Slashdot Mirror
Color Printing Without the Inkjet Mess?
Above writes "Many recent /. stories have been about the problems of inkjet Printers. Seems they all want to sell the printer for cheap, and then use the ink to make up the difference. There are also problems where a lack of printing, or printing too much, could make it much more expensive to use your inkjet. So, since mine just died, what are the best options? I'm intersted in two catagories, a 'personal' color printer, probably USB to a machine, and a 'workgroup' color printer, with ethernet, postscript prefered. While Windows is good for my application, something that plays well with FreeBSD and Linux would be a major win as well. I'd consider laser if it's cheap enough (read $500/printer), and I don't think that it is. I'm willing to pay a bit more for the printer if that means bigger ink tanks, better cleaning, and easier to buy replacement supplies, the question is, are there really good options out there or have the low-end 'throwaway' printers taken over the market?" One option is a modded inkjet like the ones here, liberated from tiny ink cartridges. Any recommendations out there for decent color lasers?
You're looking for a hardcore printer it sounds like. Pay the extra buck and get a color laser printer - it'll do everything you want (sounds like it) and it'll last a while - postscript won't go out of date for a long time! Besides, toner costs are pretty low given how long they last.
Sig & Below
Yuck Fou
I recommend Canon printers with the seperate color cartridges. I laugh at my friend who saved 50$ on his printer, but has already thrown out 2 good tanks of red/blue because his yellow ran out.
Best color printer I have ever used. Fast and reliable. Tonner should last quite a while, however at $200 a pop (x4), it's probably going to be out of your price range. Most lasers today, and even some high end inkjets support PostScript, so they should be compatible with Linux.
Samsung's ML-1650 offers Linux compatability and Postscript level III as an option. All for around $300.
For a cheap InkJet solution THG recommends the Canon i850.
If you live somewhere that accepts 3rd party cartages / refils, then inkjet is probably the way to go... cheap printer, cheap source of toner.
If you live in a backwards nation like the US (not-so-proudly a resident as of late) where the DMCA makes you pay out the ass for toner, then you are in a bind... pony up for a color laser, which, if you can expense out over time, or know you will be printing a lot for the next 4 years, will more than pay for itself, or.... Hmm, I dunno if there is a low up-front cost solution for long term color printing in a country that doesn't allow 3rd party ink carts / refills.
=(
I hopr somebody gives a better answer than this.
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
Check out ebay... I snagged a Phaser 740 for $100 or so, plus $100 shipping.. Though I had to replace a few of the consumables (which can be expensive), its been a great printer.. Networkable, Postscript level 3... Slow to warmup (3-5 minutes..), but hey, it works, and prints great..
I got that for the reason that I don't print enough, and my ink was constantly drying out...
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
You're not going to find a color laser printer for $500. Not even close. You'd be pressed to find a decent black and white laser printer that does postscript for that price. You might want to look into a printer like the Epson 2200. We have several of them where I work, and while not postscript or laster based, there is a continuous flow kit that works pretty well, and they're firewire based so not too bad in terms of speed. As a note on the price range, we spent ~$5k on our last crummy color laser printer and are finally getting a really nice one in a few weeks for $25k. They're not cheap by any means.
Well, consider the technology for a moment. If you're not willing to shell out the ton of money a color laser costs why not get a deskjet and a B&W Laser?
I have an older laser printer that prints reems of black and white (text documents mainly) and I've never replaced the toner. For photos I have a 100 dollar epson that prints out 7200x7200 or something ridiculous. The laser was 70 from ebay and the color printer was 60 dollars on special from best buy. Figure you'll print 2-3 cartridges worth of color and then buy a new printer (specs will have improved and at the cost of color printers a new one isn't much more than new cartridges).
The HP 4L I have is old but its a workhorse. 300dpi but it never complains about the documents I send it. Its outlasted 3 colorprinters now.
Go to http://www.freecolorprinters.com
A friend of mine has two of these solid ink lasers. She has to buy ink from them at normal prices, but she gets all the black ink she wants for free. Service included. You have to qualify in terms of how much of various types of docs you print.
plus shiping. Just do a google search for "ink" and click on the ads. Brand name ink for this printer is about $50, but knockoffs are cheap, and work. I guess if you stay away from lexmark you should be OK.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Check out PCWorld's running Top 10 Color Laser Printers list.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Printing is for wusses; crayons add so much "feel" and atmosphere to a picture!
