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Choosing a Personal Printer For the Long Haul
The Optimizer writes "After 16 years of service, my laser printer, a NEC Silentwriter 95, is finally wearing its internals out, and I need to find a replacement. It's printed over 30,000 pages and survived a half-dozen long-distance moves without giving me any trouble. I believe it's done so well for two reasons. First, it's sturdily built and hails from an era when every fraction of a penny didn't have to be cost-cut out of manufacturing. The other reason was its software. Since it supported postscript Level II, it wasn't bound to a specific operating system or hardware platform, so long as a basic postscript level 2 driver was available. A new color laser printer with postscript 3 seems like a logical replacement, and numerous inexpensive printers are available. I'd rather get a smaller, personal-size printer than a heavy workgroup printer. Most of all, I would like it to still be usable and running well with Windows 9, OS X 11, and whatever else we will be using in 2020. Can anyone recommend a brand or series of printers that is built to last and isn't going to be completely dependent on OS specific proprietary drivers?"
Pencil and Paper? You want a well built device that is not going to rely on OS specific closed source drivers? I'd say that leaves a pencil.
I realize things have changed, but I still stick by HP laser printers. Try to get a midrange one with a network connection and PostScript Level3, and you should hopefully be set.
Get another laser printer. Take care of it and it'll last forever. Postscript means no serious OS dependence. Hell, I just set up a new Ricoh printer at an office that needed to be used with a Mac OS 9 application. It only needed very basic printing, so no biggie. It worked fine, so thank God for Postscript. Ricoh and Brother are good in my eyes, but I'm sure someone with more experience will chime in.
I went for Samsung printers for precisely that reason. I have an ML-3051ND at home (and its replacement, an ML-3471ND at work) because they're well built and they use PostScript, and hence aren't tied to any obscure software drivers. They're not colour, but then I remain unconvinced that colour laser printers are worth while yet. Cheap inkjets give significantly better print quality, at the cost of having to keep two printers around, one for colour and one for black and white. But it's a solution that works for me, at least.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
The problem is that you are assuming that printers made today have any sort of longterm lifespan. They do not. They are cheaply-made and will not last you more than a couple years at the longest.
Add to this that you would lose the ability to buy toner after a few years due to planned obsolescence, and your dream of buying a cheap personal printer that will last you two generations of Windows is simply impossible.
Most of the stuff out there now is cheap plastic crap for "personal size" printers.
You get 18-24 months of moderate use out of them before they die, and ALL of them are proprietary drivers.
If you want more flexibility and longer lifespan, you pretty much HAVE to go up to workgroup printers.
As to a specific model, again, I'm not someone who goes through printers that often. I'm fairly happy with my LaserJet 3005x though.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You can't go much wrong with a decent HP Laser printer. As long as you don't get the completely bargain bucket, bottom of the range ones.
30,000 pages is nothing. I've got an 8-year-old HP5000 series that does 10,000 pages a year.
Anything with an Ethernet socket and support for PostScript (or even PDF natively, these days) is not going to need much in the way of drivers, particularly on OS X.
Was 80GBP has cheap consumables and works fine with CUPS.
A lot of the Brother lasers get good reviews.
Find several models that have been around at least a year, preferably two, then search for their reputations.
You might try consumer-product-rating magazines and web sites that have a reputation for independence.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
They honestly just don't make them like they used to. I have an HP 4 that I bought from a local university for $10 and it's built like a tank. It cranks em out even after 60k+ pages so far and works seamlessly with any Windows or Unix/Linux operating system I've used it with.
For something newer/smaller, I would guess a monochrome printer by a larger brand like HP or Cannon would be your best bet for something that will be compatible for another 20 years. As far as finding something that can take a decent amount of abuse, I'd like to know myself if/when my laserjet 4 dies.
I've got an old HP ColorLaserJet 5M. It's still grinding along just fine, but I know it must be getting tired after all these years. I'm very interested in the recommendations of the Slashdot community. The HP is built like the proverbial brick outhouse and probably weighs a bit more. Its only downside is limited memory (slow on graphics/photo-heavy pages), and its photo reproduction is adequate at best.
I'd love to replace it with another heavy-duty workhorse, but one that can do a better job with photographs.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Doesn't the X stands for 10?
Find a nice used laserjet or color laserjet, these printers last for decades, they will have replacement parts available for that long, and they are platform independent supporting either poststript or PCL.
Why used? If you are looking to save money (I assume this is what " I'd rather get a smaller, personal-size printer than a heavy workgroup printer" means) this is the way to go. If you are looking for an all around smaller printer, get a cheap disposable color inkjet and save yourself the trouble of maintaining a cheap color laser printer. Unless you get a workhorse, it probably won't last no matter what kind you buy.
Skip the printer. There is VERY little need for a personal printer unless you are into scrap booking or something like that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Get yourself another laser printer, after I bought mine (HP P2015-dn for $300 2 years ago) I haven't looked back. 99.99% of my printing is black and white anyway, I use the crap out of the double sided feature and I love the networked aspect.
My only complaint is that it needs to be restarted every month or so - otherwise it takes 20 minutes to print 1 page.
Sleep: A completely inadequate substitution for Caffeine.
First, it's sturdily built and hails from an era when every fraction of penny didn't have to be cost-cut out of manufacturing
That's BS. Are you suggesting that there was a time the manufacturers weren't trying to squeeze out cost? What planet are you from?
30,000 is a measly 60 reams of paper. All but the cheapest, lowest-end piece of crap should be able to handle more than six cases of paper before kicking the bucket. If standards are that low, just about any SOHO printer should do the trick.
SirWired
That is a critical question for anyone to ask, regardless of whether they're low or high volume, color vs black'n'white, laser vs inkjet. Good on you for asking. If it needs drivers instead of working out-of-the-box, pass it by.
That said, when I was looking at printers a few years ago, I ended up heading toward the HP LJ 1320. Not on the market anymore (and it's black'n'white whereas I think you want color), but that general area of their product line is where it's at. These printers actually know PCL and PS themselves, none of that the-smarts-are-in-the-driver bullshit.
Don't just look at the ticket price of the printer itself. if you're planning on printing another 30,000 pages with the new printer over 16 years (hint: you won't - modern stuff just won't last) the paper, toner, drums and even electricity consumed. will far exceed the cost of the hardware.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
This makes it to the front page of Slashdot?
You're not seeing the big picture. *Of course* this isn't about finding a personal laser printer. The submitter is *obviously* building something big... like sharks with lasers!
Brother has some of the best Linux support I've seen. And their products are well built.
http://www.brother-usa.com/Printer/Color_Laser_Printers/
The HL-3040CN is personal-sized, but packs a punch.
Network-ready
17 ppm
LED instead of laser (higher dpi, fewer moving parts)
under $300
I bought a LaserJet 2100 and a 10/100 JetDirect card for it. It lives on my network so that provides wifi printing, it has an appletalk port and a parallel port, I got a belkin USB to parallel adapter for $1 at a yard sale, and it's even got front-panel IR. Then I added a Postscript+4MB RAM DIMM to it. This gets you 300,600,1200 DPI modes plus a 600-dpi-with-variable toner blob size high speed mode. Then I had to rebuild it, which is surprisingly easy actually.
This printer was meant to print 20,000 pages a month and to be rebuildable, which is nontrivial but honestly not all that bad. The only downside is lack of duplex, and the lack of a screen. I guess that's two down sides. You manage the printer via web browser+java plugin, which is fairly cross-platform anyway. It prints PCL5, PCL6, and Postscript.
