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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get a color laser printer - it'll do everything you want (sounds like it) and it'll last a while - postscript won't go out of date for a long time!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
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.
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!
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.
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...
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.
I, too, recommend the Epson 2200. I got one about eight months ago and it's pretty excellent.
It uses seven inks, which makes the printed images very smooth (cyan and magenta both have light-colored versions which improve dithering on all the shades of those colors). I've only changed cartridges once so far, so it's been ok on ink usage (though it doesn't seem exceptional).
There's also a hot-swappable black ink cartridge, so you can switch between Photo Black (for glossy papers) and Matte Black (for matte papers). The Matte Black is really impressive -- I printed an underwater photo of a Jellyfish and the blackness of the water is excellent.
Another nice thing is that it prints large formats -- up to 13" x 19".
I think they cost around $600 - $700 (mine was a gift :-)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My wife works from home and we had a Minolta 2200 last year (before she changed employers).
We put 1600 pages through it, never did run out of toner (although, as others have mentioned, toner is EXPENSIVE, almost as much as the printer!).
But it worked well, didn't jam, and provided decent color -- not photo-printer quality, but good for just about anything else. My wife produced SKU charts with product images on it and got numerous prases on the quality.
I'd recommend it in a flash.
Steve
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
www.freecolorprinter.com Does not have a 75 monthly fee. Thats www.freecolorprinters.com (XEROX) please carefull what you type. Because you are bashing my company. (www.freecolorprinter.com) Cadapult Graphic Systems... Any problems or questions about my company, site, program, or products please let me know. I will personal help the situation. Especially for a fellow slashdoter... Thanks