Hate me!
If you live in a backwards nation like the US (not-so-proudly a resident as of late) where the DMCA makes you pay out the ass for toner, then you are in a bind...
What does printer ink have do do with the DMCA?! I'll answer that for you. NOTHING!!!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
While that is a very cool idea, and one I've never heard of, one look at the price says why. It seems logical to me that any 4 color, CYMK printer would cost pretty much the same to convert, but obviously this is not the case. Epson C60 sells regulary for about $65, and the converted one sells for $499 Wheras the C80 sells for about $85 and the converted unit runs $749. Why the extra cost I have no idea. And that website is very porrly designed and aparenty unfinished. While a cool idea, and a 6 color large formant printer like the ones they sell would give great results cheaply. This site offers the kits to do it yourself, so you can save yourself from cartridges and save yourself $200 by doing it yourself in true slashdot fashion.
Bork Bork Bork!!
That's what you want my friend if you want the lowest cost per page. Quite a few people are running these in Cannon S series and some of the middle tier Epsons for commercial use. More Info here http://www.weink.com/ecart/crs.htm although I'm sure there are other manufacturers as well. The inks in the kits are rated for 20 years under glass. I've been using them myself (not the CRS, but the same inks) for about 7 months now and I'm happy as a pig in slop.
there have been a lot of specials on color lasers lately.. the cheap minolta has what you need but is a bit more spendy in the long run in terms of toner life.. we just purchased an HP 1500 color laser and just love it. plus.. even the coated and photo-style paper is far far cheaper than their inkjet equivalents (like.. 3 to 12 cents a page when compared with 50 cents with some premium inkjet papers...) in a workgroup situation, i see a color laser far out-producing the inkjet and paying for itself in savings even before the toner runs out.. (the 1500 is good for about 4,000 sheets per drum. plus, it also actually keeps track of how much toner it's used from each color and recalculates the life expectancy of the cartridge.. neat huh?) We're still using up our inkjets.. (two canons, an 8200 and a 800) and love them.. got a big stack of the spendy ink too gott sell or use. oh yeah.. the color last much longer too and is definitely waterproof.. I hate to hock HP a lot, but they have some archival quality paper they call tough paper, waterproof, tear resistant, coated both sides, and are supposed to last 30 years or more.. priced it just under the paper we had been using (premium kodak photo paper) and couldnt believe it.
I've been dealing with LOTS of printing issues and printer headaches for years and years. (I did PC support for 6 years for a company with lots of networked printers, not to mention doing sales for a few years that often involved printer recommendations.)
I really do like a good color laser printer, BUT, I'm not convinced these are practical yet for most home users. I know prices have come down quite a bit - but a color laser is still a very complex piece of machinery. You generally have 4 toner cartridges, plus all the additional hardware that allows the printer to mix those toner colors on the page, fuser rolls, charger grids, and other assorted "disposable" items that aren't a factor with a plain black and white laser.
Everyone I know who bought a Xerox (formerly Tektronics) color laser is sitting there now with a broken laser in need of expensive repairs.
Inkjet printers have virtually no repair costs, because if one stops feeding paper properly or a print nozzle just quits squirting ink - you throw the thing away and buy a whole new (likely faster and better) printer for less than the cost of a service call, and you're back up and running.
Last time I saw a real cost analysis done, a color laser cost you about 2 or 3 cents per page to print in full color. If you buy the right inkjet printer, the cost is probably about 4 to 5 cents per page.
These cost calculations don't factor in the issue of repairing or replacing broken printers. They make the assumption that both units are fully functional for the duration of time you print those pages. Figuring in repair costs, I'd say an inkjet becomes cheaper and more convenient in the long-haul. (They use less electricity too.)
I'd venture that a lot of those inkjets people want to get rid of are from the cheaper end of the spectrum. No matter the era, you get what you pay for. In this case, regardless of the price of the cartridge. When looking at inkjets set your minimum price to about $280 for light use consumer printers, or maybe something like $380 for a heavier duty/business higher use unit.
I've had an HP Photosmart 1000 for over 2 years now with no problems. This printer goes through a couple of idle months, followed by couple days of heavy photo printing. Runs like a champ. Of course cartridge prices are a little high, but printers with dedicated black cartidges are a lot more economical to run that ones without. Given the amount of printing I do, it's still more affordable than laser.