It's not particularly fast in anything but 300 dpi mode, but it has really beautiful output and refilled toner carts are trivially available. You can pick all this up under $200 these days; I didn't, but you can. And pretty much anything can print to it, which to me is a huge feature. Finally, it doesn't require an external print server, which is also critically important to me, I have far too much clutter as it is.
If you get something newer, it's probably shabbier and faster. The 2100 is cool and competent. It's also useless without a memory expansion of some kind. You could skip the postscript, PCL is perfectly usable from Unix these days, but you must upgrade the RAM. IIRC it just takes parity EDO DIMMs or something, but you'd have to look it up.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
HP has great support for Operating systems across the board for their monochrome laser printers. Most of them have drivers from DOS-Windows 7, Mac OS7-X, and Linux/Unix support.
However, I have had bad luck with one of their more recent personal printer models, the P3005. About half have had issues of some type. But their older and higher-end models are quite reliable and work well. We print on to vellum for developing film masking for etching, and we need absolute perfect print quality, and we had an 8150 doing this for 6 years with no issues, and we currently have a 9040 that is 3 years old, still running great with no signs of slowing. So if you go with higher-end models I think you would be in great shape. You'll probably see the same among most manufacturers nowadays. That is where they don't pinch their pennies.
But really, for personal use, only printing 2,000 pages a year, you will be better off buying a more 'disposable' printer for $200 or less (I just got a very nice Samsung networked printer at home for $150) and replacing it in 3-5 years, versus spending $800+ on something that will last for 15 years. I know the disposable mentality may be hard to accept for someone who kept a 16-year old printer, but please give it serious thought, I really think you will be better off in the long run. Old equipment, no matter how nice it was at the time, is still old, and will almost always be outperformed by newer, cheaper equipment.
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The older generation of HP printers are about the best one can get. The LaserJet 4/5 series were built like tanks, using steel for the frame and being very, very simple to repair.
Since HP 4s and 5s use standard PCL and PS languages they are very easily able to work across platforms. (One note however - if using PostScript with a LaserJet 4 or 5 be sure to have enough printer memory or you'll have a few issues with the printer becoming overwhelmed).
Before Carly Fiorina destroyed HP they used to be the leader in printers (or at least in the very top tier). Now they crank out plastic pieces of shit that break after a year, are difficult to repair using off-the-bench tools, and try to market a new toner cart to you when the old one is still at 20% capacity. Seriously, our LaserJet 4200 will not go into powersave mode when it is telling me to order a new cartridge with 1/5th the life remaining. It is very annoying.
While the LaserJet 4/5 series of printers are not small, personal-type lasers they are workhorses. As I stated before parts are cheap and are easy to replace should that be necessary. Toner carts are prevalent and are reasonable. I'd go with these tried-and-true printers if you are looking for another decade-plus of worry-free operation. Personally I'd go specifically with the LaserJet 5m, but if you don't like the size/heft of that perhaps a LaserJet 4p would be more to your liking, though they can be a bit more difficult to work on because of their small stature.
"This food is problematic."
PCL 6
PostScript level 3
IPv6
That should be okay for a while.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
I used to work for Canon and saw a low of low-end printers come through our shop for repair, and software support was a nightmare.
As most people already know HP = Canon, but the main difference was that the HP software was so superior to what Canon offered us it made a significant difference in usability. I.E. typical office with typical $20k multi-function scanner/copier/printer/fax. Customer has trouble with our drivers on one form, if we substituted the HP Laserjet2 driver for ours the form came out perfectly.
If you want durability in a 'home' printer, make sure the drum/toner are all the same unit. This makes them more pricey (the drum life should be good enough to last 20,000 pages, but toner will only last you 2,000 pages) almost all the moving parts are replaced everytime you drop in a new drum. Also avoid the '3rd party' toner & drum makers. They are crap.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
the one that uses the same toner cartridges as the one at work.
I've had great results with Brother's printers. Postscript, good driver support, etc. etc. Also, the ones with wireless are pretty handy too. Ethernet for cheap, and decent consumables, both offbrand and onbrand. e.g. HL-5370DW PCL, Postscript clone, duplex, straight paper path (cardstock!), wireless 11g, ethernet & usb. Paper trays available. $249 USD Also, total MFC with Fax, flatbed: MFC-8890DW $499 and down.
Anyone seen my low uid? last seen 10 years ago while panning the #@$# out of Taco's 'web based discussion system'
In the day of eBay and world reaching online marketplaces, the easy answer is to get another one just like what you had. It met all your requirements and the only thing that you state has changed is it has worn out. I'm sure there is a brand new or nearly new one out there waiting to be found. Also, it should be cheap since it is so old. Yuo may find though, that you don't get as lucky as you did the first one. Some people have cars for 15+ years also, then get a replacement that only lasts 5.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
One question I ask people when they're looking for a printer is if they really need color. They typically say, "Of course! I print photos!" but the fact is you can run a few hundred digital prints from Wal Mart for what a single color Inkjet cartridge costs. The quality is better, the fade resistance is better, and most people don't get a few hundred prints from a cartridge. And, assuming you're going there anyway and you have a typical cheap inkjet, it's easier to send them to the photodepartment via their web site and pick them up when you go shopping than to print them at home.
What you want is a LEXMARK OPTRA S, or its color equivalent. The US government buys these by the dozen. They are INDESTRUCTIBLE. I have been sent on service calls to find units in absolutely deplorable conditions just plugging away. They last decades and at the rate the government has deployed them consumables should be available for quite some time. They have an available network interface and speak Postscript. I can tell you from firsthand experience these machines can be maintained more or less indefinitely. I have met several Optra Ses that are well over 10 years old. When they wear out you install a refurb kit and carry on. They're tanks.
I can't speak about your printer specifically, but I know that there's a whole online community of folks who are still pluggin' away with their Apple Personal LaserWriter NT/NTR and similar workhorse Apple printers from back-in-the-day. Heck, I even once found a site that sold nothing but replacement parts for LaserWriters. It could be worth your time too see if such a community exists surrounding Silentwriter printers.
Why can't these guys come out to play!! This is the one piece of Vaporware I am still holding out hope for. I've written them, they've replied eventually, they keep pushing the release dates back... http://www.memjethomeandoffice.com/faq/category/company/ >Although we initially believed we would be introducing A4/Letter devices through OEM brands in 2009, the timing now has shifted to 2010 Fuck! -rich
You aren't going to get many folks on Tom's with a lot of insight into non-proprietary drivers...
HP Laserjet 4 and a box of crayons.
Glad to help.
Why hasn't anyone asked about replacing those worn-out components and keep using the old printer? With 3D printers you could probably have the parts you need printed out.
Or, the less expensive way, find one or more of the same printer model and just rebuild one from all the better components of all the printers?
I bought a HP Laserjet 8150. It works with postscript, and I print about 3,000 pages a month. I also bought the high-capacity tray that stores 2,000 pages, which is convenient. I may have to replace the rollers at some point. It will print close to 40,000 pages on one toner cartridge.
The printer cost me $100 from a recycling depot, who gave me the high-capacity tray for an extra $50. New rollers will cost about $150 (every 200,000 sheets or so). Toner costs just under $100 to refill.
