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Comparing New vs Refubished Printers?
GraWil asks: "Does anyone have advice on purchasing a color laser printer? I'm trying to decide between getting a new small 'personal' color laser or a used/refurbished workhorse. For the roughly the same money, I can either buy a Xerox 6100 or a refurbished Tektronix 740/750 or even a tabloid sized 790. I've had mixed luck with color HP and Lexmark printers but I'm open to any suggestions at this point. There are a fair number of reviews but none of them ever compare new with the old."
I actually design printer firmware for a living (although I do inkjets), so take that as a bias. But from a technical perspective, anything refurbished that I didn't know the age and use model of would scare me.
Printers have a fixed lifespan. Gears grind down, aerosol builds up, capacitors burn out, internal memory has limited write cycles. Generally, a printer is rated for x number of pages. A cheap 50 buck one is maybe 10-15K, a 120 would give you 30K+. There's a large difference between a refurbished printer that someone used once a day for 3 years, and one someone printed 5-10 pages a day on (and as much as it surprised me, some people do print more than that). The second will have a high chance of breaking in the next 3 years, the first probably won't. Of course, this data is for inkjets so multiple by a factor of 3 to get better numbers.
I'm not saying that refurbished can't work. But with the price of lasers still fairly high, I think you get a better deal buying a new one rather than risking it breaking early.
Also, make sure to look into cost per page. Thats the cost of toner, divided by the number of pages printed per cartridge. This differs vastly between printers, and for heavy users can dwarf unit cost.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I wrote a comment on PS a little while ago in the "printing on Linux" article.
Also, given the choice, get a printer with a built in network server (you know, ethernet). If you have a desktop, it might not seem important. But since I've gotten more computers and started to use my laptop as my main computer, having the printer seperate from any computer is great. I don't have to keep one computer on. Even if I only had a laptop, I could plug the printer into my network and print from anywhere in the house thanks to WiFi. I can keep my printer next to my computer, in the basement where my cable modem is, in a bedroom that has an ethernet jack, or in a bathroom (if I added a ethernet jack). And with a little ethernet->wireless adaptor, I could put the printer in the attic if I wanted. It's actually very handy.
Also, as a /. special, if you have both ethernet and PS on your printer, it's AMAZINGLY easy to configure with Linux, Windows, or OS X. Windows is a little weird (a network printer that's not attached to a computer is considered "local" when adding a printer. Huh?). But no messing with GhostScript or anything under Linux. The printer already speaks PS, and if it's like mine ACTUALLY RUNS LPD, so you just forward jobs.
I hope others can help you better with the which is best, as I said I've no experiance with color lasers, but PS and ethernet are fantastic features that you should be looking for.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Having worked hardware support for UMD (maintained, repaired, replaced printers and recharging toner cartridges, among other things) and having owned (and still do) refurb laser printersl I whole-heartedly endorse buying a refurb printer with certain caveats:
While toner cost does make a difference, for a refurb you can generally find toner on Ebay or the like for cheap. You can also find recharged toner cartridges from most printing companies for cheaper than the original, though you'll have to be a bit more careful in the care and handling since recharged laser toner cartridges always leak more easily.
In particular, I once found a Phaser 760 being tossed out at a corporate site and brought it home to work on. There was little wrong with it, and I found toner cartridges (all four colors) for around $80 apiece on Ebay. They do print a ton of pages, but that also depends on what you're printing.
I would say that the primary deciding factor (for refurb vs. new) is that reliability of original. If the new printer was a POS then I would steer clear of the refurb. I have a Lexmark Optra S that I picked up particularly because I'd worked with an Optra S for a while and found it such a rock solid printer. I even sprang $$ for the duplexer for it (new, couldn't find a refurb/second-hand one at the time).
The track record of the printer will also advise you as to what spare parts to stock on hand. Laser printers are much more repairable and reliable than inkjets, but you do need to have replacement parts available - fuser, roll bars, paper feed rollers, and imaging drums in particular for color lasers. I remember that the paper feed roller (little rubber wheel that pulls the paper out of the tray into the printer - nubby when new and smooth, dusty rubber when worn) was the thing that wore out the most on HPIVsi's and we stocked those by the truckload. The rest of it was pretty rock solid and like most B/W lasers the imaging drum is part of the toner cartridge, so much less hassle.
After that I would think about the size both in terms of the amount of space these heavier duty printers require and the weight (the Phaser 760 was one @#$% heavy printer and I think lugging it around was a good part of what re-injured my back). If your don't have a lot of desk real-estate to spare or a really sturdy printer stand/table then you might want to think twice.
A lot of the pricier but nice features in printers are more affordable when you buy a refurb. Think about networking built in on the printer and any built in spool disks or memory. The down side is that refurbs seldom come with a manual or warranty and some of these things are what will kill the printer in the end. The primary reason I ended up throwing away an old HP of mine was that the spool disk went bad and I couldn't replace it.
How comfortable you are tinkering with the printer definitely is the last thing I would list as a factor in choosing refurb over new. If you have to get the copier repair guy in to fix a paper jam, stick with new, however, if you're comfortable with getting a little toner on your hands and reasonably handy tinkering in the guts of a PC, then there's no reason to shy away from the refurb printer.