I think you'll have a hard time buying a color laser in the price range your looking for. If your willing to pony up the cash, today's color lasers are really nice and the way to go. If you are going to do a lot of printing, the laser will be cheaper in the long run.
The ink is, uh, a copyrighted formula? And the printer access hatch is an access device. Yes, yes, and by opening up the printer to refill it and walking backwards, you are reverse engineering!
Et voila!
this is a sig.
I think he's referring to the chips in the manufacturers cartridges which have features specifically to prevent refilling. DMCA might have some influence over whether a 3rd party can "hack" the cartridge's chip back to a full state after doing a refill.
Actually, it does. Certain manufacturers are sueing people under the DMCA for refilling ink cartridges. The cartridges contain a chip saying whether they're empty, so cracking this chip is arguably circumvention...
They've got a color laser at $500. I dunno what the brand was, but given today's printer market, it's probably a rebadged HP,Lexmark, or Epson.
IMHO, Lexmark's arguments are very strained, but resellers aren't looking for a fight, even one they can win. As a result, generic ink cartridges are hard to find.
obTopic: I think a lot of people are boycotting Lexmark over this, so don't go there, whatever you do.
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
I didn't know that LEDs are printers?
a.k.a "cheap laser" printer. Okidata, I believe, was one of the first to make those available at prices that I (student at the time) could afford.
And, if you think about it, there isn't much difference between a LED and a laser in this context - both are just a monochromatic (hopefully tightly focused) beam of light that polarizes the drum.
Jobs? Which jobs?
The Phaser "wax" printers were originally popularized (and I believe developed at) Tektronix. They got out of the printer biz some years back and the Phaser is now sold by Xerox.
They still have a number of models, mostly still in the high-end departmental area.
There are certain tasks where the Phaser output is pretty nice. Because the wax-based pigments are opaque the colors are really saturated. Cost and mess factors are very low relative to inkjet printing. All these things make these printers continue to be a pretty strong choice for printing business graphics (charts, graphs, etc.). And as the RIP hardware has gotten much faster, it's not quite as long a lifetime to wait for output as in the old days.
But in terms of capability, I don't think they can touch the flexibility of inkjets. These days there are choices for pigment-based or dye-based inks so you can print opaque or transparently. And inkjets have much higher resolution, more flexibility on printing media, and are cheaper too.
We bought a used Tektronix Phaser printer several years ago for the office. We've never looked back. Maintenance is virtually zero. Adding more wax is trivial, possibly easier/cleaner than toner. Black wax is free with our model (ie, ultra cheap per-page costs for B&W documents), and you pay for color wax. Output quality is fantasic whether it's B&W text, solid color regions, or near-photo quality. You could certainly burn a lot of wax if you printed color photos or solid pages all the time, but your B&W docs will be cheap.
As far as connectivity and compatibility...
Windows: Great. Drivers are easy found and work great.
Linux: The printer sits on our LAN with its own IP address, etc. so when I print from my Linux desktop I simply have a script that fires the [text/PDF]->Postscript straight into the printer's listening port. And I'm sure there's a better way to print to this printer from Linux (with Samba) that allows for proper queuing, etc.
First cavaet: The printer has a warmup sequence that keeps itself clean and ensures liquid wax is ready when needed. The good news is you never really have to think about turning it on or off or whatever; it just wakes up and warms itself up. (In fact, don't turn it off or it goes through an extended power-up cycle that burns additional wax.) The downside here is that it does burn a small amount of color wax each warmup and eventually I guess you'd run out of the color wax even if you weren't doing color printing. In real usage, this hasn't been an issue for our office, but I thought I'd mention it.
Second cavaet: This is a fairly big, heavy, expensive printer. It performs like a professional printer, not a light-duty home inkjet. So you do get what you pay for here, in my opinion.
Ours is an 800-series Phaser, but here are some current models from Xerox. And check into the free black wax issue -- I'm not sure if it's still the standard policy.
I still have an ALPS MD-1300 "micro-dry" thermal printer, with tape-based cartridges like a typewriter. It's a workhorse, never has any inky mess, and puts out great output, especially in dye-sub mode. Alps doesn't make printers anymore, and although the cartridges sets are on par with inkjets as far as package cost, they're separate for each color and last quite long.
I'm not sure I'd buy a discontinued printer, but I wish someone would continue developing this superior technology.