The capital cost was about $150, and the ongoing cost to print is just over $0.003 per page (not including cost of paper).
It's a big beast, so probably not the best thing for at home, but it's saved me thousands of dollars every few months compared to going to a print shop for my large print jobs or the smaller, newer printers that require new cartridges every 10-20,000 pages.
I have to give credit to Canon. I've had a few of their printers now. One experience though galvanized my loyalty. I bought a fairly nice MFP from them a few years back. After a few months, the unit failed to power on (likely due to problematic power surges that I've since mitigated with strong ups/power conditioners, btw.) Anyhow, I called their support, and here's what happened:
The first person I spoke with was able to handle my call from start to finish.
The call took less than ten minutes total.
They determined quickly that the printer should be replaced.
I was never asked to 'prove' anything, everything was on trust - no receipt, warranty registration, etc.
Canon shipped me a brand new printer that arrived in two days. I used that box plus their own pre-paid, pre-printed shipping label to return the old printer.
Long story short, I've never had such a positive customer service experience with a consumer level product. It was the most hassle-free RMA I've ever experienced, consumer or otherwise. I'll continue to buy as long as the support is there. And by the way, their photo printing is quite impressive at the mid and high end.
I have a 7 year old HP 2300 Laserjet and I got plenty of toner
cartridges up front. I bought in bulk, saving money. I have given
that printer a lot of work over the years and with gentle treatment,
it is still going strong. It is solid. When not using it, I cover
it. Simple maintaining keeps it running smooth. With over 86 thousand
pages , almost all totally full of text.
I wish these printers were still being manufactured. SIGH
Very happy with it.
Ignore wireless printers (the technology changes too rapidly), but definitely get an IP printer... I suspect it will still be compatible for at least 10 years. USB will probably still be usable as well, though I can't guarantee that you will still be able to find drivers for your OS to print to it via USB.
I have come to really like the reliability of Xerox printers. I support many workgroup class printers and find that the couple of Xerox 4500's require very little attention and I have yet to need to toss a half used toner cartridge due to print quality issues. Which is important in a personal laser that isn't used constantly.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
They invented the Laser printer. I have a 4505 that is dependable. Just watch ebay for drums and toner and stock up.
... I'll have a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster with a side of Plutonium Nyborg
Anyone know any sturdy inkjets that have really cheap cartridges? I remember shopping for one once and the only cheap cartridges out were for printers they didn't make anymore.
My LaserJet 1100 lasted me nearly 10 years. I sold it because I moved from Canada to the UK, and just knew that I wouldn't have room in the shoebox-sized apartments here. The first toner cartridge lasted seven years, and printed more than 3,000 sheets (I think it's spec'ed for 2,000). There was a class action lawsuit against HP for this printer at one point to do with a paper feeding problem, but that was resolved with little effort my behalf. Drivers never an issue.
HP Colour Laser 3600n.
Single pass colour, affordable compatible cartridges, bulletproof performance, prints on anything up to 150gm card no problem through the bypass tray, entire paper path easily accessible for clearing jams, fuser, pickup rollers and pads, transfer belt all customer replaceable. It's a fairly old model, so drivers should be available for all platforms / included in the distribution, but that's the only thing I can see being wrong with it. It's a little large, but you wanted reliable. Any smaller and into the consumer lines and you get more plastic cogs, cheaper motors and clutches, and less consumer replaceable parts.
If you wanted mono, I'd tell you Laserjet 1300n every time.
I used to be an printer engineer working specifically on HP workgroup / enterprise laser printers and large format printers and plotters.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
This is a PERSONAL printer, not an office printer.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Resolution is good
Parts are cheap
Toner is cheap
Expansion components are cheap
Speed is reasonable
Longevity is great
Language (PCL) is widely supported
When my Brother laser died and proved to be essentially unserviceable (just try to cleanly replace the fuser on one of the older models), I decided I was going back to HP no matter what. I got a LaserJet 2100, a stackable 3rd tray (additional 500 sheet capacity), a JetDirect card and a wireless access point, and three spare toner cartridges for it, all on eBay for a total of about $150.
I've been using it now for about three years and have run about 50,000 sheets through it with no problems. It's never needed to be reset, I've never had driver issues, and it seems content to just sit on the wireless network and slave away. If something does go wrong, there's the added benefit that parts are readily available and it's reasonably easy to work on in comparison to those very cheap consumer printers from many brands today.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
In 2020, you will not be using a printer. You will be using a scanner. Possibly a brain scanner.
Get yourself a good business-level machine. We've got the above, using 3rd party ink wax blocks. We just replaced an 8200n with an 8560 after 5 years and 120,000 pages. Our older 8560 is sitting at 80,000 pages and just had a stripped nylon gear replaced. Good machine, it does color, and is fast if you choose the right mode. Just don't laminate anything that comes out of it, unless you can do cold lamination.
You do not have good enough insurance for eye exams. THis is for a PERSONAL printer, not office.
In addition, I have developed medical systems and worked in the medical world. Paper is NOT required. In fact, the opposite is true. The feds are now paying medical providers to drop all paper and be computerized.
Obviously, you do not work in the medical arena.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I did when my Laserwriter 16/600 gave up the ghost after 200k pages. You can get a refurbished one for less than a new one, and it'll last. Only downside is that it's probably overkill.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
No matter what sort of printer you buy, toner cost will quickly dwarf the cost of the printer. Don't worry about getting one that will last decades, focus on having cheap toner. This will pay off enough in the next few years to let you afford to buy a new printer every 3 years and still save money.
It's got something like 900,000 pages on the clock. It works with Linux, except for the duplexer. Toner is $40 for a aftermarket cartridge, and the last one I bought lasted three years. My printing habits have changed drastically though, and it's so big and uses so much power that I am probably going to sell it soon. but i feel I've kept about a thousand inkjet cartridges and ten or fifteen printers out of a landfill.
12:50 - press return.
We had a Xerox Phaser 6250DN up until a couple of years ago. The paper handling was terrible - frequent jams, even on plain paper. Don't even get me started about trying to print on cardstock (which it theoretically supported). The model we had was a refurb, and a firmware update they released a couple of years after we bought it did help with the paper handling somewhat, but I'd hesitate to recommend that line to anyone.
We did also have a Xerox/Tektronix Phaser 850DN (solid ink) that was a bona fide workhorse, though it took forever to warm up and wasted a lot of ink. Trying to use off-brand ink was the death of it.
We have a Ricoh AfÃcio SP C811DN now - definitely not a SOHO printer (it supports up to 12x18, or even 12x49 banners), but it's much more reliable. We have some print quality issues with it, but the paper handling and speed are very good.
I was hoping to get a printer with similar requirements. I end up to buy Samsung CLP-350N, a color postscript laser having ethernet and USB and good Linux support both by free and Samsung provided drivers.
I was happy and I recommended it also to others, UNTIL the first black cartridge was finished. The first one does not contain any DRM chip so I did not know the printer has DRM at all. The printer keeps an internal counter how many pages are printed with the first cartridge and refuses to print anything after a certain limit unless the new cartridge contains a DRM chip. The chip coming with the unofficial cartridge claiming compatibility with CLP-350N did not work in via ethernet. Via USB it might have worked according to instructions given by cartridge seller but network functionality was required. So now I'am quite disappointed with this model.
I would go for HP now. Its popular so it is quite certain that toners are available after 10 years - either from the HP itself or from unofficial sources.
