Buying a printer

Any recommendations?

[limbo]

I'm looking to expand from my dusty old b&w HP thats as old as APPLE to something with a little more oomph!

I have never really needed a printer at home as I could always print at work (superb quality) but I am expanding my home office and need to hook in a quality colour printer for about £200 quid. Ideally it would print A3 to but it's not a neccessity.

I thought before I went trawling the web I get an idea here of your experinces first.

Much obliged

Limbo

[martinibuster]

Just keep in mind that the printer manufacturers make their profits on the ink refills, which makes the price of operation alarmingly expensive.

In order not to get jacked by the high price of refills opt for a computer with multiple ink tanks, like Canon does. The cost per page is lower.

Then again, the price of B/W laser printers have dropped through the floor, and the price per page is much lower than inkjets.

[richardb]

You aint kidding martinibuster

The office P's both died on Monday so I went to the local PC shop about the only machine that looked OK was an Epson Stylus C42UX.

It's only lasted 2 days, can't have done more than 20 pages of text! Epson should have given it a model No: SUX

Rich

[limbo]

LOL

Rich B maybe I'll avoid the SUX ;)

[stlouislouis]

Hi There,

I bought myself an HP 1200 Laserjet in Jan 2002. Just replaced the original toner cartridge with a new one.

Bottom line: LOVE IT! It's plenty fast enough for home use, hasn't given me ANY trouble, works with both Windows and Linux just fine, is quiet and cheap to opperate.

Don't recall how many copies I got out of the original toner cartridge that came with it, but I think my cost -- including paper -- is just under one cent per printed page.

I'm SO GLAD I spent $400 US at the time to buy something GOOD rather than risk buying aggravation and possible lower print quality by going with something cheaper.

It's worth it to me to buy something good that I don't have to worry about or waste time with over the useful life period of several years one gets out of a good laser printer.

Note: I'm a programmer/analyst -- i.e. NOT connected any way shape or form with HP the company, retailers, printer related companies, etc. (except as a user of MY HP 1200).

FWIW,

Louis

[Jenstar]

HP 1200 Laserjet

I have one of these that I bought last year. And like stlouislouis, I love it :) I have gone through a few toner refills, but I was getting pretty heavy duty printing usage out of it.

I have had no problems at all, and if I needed to buy a new laser printer, I would get the same one (unless HP has released a newer fancier model, and then I might be tempted ;) )

[Mardi_Gras]

I highly recommend the HP series of printers - I'm using the Officejet d135 all-in-one - the quality is outstanding and the ink usage/pricing is acceptable.

[peewhy]

Kinkos

KallKwik

Prontaprint

[moltar]

I have a Samsung ML-1210. It's pretty good for home use. Catridge is about $50US and I had one for about a year, just changed it. And we print a lot! I think it says something around 1000 pages if I am not wrong...

[Mardi_Gras]

A gentle reminder :)

the poster was seeking advice on color printers...

[stlouislouis]

<quote>
the poster was seeking advice on color printers...
</quote>

Oops! Sorry about that.

And I can't even blame missing *color* on that speed reading course I've not yet got around to taking....

I'll bet several folks at the Arstechnica dot com "Other Hardware" forum would have great suggestions -- from either a forum search or from posting a new thread here:

htt*://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=frm&s=50009562&f=24609792

Louis

[limbo]

Thanks for all the advice.

However, in light of a recent occurrence I thought my £200 might be better spent on this [webmasterworld.com] ;)

[PatrickDeese]

There was an interesting "Ask Slashdot" on this a few days ago - lots of good advice on color printers.