Networked inkjets, as late as a year ago, were fairly prevalent, with models available from just about all of the major vendors. I don't know what happened - whether it's a sign that color laser is entering the sub-$1000 marketspace or what - but when we looked for a networked color inkjet, HP was really the best option out there.
Epson seems to have dropped their mid-range workgroup inkjets. The only model they have networked out of the box is the C82, which is a rather low-end printer - nothing I'd consider a workgroup printer. Canon likewise has absolutely no networked inkjets at all.
Lexmark has a few networked inkjets, but what with the recent stuff with their using the DMCA to corner the inkjet cartridge market, and given we've used Lexmark printers and had mediocre quality out of them, I decided to pass. The only model they are still marketing/selling is the Lexmark Optra Color 45n, if you're interested.
HP has a couple of decent models - the 2280 and the 3000. We ended up going with the 2280 here, but both are very good models. The one caveat that I'd have to say - make sure you get the latest JetDirect EIO card. The older ones had a PITA for a web interface, while the new ones are a dream to work with (and support ZeroConf/Rendezvous!)
For day to day printing, I use a cheap HP 3100 monochrome printer. Toner can be stored a long time, costs little, and gives excellent results. However, businesses learned long ago that owning and maintaining and owning something like a color laser printer can be expensive. When I want to print something special, I use the Kinkos KFP tool and just pick up my prints anytime (open 24 hours). If I want a photo, I upload it to clubphoto.com when they're having a promotion or I'll use the Fuji machine at the local super wal-mart. I generally avoid using the Kodak kiosks as they use thermal dye sublimation, like a color laser printer. The Fuji's use real photo paper and expose the image. Pretty decent results. But my best prints have been from clubphoto and yahoo photo prints. So I've completely eliminated little ink cartridges from my life, that is except for relatives needing them. I usually direct them to ink4art.com.
Generally, my experience with color inkjet printers has been that you get what you pay for. My first color inkjet was a Lexmark 5700 that my folks bought for me. I think it was moderately priced back in the day. And that printer performed admirably. It was fairly quick, produced good quality output, and was pretty reliable until it up and quit on me for no real reason one day.
I replaced that one with a Lexmark Z23 because on paper it had similar specs to my old 5700. Yeah, it was cheaper, but I just kind of assumed that the Z23 was a cheaper, updated version of my old 5700. Wrong. I had more problems with that printer than I've ever had with any other printer. It seems like every time I printed out a document to turn in for school, I had to clean the nozzles 2 or 3 times and realign the cartridges. Even then, I would still have some gaps in the print where the printer just didn't seem to cover.
Since then I have bought a used HP Deskjet 895ci. The thing was in practically brand new condition and I have yet to experience any problems with it.
I don't necessarily think that the market has been taken over by the cheap printers. Yes, they are quite common and they sell very well. But, I think that as long as you are willing to spend a little more than the average consumer (I'm guessing above the $150 range) then you will probably get a halfway decent color inkjet printer.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
What the author really means is "I intend to use this exclusively on Windows. But since this is Slashdot, I have to mention *nix somewhere to get it posted."
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
I've seen the guy who modifies the Epson printers at ComputerPro shows in Charlotte. They look nice but we very careful. He's never answered any of my emails asking about the ink. He'll claim he's tested all kinds of inks and is using a custom formula. Riiiight. I sell printing machiens for packaging. This guy's printer business is a hobby. He's got custom small batches of precise ink being made just for him? Uh-huh. Maybe it's a standard ink with a ph modification or something like that. Custom ink is expensive. The point is, if you buy one of these, all indications are you'd be locked into him as your sole source for ink.
My favourite printer is the one at work. ;)
...a more robust setup. I would recommend a monochrome laser printer for text operations, paired with a dye sublimation printer for color.
I use two Kodak 8650 printers (pick one up for a couple grand on ebay) for a commercial application that is probably beyond the scope of the submitter, but the quality (indistinguishable from a lab print), reliability (over 800 9x14" prints/week at times), and durability (light-fast for more than 20 years)
Olympus, Kodak, Sony, and others have items at more reasonable price points.
No doubt; for color, go dye-sub. Then again, I own an Epson 1280 photo that does really nice work as well. I have installed an Epson 2200 for a couple of clients and they are even better.