LaserWriter II.
Pick one OS and stick with it. Simplify, man!
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
The printers marketed for the home are cheap pieces of crap, pretty much regardless of manufacturer. The problem with office-class printers is that they're much more expensive.
My solution is to buy a used office-class "workgroup" printer. Find one that's extremely common so you won't have to worry about toner availability.
My current laser printer is a mid-90's era HP LaserJet 4 Plus. The thing is a tank. I got it five years ago for $10 (+ $20 shipping) and I've put over 20,000 pages through it. 8000-page toner cartridges are $25 on eBay even today. My plan is to keep it for a few more years and then start looking for an office printer made around 2000 and put out to pasture because the case is yellowed with age.
The only real downside to these printers is that they tend to be a little power-hungry, especially when just sitting. Mine costs $2 per month in electricity to leave running 24x7. So, I turn it off when it's not being used, which is most of the time.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
That's a joke right?
It's 2009, man. It's time to consider discarding the printer and not replacing it. I haven't had a printer for 4 years. If you really need a hard copy, try Staples.. 10 cents per sheet.
If it only holds 250 pages or less, that is a sign it isn't meant to be used much.
Yes, it will cost you more, but it will last.
semantics are everything!
Last spring I bought a brother DCP Series DCP-9040CN MFC color laser printer/scanner/copier/fax that I couldn't be happier with. While this is really more of a small business machine than a personal printer, it sells for less than $400 (on sale at New Egg right now). The important thing to remember about color laser printers are replacement cartridges - Brother's sell for about half of what HP's sell for, and print more pages per cartridge. (If I recall correctly, the comparable HP printer in the same price range had cartridges running at $130 - and you need 4 of them). According to my brother-in-law (a district manager for Officemax), Brother consistently has the lowest price per page of any other manufacturer. The only drawback to this machine is that it is huge - 75 pounds.
We had one of these and it needed rebooting for almost every print (after about 2 years reliable service).
then I bricked it trying to upgrade the firmware (I knew that was a risk).
The relevant HP forum thread is long and full of irate customers.
I used to work as a technical writer and my company printed entire books on a daily basis on a HP LaserJet 5Si/MX - that printer was built like a tank and when I left the company, that printer had printed more than 500,000 pages and was still working fine.
At my current job we have two LaserJet 8100 printers (which are a newer version of the LaserJet 5Si) and both have over 300,000 pages on them and are still going strong. These workgroup size printers are designed to work in an environment with multiple OSes and software support is normally very good.
If you are looking for longevity, any of the workgroup size printers normally last WAY more than 30,000 pages. The down side is that they are loud, large, expensive and use expensive consumable parts (toner and fuser).
For a home user that has low volume printing requirements I suggest you get a SOHO printer.
They are smaller, use less expensive consumables, require less initial investment and consume less energy. I have had good experience with the Samsung (I own a CLP-300).
We've got a Brother HL-4070CDW at the office, and I have a Brother HL-2170W at home. Both are wonderful machines. Consumables are inexpensive and are carried by the local stores. Both machines work well with Windows and Linux machines (Ubuntu 10 and Fedora 11 have been used on both.) From full idle, the 2170 is ready to print in under 10 seconds. I would recommend both machines without hesitation.
I won't even look at an HP printer any more. They used to be fabulously reliable, but no longer.
Now granted, most of my experience is with their larger machines, but my experience with their SOHO inkjet machines has sucked too. The last of those went in the dumpster last year, when it told me the cartridge we'd had on the shelf for a year had expired and it refused to print with it.
Last year I took a Torx screwdriver and a hammer and dismantled and threw out my office's HP 9500hdn and the old HP 8550DN.
Both of these printers were used lightly during most of the year, to print the occasional office print job (5 person office), and then for two months of each year they'd be run about 6 hours a day continuously, to produce duplexed and stapled documents for a conference.
The 8550 you could charitably say had worn out - over firve years we'd gotten over 150,000 prints out of it, but the monthly duty cycle rating was supposed to be up around 100,000 pages anyway, so that's not much. At the end it jammed more often than it printed, but long before the mechanical parts started to fail, the formatter board had decided that it wouldn't boot with the internal IDE hard drive attached (or any other IDE drive attached), and this was the second formatter board - the first one died years ago. This meant that it could no longer produce more than one copy of any multi-page document. This, coupled with the constant jams and the 4 page per minute print speed spelled the end of this machine.
The 9500... well, that was a huge disappointment. We got about two years out of it. It was a lot faster than the 8550, but after about 18 months it started to jam. A lot. We spent close to $2000 on having HP's on-site support people take guesses at the problem, and they honestly had no idea why it was jamming. We'd tried everything including putting it in a special room with controlled temperature and humidity, and even using a power conditioner and a variac to play with the line voltage - at this point I would have brought in a Voodoo priest if I could have found one. I don't think we even broke the 150,000 page mark on this piece of junk.
Both printers were replaced with a Ricoh Aficio SP C811DN-DL. Talk about a night and day difference. We're on our second year with the Ricoh and it has jammed once, when someone put a folded piece of paper in the supply drawer. It is a thing of beauty. We also have one inkjet machine, a Ricoh GX5050N - totally trouble free, prints two-sided and has huge ink cartridges.
We also had an HP 3500N. It actually costs more to buy a full set of all four toner cartridges than it does to buy a Brother all-in-one color laser fax/scanner. So that's what we did. We have two of the Brother machines, and they only complain when they need toner or a drum.
In short, my advice is buy a Brother or a Ricoh, but whatever you buy, research it - find reviews from people who own the printer model you're looking at.
Putting moderation advice in your
At my university, we have over 40 HP LaserJet printers. About half of them are networked 1000 models (1020, 1015, 1050, 1300 IIRC). I have them all configured as Postscript printers at my Samba server, so I can freely just interchange their IPs in case I have to shuffle them around. And yes, sometimes they are slow (I'll try setting them as PCL printers, that's a good tip and we are a mostly uniform HP-shop anyway), but they all understand proper Postscript.
The joke translates: find one with readily available cartridges. :) If you have a little more volume, the issue becomes cost of consumables. Toner and drum cartridges are expensive, and often proprietary. Next printer, go to visit your local Cartridge World, or similar cartridge recycling vendor, and ask them: "What cartridges are cheapest, and most readily available, with no proprietary crap making them unrefillable?" Then, go buy the printer that uses them.
Computers obey me.
if your interest is limited to a B&W printer for desktop use, from our experience* I would recommend Samsung laser printers as a good choice. Indeed despite my printer having been unused for a period, my daughter is now using it for her printing off a Mac without problems. Works well using Linux, Windows and the Mac, but some configuration tools may not be fully available under Linux and perhaps the Mac.
Now this portion is a bit more problematical when I researched buying a color printer. I ended up with a networked, laser printer that seemed to be an excellent choice though beyond the then current needs**. However, I have had to shut it down due to misuse of one user that has been thoughtless and wasteful (Not my daughter). While I think the research is necessary, you have to set priorities on the individual importance of desired features. Here was some of my experience when I was pushed to make a quick purchase: http://bst-softwaredevs.com/howto/articles/Hardware-buy-laser-print.html
Best of luck with your search.
* models 1210 (mine) and a 1710 or later (his)
** the desktop model would have sufficed at a lower cost
Somehow "Sharks with frikken laserprinters in their heads" just doesn't seem as cool
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
This makes it to the front page of Slashdot?
