid range printers are good for 20,000ish pages a month, so long as they are being used in that sort of fashion and have a reasonable page count, like I said 200,000ish you should be able to get ample usage at home for years and years and years. If I recall I think the small/medium office printers had a life cycle of 500,000+ pages. So if you get a machine with 300,000 pages left and you printer 2000/yr which is like 5 pages + a day, think of how long it will last! Avoid anything that is "3 months old" and showing 300,000 pages. I have seen it, they may really be that old but someone has been over using them and that is not good.
If you can't do that get a quality new B&W laser and you are good to go for ages, colour ONLY if you need it.
Oh and if you have in your head that you wish to print photos... you can not print photos for less cost (paper & ink) than you can to email them to your local WalMart! Seriously, there is NO good reason to print photos at home unless you are a pro working out of your home. I think a 4x6 is about 20 cents, you can hardly buy photo paper for that price. By the time it is in your hands you supply costs on an inkjet is over $1. |
|
AvCanada's Home Page
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
I would never buy another inkjet. I bought a black & white laser (Okidata) for $99 with free shipping, and I love it! You can get other lasers (they're not really lasers, the light source is LED) for the same price if you keep your eyes open, but I chose the Okidata because it's a duplex printer (prints both sides of the page), and it's hard to find that feature at this price point.