I picked up a Minolta Magic Color 2200DL (I think that's the model number, there are a couple that are pretty close) for just over $500 from a Dell Deal(tm) a few months back. I'm not a heavy duty user, my HP 5mp is still on its original toner cartridge. The Minolta lacks postscript, so it is 'windows only' but last I checked it looked like one of the ghostscript drivers and/or something from CUPS could be adapted to do the right thing.
Plus side: Takes standard PC100 or PC133 ram, so stuck some old dimms in it to take it up to 192MB or so.
Down side: It doesn't come with much RAM to begin with.
Plus side: It comes with a 100baseT port built in.
Down side: Speaks an officially undocumented, but apparently well-known queueing protocol.
Plus side: It was under $600 shipped.
Down side: Comes with partially filled toner cartridges, good for like 2000 pages instead of 5000 or something equally unfull.
Plus side: You can buy individual toner carts, instead of all 4 CYMK carts at once.
Down side: Toner costs a lot, like $125 per cartridge.
Plus side: Prints really fast, like a real 4 ppm color and a real 16 ppm b&w
Down side: Takes like two minutes to warm up out of stand-by.
YMMV, I was too lazy to double-check my facts and just went from tequila-addled memory.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
My predecssor got suckered by the very cheap up-front purchase price on this machine. It was, IIRC, something in the order of AUD$3900.00.
'course, it is during my reign and my budget that the beast needs new toner cartridges, isn't it! AUD$400.00 a pop (times four, C, M, Y, and K)
This machine proved to be so expensive to run that we made a commercial decision to shut it off for a few months, and now we run it with a FreeBSD box bridging it from the rest of the network, with MAC layer filtering restricting access to just a couple of people.
It isn't even that nice a printer on quality terms. Any cheap inkjet gives far better quality (resolution, clarity, colour match, etc) results than this huge beast!
Your Mileage May Vary - mine obviously does!
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
...that is currently cost effective. If I remember correctly, the manufacturer's name is crayola.
And of course Canon printers are supported by foomatic. My BJC-2110 works with Red Hat 9 out of box.
The printer has parallel, USB, and 10/100 ethernet connections. I personally use the ethernet connection exclusively. It does 16 pages a minute in greyscale, and 4 pages per minute in color. While a lot of the more expensive color lasers can do single pass color printing and get 20+ ppm, 4 ppm for 8 x 10 color photos at top quality easily beats any inkjet. I printed my Christmas card (~100 copies x 2 pages full color) in under 2 hours. It used to take me days of printing with an inkjet.
My only issue with the Magicolor 2300DL is that it is not postscript. My primary desktop OS is Red Hat 9. Greyscale printing is perfect from linux. Color printing is not photo quality, as you can see patterning in the output. Linux printing is also slower than Windows. Linux printing does work well enough to be usable (it's the only printer set up on my linux boxen), but if you're going for true photo quality, for now, you'll need a windows PC lying around. Linux drivers can be found on linuxprinting.org jump directly to the 2300DL linuxprinting.org page or the driver page, which also gives info on the protocol used by the 2300DL.
As far as toner goes, I've had a hard time finding the high capacity 4500 page toner cartriges for everything but black. The standard 1500 page cartridges go for about $70, the large color ones for about $120, and the black ones (only comes as large) for about $80. The toner is a little more expensive than other lasers, but any laser toner is dirt cheap compared to ink.
The list price is $800, but you can probably pick it up for $600 if you can wait a little while for it to go on sale. It's definitely worth the extra $100 and the wait.
I love those Tek Phasers! It was well worth the wait to print from one of those. When my school got rid of them, and replaced them with a cheap HP injket, the picture didn't look right. I should of picked that one up that was on a donation pallet...
Actually I have tried 2 printers with the gimp-print drivers for linux, both perform better than windows (note i only use b&w).
I had a Desktop 340 (smallest printer i've ever seen, smaller than the size of 2 shoeboxes or so.. and quite old) ... the quality was a tad higher in linux, but the quality is so poor already its hard to notice a difference
Epson Stylus Colour 600 ... now this surprised me.... the quality is poor in windows... even at highest quality at 1440 res... lots of bleeding... in linux it is like a high quality laser printer (even though it takes 10 minutes or longer to print a page), and even with hardware microweaving off (which can damage the heads) it is excellent quality... and the thing is somebody gave me this printer because they were dissapointed with the quality...
my guess is the manufacturers make the drivers use more ink then is really needed so you gotta pay for another cartridge ... or they for some reason cant make quality drivers...