You're not seeing the big picture. *Of course* this isn't about finding a personal laser printer. The submitter is *obviously* building something big... like sharks with laser printers!
FTFY. ;)
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
Printed data is dead data. Save a tree, go paperless, and welcome to the modern era.
I'll give you a prime example. About 2-3 years ago, I decided it was time to buy a good, solid color laser printer for use with my side business. (I wanted to print my own business cards and advertising 3-fold fliers, among other things.) I finally chose an HP Color LaserJet 2550N since it got good reviews for print quality, offered OS X as well as Windows support, had built-in ethernet, and so on.
Well, it turns out it has several big problems most of the early reviewers neglected to mention. For starters, it has a really annoying habit of rotating the carousel the toner cartridges drop into, every 4 hours or so. There's *nothing* about this in the owner's manual, but people complaining to HP tech. support were supposedly told it's "normal behavior" and done "to ensure the toner doesn't clump up/settle in the cartridges over time". All fine and good, except the loud racket it makes, with a big "Cha-chunka, ka-chunka, ka-chunka, ka-CHUNK" drives you crazy when it wakes you up in the middle of the night, and you have to wonder how much extra wear and tear it makes on the internals.
But wait, there's more! The second "surprise" HP had in store for owners of this printer is that each time it cycles the toners around like that, it counts it as 1 print cycle. The toner cartridges and the developer drum all have computer chips in them that track page count, and when it reaches HP's predefined "limit", the toner or developer reports it's "empty" to the printer, and stops working - no matter how much longer it could *really* go! So theoretically, if you leave this printer powered on, so it's available to print to on your LAN, but never even print anything - it will eventually tell you all the supplies are used up and need replacements!
After I owned this printer for the first year or so, I noticed it was quickly replaced with a newer model that uses totally different supplies, too. This is typical for HP's products these days - and becomes a real problem when you run out of a toner and want to grab a replacement locally, so you don't suffer a lot of downtime. At least with cheap inkjet printers, you can usually find what you need, even for popular older models, if you check several office supply places. But they don't like stocking > $120 each color toners for a printer that few people purchased before it was discontinued. So basically, I can't get anything locally for my 2550N!
It's a huge waste - but honestly, when my toners run out, my smartest move (money-wise) is to sell the printer for "parts" on eBay for $25 or whatever, and buy a new color laser that comes with the supplies. The supplies are often as costly to swap as it is to buy the whole printer with them!
Really? If 60*500 != 30000, then what does it equal (assuming base 10)?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
30,000 is nothing. Maybe, maybe you need to replace the drum. Of course if it's not made anymore...
Any laser printer should last just shy of forever. These are simple, simple machines. You're not printing enough to really worry about incremental costs. Just buy a cheap, popular laser.
The joke translates: find one with readily available cartridges.
No it does not. It translates: "Find one with FREE cartridges."
It is a common mistake.
"FREE!!!" is the base of many words in Freeloaderian language, so the actual meaning often gets mangled when translated to English.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
the funny thing about brother is they don't really care how much toner is in the cratridge, as they put the waste toner back into the cartridge.. so they measure usage by how many half turns of the drum on the cartridge, once you get 900 pages thru it's time to replace (or move the cog to fake replacment), and it will not print without all the colors being full... it also defaults to haveing all 4 colors engaged, unles you select mono in the driver
so if your smart stay away from brother printers, even if newegg is giving the printers away for the price of a new set of toner cartridges and giving you free shippin on 64 lbs of the electronics and almuninum that make up the part that prints
Actually, we can recommend something: a laser printer. The manufacturer probably doesn't matter as much as the fact that you go laser, which seem to have far longer lifespans than inkjet printers. Other commenters below recommend HPs, but I doubt it really matters; I have a Brother HL 2040 and have for about four years, and it's given me no problems.
Have you EVER tried to get support from Brother?
I'd wager not.
They will do ANYTHING to avoid servicing your printer.
I will never deal with those retards again.
I found a deal last week on the Brother HL-4040CDN (built-in Ethernet, color, duplexer, PCL 6, 500 sheet tray option, etc.) at OfficeMax, $279. For some reason, OfficeMax was showing it as discontinued last Wednesday, so the manager at the store sold me his display unit for an extra $28 off. Looks like they've got it back in stock now, for $399. IMHO, that's still a bargain, just out of the price range I could justify.
Pros:
* Built like a tank. Everything is built well (no little bits of plastic designed to break off).
* All the main consumables (drums, paper feed, etc.) are field-replacable.
* Toner cartridges are easy to refill.
* Standard PCL6.
Cons:
* As heavy as a tank. Plan on two-person carries.
* 64M of memory isn't a lot for a color printer. Scrounge out or buy a PC-133 SO-DIMM (laptop) and put in it first thing. I had a G4-era 512M SO-DIMM that it loves.
* 250-sheet tray is wimpy for a printer in this price range. Go on, take the extra inch, and make us a 500-sheet tray.
* According to the intertubes, printing Envelopes is an exercise in frustration. If you print lots of envelopes, go get something else.
* PCL 6 only. That's annoying, Postscript 3 should be an option there. (I haven't checked to see if it's there and hidden or not.)
Brother has end-of-lifed the 4040CN (non-duplexer), so if you don't need the duplexer, you might find a bargain.
I've not used it a lot yet (my big printing starts tonight or tomorrow, probably), but it really looks like a nice printer that's aimed for a 100k lifetime at least.
One strange thing: There is a Brother 4050CDN that fit most of the 4040CDN feature set, but appears to be UK only. The manual shipping with the 4040CDN says there is a 4040CN, a 4050CDN, and a 4070CDW (wireless). It claims the 4050CDN has Postscript and can take the 500 sheet add-on tray, and had a parallel interface. Brother is correcting some of their web site stuff showing the 4040CDN and 4070CDW, but the manuals are a strange change for Brother. They are usually much better at details than that. (It also lends credence to my first thought: they turned on duplexing on the 4040CN using software changes only.)
...an inkjet I've fallen in love with; the HP OfficeJet 8500.
If you can find a working LJ4, get it. Best thing HP made, other than the venerable LJ II. I sold my last one 2-3 years ago. Stilled worked and toner carts were still available. The 5 series weren't bad, either.
I recently went back and forth on laser versus inkjet and ended up coming home with the OfficeJet 8500. I needed color capability, so price was an issue. Got the wireless-capable model for $199, on sale.
It's an all-in-one and while speed and print quality were my primary drivers, I did have to send a 40 page fax this week and have used the copier feature more than I thought I would.
This is a big printer..bigger than some lasers...but the print quality and features are excellent.
I am my own gestalt.
The Lexmark printers from the IBM days are still
rocking. Quite fitting for ROCKtober 2009.
I have one in the garage, old dot matrix wonder that
is as good today, as it was back in the day. Ribbons
for them are hard to find of decent quality.
The world, in case you haven't heard, is going to end in 2012 so anything you buy should be good to go.
I picked up an HP CM2320fxi a few months ago. I use it for network scanning, faxing and printing for Windows and Linux systems, and it also claims to work with OS X. It includes PCL and Postscript with duplex and full colour output. It has network and USB and digital media inputs. It handles letter, legal and envelopes. Basically it's an all-singing, all-dancing solution for SOHO.
Drop me a line in 10 years and I'll let you know how reliable it is.
I had a NEC SilentWriter 95 and it was not junk. It rendered postscript perfectly, and it was built like a tank. The only problem I had with it was the need to purchase toner cartridges by mail order. This was a very long time ago, and before the "world wide web" was in the mainstream vocabulary, and 6 pages per minute was fast.
The lack of toner cartridges really irritated me at the time, because I purchased it from a fairly new office supply chain called "Office Depot" and they stopped selling the toner cartridges for that model to make room for all the various sizes of Brother and HP supplies that was generating them revenue.
I printed way more than 30,000 pages with that printer. I used it in an office, and that printer alone would use 2 cases a month. As far as I know, my cousin still has that printer and it still works today... It's been a long time, but I remember that the toner cartridges were expensive but yielded an insane number of printed pages. I'm thinking we averaged a cartridge per case and a couple of reams of paper (let's say 6000 pages), which was great since back then the cartridge was around $250 which is around $0.04 per page (Laser printing was new tech).
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
I got a Xerox Phaser 6180N and love it. It prints pretty good color, and costs per page pay off in the long run compared to cheaper laser printers.
Make sure you get official postscript (Adobe licenced) support, as some printers emulate it using things like GDL, often resulting in rasterized text. I've returned a minolta printer because of this. I believe some lower end Brother printers also use some form of postript-substitute.
I bought an HP 1320 a few years back. It's got auto duplex, a duty cycle of 10,000 pages, works in Windows XP, Linux, and Mac OS X. Cheap, too. Only $300 when I got it. Not sure what the current version of the 1320 is.
OS X stands for OS 10, so 'OS X 11' is like saying 'OS 10 11'
After getting fed up with an ailing Lexmark and it's freaking ridiculously priced ink cartridges, I started looking around for a replacement. I pick up a Brother HL2170W for $60 on sale at some box store. That's right $60.00. The same cost as the two ink packs for the Crapmark I had been dealing with. It has it's own WAP built in and can auto detect and configure for most modern wireless routers (my Linksys WRT54GL's one-touch config picked up the printer with out me having to do a thing), or you can connect directly using ethernet (maybe even USB, I can't recall)
Anyway, for $60, this thing has performed admirably. I'm not printing off nightly novels, but it fulfills my educational and gaming related printing needs with ease. Time to first print is extremely fast. The only thing that I've heard people complain about is that in order for it to heat the corona wire so quickly, it has to pull 6-8 amps for a few seconds at the start of print jobs. So you'll probably want to put it on a different circuit than your PC.
And if it breaks, it's only $60...
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I got a couple of Brother HL-1450s a few years back. Totally shit quality. The print output and speed is fine when they work. But they're excessively prone to jamming. The front cover and tray are cheaply put together, and start falling apart over time. The Brothers are nothing close to the quality of older HP equipment. Haven't tried the newest HP stuff. But unless Brother has totally revamped their approach to quality, I'd never buy one again.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
You either have a very big hand or very small printers.
My experience with Brother is that they have little to no Linux support on any models. I tried in vain for years to get any Brother printer to print anything from Linux, and have only recently succeeded in printing from one on Jaunty using an outdated postscript driver for one of their older models. It wasn't easy, and the system was printing over the network via a windows machine anyway, so I can't say if it would have worked with a direct connection.
To top it off, they eat ink like a Tank eats petrol. Colour Brother printers that run out of yellow ink will refuse to print any document, whatsoever, until they are topped up. And usually they can handle only about ~200 pages before requiring a refill on one or more of their four ink wells. It costs about $30 to get a refill, and the system is locked down pretty tight against third party suppliers.
Brother sells plastic pastel printers on an one time basis to small businesses and home users who have not yet been burned by their shoddy products. Avoid.
May the Maths Be with you!
I'm having a terrible experience with my HP Printer. I purchased an HP 1000 about 7 years ago. The thing is tank but it is NOT SUPPORTED in Windows 64Bit Operating Systems. (Please don't tell me the answer is to change over to linux) HP's answer is upgrade my printer, but the one I have is perfectly fine. I've been very happy with its quality, but I'm not sure if I'd recommend it for the "Long Haul" especially if you're using any windows products.
Seconded. Loved my Okidata 600e, lasted almost 15 years. And to top it off, the toner was something on the order of $20 a cartridge, for about 5000 pages. Cheap, reliable, compact (for the time), fast (for the time), supported PS, PCL5...only needed ethernet and it would have be perfect.
Personally, I'm still using a LJ 6 at home. Work, I support 500 users. The 1XXX series has been... well. The cheap end has been poorly forever, and is all winprinters. The higher end, 13xx or so has wear issues. The 1505 is pretty decent. The 4000 series is brickproof. I'd say bulletproof but I _have_ seen people throw bricks at one and it survived. (It's a drug treatment program. Things get exciting sometimes) But it's _not_ personal-sized, it's freaking huge.
But... I'd go Brother. They're better quality these days and actually make decent stuff.
And one hundred percent go laser. Otherwise the ink will kill you. Color laser is still a cost savings over inkjet, these days.
My HP 2605dn got plugged into Mains as week ago. Since it travelled to the UK with me it did not like the 220V. It went band and the magic blue smoke escaped.
Well what do folks think the chances are that the damage is confined to to power supply?
What is a good replacement? What do people think of the CP3520 from HP?
And if you have a HP 2605, 2600, or 1600 and need an unopened set of toner(s) or wish to part with it, well seem to need a replacement, or a new power supply board.
? 10k pages? you're joking- it better see 2-5k pages on a toner cart, and if it only last for 2 carts yer nuts. - Most laser printers ive serviced over the years (HP engined Apple Laser printers) had well into the 3-400k pages before they gave up the ghost. My current printer is an old Apple laser 16/600 office laser printer (its a rebranded Hp 4xxx engine) - its at 394k pages currently - so im starting to look for a new one myself. Other than needing to dig up an old mac running OS9 to set up the TCP/IP printing (since snow leopard killed appletalk) its been running strong for 15 YEARS. Currently im not liking any of the printer offerings on the market , i'lll probably buy an older HP 4050 when my Laserwriter dies and transplant the engine. Hp still makes great hardware, and if you dont mind investing in their PostScript networked offerings you're OK, but avoid ANYTHING that uses their printing Software. Lexmark makes lots of Very compatible laser printers, but their hardware sucks. The Oki LED printers have made a big splash with me recently- but with only seeing them commonly for the last 5 years or so .. who knows about longevity.
Dont get me started on the comedy of inkjet printers these days.
Kyocera 6950DN network printer with 64mb ram, upgradable as such that you can stick a regular 512mb stick of ram in it also, does a3 size paper too.
Excellent print quality, toner is cheap but you get what you pay for, looking $3k plus for one, I have one sitting here :)
Bonus points for pointing out the assumption of base 10!
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
How come no one mentions Xerox ? Aren't they supposed to be the best ?
I realize things have changed, but I still stick by HP laser printers. Try to get a midrange one with a network connection and PostScript Level3, and you should hopefully be set.
And unless you really need it, try to avoid colour. Worrying about one black toner is a lot less hassle (and expensive) than four (CMYK).
I bought an HL-1240 in 2001 for $300 ($100 less than HP's cheapest laser at the time). The printer (and the stock toner cartridge) have lasted me through 2009 without any issues (I print occasionally, and it's nice to never have toner dry-out). Over the years, Brother supplied XP and Vista drivers (despite the fact that none of these OSes were out when I bought the thing), and good CUPS support meant it worked well on OS X and Linux.