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Plus many of the cheap colour lasers I have been looking at are quite dark/dull when compared with expensive colour lasers or even cheap inkjet printers. They also seem to be quite poor at continuous tones.
You can afford to buy several "disposable" inkjet printers for the price of even a cheap colour laser.
Colour lasers also seem a bit hit-and-miss quality wise, even within a manfacturer. We have some that are fine, then others that are pretty much lemons. I just looked at someone's Xerox that's been in for 6 months now and it seems OK. If we get one, it'll probably have an extended on-site warranty.
I am thinking of buying a cheap inkjet for home and emailing pics I want printed to the local camera store, where they are printed for about as much as it costs to get a good set of 35mm prints done.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
I've had an Epson Stylus 740 hooked up with a CIS system for about two years. I would do it again in a hearbeat. The benenfits:
.12=(200+150+8*8+75)/4000 (200 printer, 150 for CIS, $8 ream, 75 for ink. Obviously, YMMV.
- You can tell exactly how much ink you left at a glance.
- Your price per page is around $0.12, if you print 2000 pages a year for only 2 years:
- My print quality is very good- no banding at all.
- I run two weekly crons, one to print a color bar pattern and one to run an extra cleaning cycle. Only once did I have a clogged head, and a couple extra cleaning cycles cleared it up.
- With any amount of diligence, you will never run out of ink in the middle of a job.
- You get the satisfaction of knowing you're not paying pure profit for carts.
I would definitely recommend that if you go this route, you get a new printer and do CIS from day one. If not, invest in the cleaning solution to get every last bit of old ink out and your heads totally clean. This I learned the hard way.
If you have more questions, you can email me at jmgallag at attbi dot com.
Also black ink is free. If you buy a color set, you get a free pack of black. Picture of ink. One thing and I can't stress this enough. Ink is not cross compatable across many models, so the bow tie ink should not go into the oval slot even if the color is right. The different printers they make use different temp inks. If you load 800 series ink into an 300 series system you'll damage the print head because the ink will solidify in the tubes. If you do the opposite, you could burn the ink. Common preventative maintanance is to run a cleaning page. If the print has lines in it, run the "light stripes" test. After a while you have to replace the oil roller. There is a small chip on the roller that counts pages to keep you from using the printer past the roller's designed usage period. Also after about a whole pack of ink has been used, you'll have to dump the drip tray. The easiest way is if the tray is still hot, run it under a cold water faucet, the ink will shrink slightly and you can bang it against a trash can and it will come loose.
I picked it up at OfficeMax/Depot for something like $50 and got a $30 rebate (it was listed on slickdeals.net). I then go over to eBay and buy cheapo ink from someone and buy enough of it to make it last for about a year. Total $$ spent, less than $70. Works good enough for me and the little bit of printing that I do. Even looked pretty good when I used the free borderless glossy paper that came with the printer.
Its a USB printer, so I can use it with my iBook and my PC, will someday setup the wireless printer through XP, but that is another post.
I just bought an HP 2000c for $5 at a salvation army. You should check out your local resale shop.
what sig?
I recommend the Canon i850 Color printer. It does excellent photos, is relatively inexpensive and canon doesn't seem to encumber their ink cartridges.
I also got a hawking USB print server (~ $60) and it's now a network printer.
Take a look at how easy it is to assign this thing an ip address and have a network printer.
If you don't spend their secret Priceline minimum required amount on ink sticks, you have to pay a $75/month fee.
For that money you can get a business lease on an HP4500, which is a far better printer.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
I gave up on inkjets last February. I had already switched to doing my photo printing using dotphoto.com for about .15-.19 per photo.
I bought a Minolta 2300 DL network color laser on sale from OfficeMax for $600. The network interface is included in the base price, which makes this printer the best bargain I've seen in a color laser printer. An optional duplexer adds about $330 to the price. The protocol used by this printer is Zenographics ZjStream (JBIG based). I wrote an open source driver for it, called foo2zjs.
The printer with my driver is good enough for business graphics and casual photo printing. The resolution of this printer is 2400x600 with one bit (1 dot size) per CMYK color plane. The printer is not good enough for photo printing, but I prefer dotphoto.com for that anyway. For the price, I would buy htis printer again.