I only had to buy a replacement recently because the toner cart got damaged, and I had to choose between a new cart ($50 or more) or a new printer ($120). I decided to see how much the technology had improved in 8 years, so I bought the Brother HL-2170W. On XP and OS X, the wireless configuration was a breeze, and it has worked without a hitch. The Linux support for the wireless is more involved - there is a CUPS driver, but you'll have to configure the wireless manually.
The new printer is even faster than my old one, and because it's wireless, I can stick it in whatever damn room I please. And the networking already supports IPv6, so I can depend on this network printer being future-proof.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
last year my wife asked if we could get a printer that was a little smaller more quite than the either of the HP beasts, and was closer to her home office, so i ended up getting an epson/brother HL2170W. great networking connnectivity capabilities(i like the fact that it's wifi AND wired) the overall printer is cheap, and the consumables are fairly inexpensiïve. the network setup was a little stupid, and it didn't recognize one of my wifi routers(buffalo running ddwrt) but it did connect via linksys wrt54G(running ddwrt, WTF?). other than that, it's been running smoothly with very little intervention other than loading paper.
my criteria for choosing a new printer was multiple network protocols for configuration(http, telnet, ssh, zeroconf), not tied to proprietary net interface(EpsoNet or some such bullshit), allow multiple ingree(lpr, ipp, cups, direct attached, etc). they don't make printers like the old school HP's anymore unless you get into the larger workgroup-and-enterprise level printers.
i still like my old printers, and so long as they make parts, i'll keep using them. go to a resell shop, ask around at office furniture resellers, ebay, craigslist, etc, and get one of the old reliables, or go with one of the newer ultra-cheap-sub$100 printers(remember when laser printers cost $6000+?) that have reasonably priced consumables. B/w printer still a better cost advantage over color, color laser will produce fewer prints per cartridge and have higher rate of mechanical failure...
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
Brother has some of the best Linux support I've seen. And their products are well built.
http://www.brother-usa.com/Printer/Color_Laser_Printers/
The HL-3040CN is personal-sized, but packs a punch.
Network-ready
17 ppm
LED instead of laser (higher dpi, fewer moving parts)
under $300
What's the difference between LED and laser?
I'm generally content with the Lexmark T520DN that we have, except that colour isn't as important as we thought it would be, so that feature is not used a lot.
What's really handy is the duplexing (less paper) and the networking (no print server needed). It support PS3, so drivers are easy as well.
wasn't all that great. It lasted 16 years because you only ran 30,000 pages off it over the lifetime of the printer. If you had a HP Laserjet 4 or 5 series printer from 15+ years ago you could expect 300k pages before the first major refurb.
Since you don't seem to print that much you probably don't need a really expensive workgroup or higher grade printer. Find one that supports the features you want at a reasonable cost per page.. that means paying attention to page yield of the toner cartridge. The other thing to watch out for with non HP printers is what components are included in the toner cartridge vs split out as separate pieces i.e. print drum, certain rollers, developers, etc. Very high volume machines benefit from having separate parts but lower volume machines typically work better and retain higher quality printing with integrated cartridges that replace everything but the fuser with each cartridge change.
Also, the higher volume the machine and the lower per page cost you're realizing, the less important the upfront cost of the machine becomes.
So, look at page yield, look at features, look for an integrated cartridge, lastly, look at the retail cost. HP has typically been great for this but over the years they have cut the feature set of their printers enabling them to talk to fewer platforms outside windows/mac.
I've had nothing but bad luck with HP multi-functions. The last one I tried couldn't send a fax, but could receive a fax. So I've gone to Canons. Cheaper to buy, ink is cheaper, and they work great.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
No Linux support on any models? Unlike you I don't claim to have experience with all Brother models.
However I do have a network Brother printer (MFC 7820N) which I have been using for a long time exclusively under Linux. It worked out of the box in Debian (not your fancy latest Ubuntu). Brother does provide a custom driver which is better. When I was downloading it I happened to notice that there were Linux drivers for many other models. Perhaps you simply didn't see them. Ah, the scanner also works under Linux.
Don't get me wrong though - it is not perfect. The same printer is faster and more usable under Windows. But is also perfectly usable and reliable under Linux with no effort and I would buy it again if it broke.
If you want a printer that will stand the test of time, better get one of them 'dot matrix printers'
Now you kids get off my lawn!
I've got an old Apple LaserWriter Select 360 that I bought new in 1994 and still use. I had to replace one of the boards in it a couple years ago, but I salvaged the part from another dead one I had access to and did the surgery myself. Sadly, it is LocalTalk and parallel only, no Ethernet. I've been using it with an Ethertalk adapter for the longest time, but now Mac OS X 10.5 and newer no longer supports Ethertalk. I've tried a couple parallel print servers, but the quality of jobs printed through them does not compare to what is output natively.
I love that printer so much I'm considering keeping an old Mac around running Tiger just to serve it up to my other machines running newer OSes, but it would be nice to upgrade to a nice color laser with a faster engine and modern protocols. I'm only hesitant because, like you, I know it will be hard to find something manufactured today that will last me another 15 years.
~Philly
Some of the most rock solid dependable office grade printers are the HP LaserJet 4050 and 4100. These have small improvements over the 4000 and they lack the "smart chip" of the 4200 and 4300 toner cartridges that inhibit remanufacturing. Drivers are a non-issue with the Postscript models and you can connect via serial, parallel port, or ethernet. These are some of the last printers designed before Fiorina took over and ran the ship into the ground. You can find them and their accessories for a song on eBay these days.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
First, it's sturdily built and hails from an era when every fraction of penny didn't have to be cost-cut out of manufacturing
Bad news: the was no such time. You're just suffering from survivorship bias. Get over it. The good old days weren't.
I've been really happy with the Okidata b410/420/430 series printers, they're rated for 50K/50K/80K PER Month duty cycle and they're still within the range of a typical well built laser printer - As luck has it I priced one out today on CDW and the b430dn has an instant coupon so the whole unit is under $200 (the b410 is the base model and lists at $250 regularly) Supplies aren't crazy expensive either, about $70/ 3,500pg toner and drums last forever but are a little pricey at about $150. I have absolutely no affiliation with Okidata or CDW ,just a very happy repeat customer.
My Sig Sucks
If the printing speed is not an issue and 4-6ppm is OK, I'd suggest to buy a printer that has remanufactured toner rated at 5,000 pages for about $30 on ebay. Such printer should be under $100, and the toners will be cheap.
I have been doing this since 2000 for a lot of printing needs. My personal favorites were HP LaserJet 6P (you have to make sure it has more than 2Mb memory) and HP LaserJet 5 (medium size). Both are now under $100. Both handle hundreds of thousands of pages per year just fine.
But I seem to recall that the experience on *nix is actually pretty good these days. Set up one machine with Foomatic... Then configure it such that all the other machines can send postscript to the first one. From the client side perspective you end up with something pretty OS independent that way.
30,000 pages sounds like a lot, but you're barely pushing five pages a day on average.
Most pro-sumer printers will handle that easily. HPs prosumer inkjets are rated at 15,000 pages a MONTH (though the recommended level is less than 1,250)
Considering you're averaging six pages a day, you might actually be better off getting a cheap inkjet that you replace continually over buying a long haul workhorse. Pretty much any printer from any company will suit you, as long as the OS of your choice is supported.