I've also got an unreleased driver for the HP LaserJet 1500 color laser printer. This printer uses Oak Technologies OAKT protocol, also JBIG based. This printer has two bits (3 dot sizes) per CMYK plane. The driver currently produces output that can be parsed and turned back into the original page images, but has never been tested on a real LJ 1500. I shelved further work on the OAKT driver due to HP's lack of interest in loaning me a LaserJet 1500 for final testing.
MagiColor 2350 by QMS.
Cost my about $900 at Office Max on sale.
More than you want to spend tis true, but it is a damn good color printer.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Tektronix/Zerox gave us 3 of the 840's (educational institution). They print very nicely, with vivid colors and good saturation.
But, it continually shit its ink into its drip tray that I had to dump out every few days. Tek said there was nothing wrong with the printer and to just order more ink (not cheap!).
We finally turned it off. We had gone through 3 sets of ink and only a couple hundred pages. Now, if someone needs a print, we turn it on for them , they can print to it, and we turn it off again. It costs much less that way.
Also, you don't want to put your prints in the cover of a plastic binder, since the wax will stick to the clear plastic of the binder.
There is one major drawback every one is neglecting when they suggest a color laser. The quality sucks. Laser is great for black and white text, but color laser prints are flat and have a much smaller color gamut than inkjet. A good quality inkjet will last a long time, and should offer ethernet.
I have always been partial to Epson as they offer lightfast inks, and cater to people looking for photo quality output. I have used a Epson 1280 for a while and had no issues. I don't have any experience using it under linux, but under mac OSX it works beautifully, esp. with colorsync. The major down side that has been mentioned is many inkjets do not have individual ink carts, this is changing, most of Epson's printers now have separate carts. HP's nicer printers do as well.
Good luck on deciding.
As someone else pointed out, color laser prints and dyesub prints are two totally different animals.
.. but, that's generally the difference between a $5000 printer and a $25000 printer. :) The silver halide printers are harder to tweak to output the "right" colors though -- the colors generally look "flat" (best word I can use to describe it) out of the box. They're also harder to maintain -- the one we had back at the office could have some nasty chemical spills and whatnot. I probably wouldn't use a kiosk that has one of those built in -- I'd rather send it off to a large facility that spends more time keeping their printers in calibration.
Dyesub printers, while sometimes finicky, produce excellent quality prints. A company I used to work for uses them in all of their portrait studios for "on demand"/instant prints.
It is definately "different" than the print you get with a silver halide printer
It seems like a lot of people forget that, I know I did until recently. Ink jet printers seem to be a cheap solution - until you realize just how much you are spending on ink.
I own (but no longer use) an Epson Photo Stylus 700, which I bought because I loved the quality of the output when used with the "special" photo paper. I never printer one picture on the paper. I think the greatest thing I *ever* did with the printer was make some nice Thanksgiving party invitations.
It seemed like I was always buying ink - because we rarely used it, but left it turned on. This tended to leave the print heads uncapped (I think they do this on purpose, rather than auto-capping, to sell more ink), and caused the ink to dry out prematurely. But you wanted to leave it on, because it seemed to take forever to "boot" (turn it on, and after minutes of "self-checking" and "cleaning" it would finally be ready. I took a look at how we were printing (rarely, but we wanted good output *now* when we did), what we were printing (most of the time, simple text only stuff, black and white) - and I bought a printer based on that.
I ended up buying a used HP Laserjet 6 (there is a P or something there at the end, too), and a refilled toner cartridge. Total cost: $170.00 - and I have postscript, too. I installed some old 72 pin SIMMs I had lying around to bump the cache up some, and I haven't looked back.
The printer is great - what was really nice was the low page count (25000 pages). I also like the fact that I can use el-cheapo paper in it, and it still looks great (the Epson, on anything under 24lb weight, would "fuzz" - lighter weight paper had more "fur", and the print wouldn't have crisp edges). I also like it that I can leave it on - and then when I want to print out to it, I instantly can - and it just works!
Now, maybe if your job or hobby requires color, an ink jet is what you need to get. But I learned my lesson quick - I don't have *any* need for color. If I want to look at pictures, I look at them on a screen. Just about anyone else can do the same (most people I know have a computer). If I need a print of an image, I will print it in b/w for "checking", then the final can be done at a copy shop or something. I have yet to need to do this, though - but it is the most sensible option, for me.
I will never regret buying that laser printer.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Actually, the current terms are that the printer is yours after 3 years, not two.
Thanks for the link, though. I think I'm going to pick up one of these.
.-.--
I don't think hp4600 cartridges are so expensive if you see the cost per page. It's still cheaper than inkjet color prints.
But with the hp4600, people start printing nice looking pages with white letters on a dark-blue background and similar toner-wasting things. With an inkjet, they wouldn't have done this because it just takes too long to print.
So the real cost increase is caused by the users, not by the printer.
Does anybody have an idea how to fight this? Perhaps some print filter (we use a linux print server) that measures the amount of toner used for a page and charges the user based on that?
My fiancee and I decided that, rather than pay a printer to do our invitations, we'd buy a new printer (our old Canon died after taking a header off the desk) and print them ourselves. While the geek in me loved this idea, the part of me that loves my fiancee dearly feared nights of her (or me) struggling with the printer, trying to get invitations to print straight, piles of misprinted invitations everywhere, struggles of anguish unleashed. We bought an Epson Stylus CX5200, which is a combination scanner/copier/inkjet, for about $150, with a $35 gift card to the office supply store thrown in (which we used to buy extra ink). To my amazement, the printouts all came out perfect. No lineup problems like with other inkjets I've tried, and the printing was fantastic. The copier function is also nice for rebates and work items, and the "footprint" on the desk is much smaller than the two devices were. So there's a recommendation for anyone looking for a quality inkjet. Apologies if that doesn't answer this particular question, however.
then throw it away when the ink runs out!
Seriously.
I used to be really concerned about the DPI and speed and color capability, etc, but these days the cheapest printer is far better than the best I had a few years ago. Add to that the fact that new ink cartridges will be more exensive than a bottom-end one on sale and there is no point in replacing the ink cartridges any more. Just pitch the old one and go to Target/Bestbuy/Circuit city/etc and pick up the cheapest inkjet they have on sale.
I know this is probably horribly irresponsible from an environmental standpoint, but it does make good dollars sense.
Minolta makes a Color Laser Printer that sells for about $750 at Staples or just about any other computer retailer.
I have an Okidata color laser postscript printer that ran about $1050, and toner carts are about $60 apiece.
Overall, I like okidata because of their low consumable prices. The printers are more expensive, but the long term TCO is less than just about any other.
The printing cost on my B4200 B&W laser is about 7 cents per page and the color is about 30 cents.
I ran into the "wasting the wax when the machine power cycles" problem on a couple of Phasers. I called tech support who told us how to turn off power cycling and sent us a free box of ink for our trouble.
wherever I go, there I am.
How about a real laser printer that works by lightly browning the paper but without setting it on fire. No refills ever...I want one. How about it science?
For great justice take off every sig.
Not sure what the technical solution to THAT problem is!
This is my sig.
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned it, but the HP color laser 8500/8550 prints 11x17 (sadly not full bleed, but 1/4" margin or something close to that). The toner cartridges last forever and a day and the output is quite nice. It was also designed before Carly / the compaq merger, so it's not a piece of shite that will break in 13 months. It's not that I don't trust the 4600, but I trust it less in the long run. ;)
I've seen them for sale in stores for $1500ish - they are getting kind of old, and I think HP wants to discontinue the product, but get that and the onsite warranty (you aren't moving this in your car) in case something should happen and you'll have a workhorse machine for $2k.
The printer is also huge, if you need that whole geek factor thing
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We just bought a Tektronix 8200, and it rocks. People who are so used to inkjets and lasers are really amazed when I show them a) how easy it is to check the amount of color left (pop the lid and count the wax blocks) and b) how easy it is to replenish the color (each wax block is uniquely shaped so that it only fits in one hole -- virtually idiotproof).
The output is gorgeous. It is big and heavy, like you say, but it's a workgroup color printer with postscript. It's not expensive; in fact, it's quite cheap. After all, it's not competing with inkjet printers, but with color lasers. We bought a color laser (Tektronix 7700) at the same time, and the 8200 was about half the price of the 7700.
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So now you're spending $900 for both, $300 of which comes from your ink jet versus $600 for just the ink jet?
They don't have any right now, but about every other week, I've seen a couple HP Laserjet 4050's (or 4500) Colour Laser Printers at AuctionDepot starting bidding at around $200. You could probably get one for ~$500 as you said. They also often have old rack cabinets (great for geek-class bookshelves - if not a little expensive.. but definitely cool. :D