But let me reiterate - six pages a day is a breeze on anything you can buy. If that's all you're printing, you don't need a printer for the long haul.
What you save on price. Government Auction
The Navy Motto "IF it ain't broke Fix It" "A day is wasted if you don't learn something new"
I bought a LaserJet 6MP, added RAM and the postscript SIM, total cost incl shipping was about $100. I have yet to exhaust the toner that it came with, and it works with everything I have (OSX, Linux, XP, Vista).
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The original poster didn't explicitly mention an Ethernet connection which I think you really want on any long-term purchase, and I find duplex printing very very useful - enough so that I keep lusting after new printers even though our Apple LW 1600/600 probably will never completely die.
Great personal or small business laser. Network, fast, has postscript so it works with pretty well every OS that one could imagine.
I refuse to buy any more HP products after the fiasco that was a multi-function deskjet. Bugged me once every couple of months to install yet another !@#$! colour cartridge, even if I only wanted to print black and white. HP used to be a respectable company, ever since Carly Fiori, it has been in a tailspin.
Brother is the way to go, brother (or sister, as the case may be).
Salut,
Jacques
I too just recently retired an NEC Silentwriter '95 printer. Man, I loved that thing. I've been a laser printer adherent for years, and it was an unstoppable beast of a printer. What a tank! Every time I thought I was out of toner and this was it, one would pop up on craigslist with a couple of cartridges thrown in. Post-XP support in Windows was sketchy, but you could get the XP driver to work in Vista / Win7 if you were willing to turn off driver signing to import the driver. I finally gave it away because I got a better printer.
A friend wound up giving me a free Canon Pixma iP5000 5-cartridge (CMYK+K) inkjet that she was going to donate to Goodwill. After about 2 hours of cleaning / dusting and a box of new cartridges, I gave it a test run. 3 weeks, a full box of photo paper, 200 sheets of black text on plain paper, and still no replacement cartridges later , I listed the NEC on craigslist.
Inkjets have greatly matured in the 14 years since the SilentWriter '95. The inkjet is silent, it works with my Time Capsule base station, it wakes on USB but stays powered off the rest of the time, and it's fast. In the time it takes me to walk from my computer to the printer after I click print, most single-sheet print jobs have already completed. The Canon has a duplexer on it, and the print quality with photographs on good glossy paper is good enough for framing.
Add in that the printer is $100 and cartridges are $50 for a 4-pack of new Canon-branded carts, and there's just no reason not to stick with it. TCO is not the near-zero of the Silentwriter, but it's pretty low, and it's not the complete horrorshow scam that I've been led to believe that inkjet ownership entailed.
I love my little Canon. It's cheap enough to be disposable, full-featured enough to be a personal workhorse, quiet, uses so much less energy my electric bill dropped, quick, and useful. Support is ubiquitous (tested personally on XP-Vista-Win7, Leopard/Snow Leopard, Ubuntu, even the freakin' PS3). TCO is low. I can't recommend it enough.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
Get one you can still get a maintenance kit ( buy the kit) for and then buy as many toner cartridges as you can afford since the shelf life is damn near forever. I have an HP 5000 that is still chugging away and prints from EVERYTHING, Linux, Mac, Windoze and BEos to boot!
The best part is almost ALL of them will print with an HP Laseret III driver! You might be missing some of the fancy stuff, but it WILL work.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Can I get this Windows 9 you speak of? I'd love to test if my HP Laserjet 4M will work with it.
If you're going to label HP based on your experiences with their color, laser printers, then that is a little broad. Their B&W laser printers are a thing to behold.
Color will always run out infinitely more quickly and cost you a fortune more.
Second, piles of vendors chip their toner cartridges and lock them after one "usage" - that is by no means HP specific.
Third, HP may obsolete consumer-level printers pretty frequently, but they have a common stock of different toner cartridges that work in many of their machines.
Lastly, Amazon buyers give that specific printer a pretty crappy rating.
I'm not on HP's payroll, but I have administered piles of HP laser printers in small business that routinely pushed out 400-700 pages per day per printer and are still going strong after a decade. They have been serviced a few times, but they have withstood the test of time and simply keep on going.
Printers have become a cheap commodity item. They don't make industrial strength devices anymore. I have an old Laserjet IIp in my garage that still prints great, but it is slow as molasses. I bought a simple Laserjet 1000 a few years ago and it works just fine. I don't expect it to last forever, but for what I paid for it, it's easy enough to replace.
This is why you get a printer that supports PostScript. If you don't you will end up in that situation over and over.
Does any know of any list of more recent printer models that do or don't print tracking dots on the pages? Looks like the EFF's list at http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/list.php/ hasn't been updated in a while.
I have had 3 different panasonic laser printers and have all worked well. If you find the right ones, you don't have to buy their specific toner cartridges, just bulk toner. I have a KX-MB781 which I picked up at frys for $99 bucks (you can still see it from time to time). I print about 50,000 pages a year on it, and no problems. Have not had to replace the drum or anything. Toner is bulk replace, and cheap. Only issue is the drivers, has to be windows at this point - could not get it to work with ubuntu. It did not matter, I just printer PDFs and printed on a windows machine if I had to print from my Linux OS box.
I feel like I have a good case-study to answer this question. I did policy debate for the past three years, which has meant hulling a printer around the state/country. When it wasn't being hulled to tournaments, it would go back a forth from school in friend's cars quite often. The files we regularly printed off on it were generally 50 - 100 pages long, sometimes longer, and sometimes (saturday morning updates, etc.) much smaller. Every now and again I would print off a book (300-500 pages) on it.
I'm using it at college now and I still haven't had a problem with it.
It works perfectly on osx and windows. I run linux, and installing the cups drivers is a bit of a pain but after the first time (during which I documented my own procedure) it hasn't taken more than 10 minutes.
The smartest thing to do is not to buy color printers from HP. I don't just mean laser printers either; HP practically pioneered the practice of crippling toner carts with a magical chip, although they never got as serious about it as some (like, say, Lexmark.) But HP is legendary for the price of their refills. Even on the 5550n, a $3000 workgroup color laser with four bigass toner carts, the carts are a full third of the price.
I think the best thing to do is to buy a printer that takes wax sticks or something. It will probably suck, and crap itself just like HP color laser printers and it might not even save you any money, but at least you don't have to fuck around with any gigantic toner carts. I don't know how cheap you can get something like the Phaser 8860 these days (I know nothing about it, just found it on a search) but I hope they're coming down. We had a Tektronix Phaser 740 or 750 or something (a predecessor to this printer) and it produced truly beautiful output in quite good time. You occasonally fed it a wax stick. I wasn't there to see it fail :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The new machines all suck. Lexmark sucks the most. The quality of the hardware has had the lifespan reduced significantly. That said, I'd get HP's 3600 colour LaserJet (Network) version which sucks less. I have one at home and bought one for my son at university. His entire household uses it (six guys) and have done so for two years. We've only had to replace toner. The units sometimes come on sale. If you have extra scratch, get the duplexer to save the environment by printing on both sides. Other than that, I've run all sorts of card stock and envelopes through it with minimal issues. But don't use the front feeder, use the tray for heavier sheets - it's a straighter path.
Good luck.
*** Don't be dull.***
Please. This is not a tall order. A Lexmark 4039 purchased 15 years ago is still working today, you can still get toner for it, and it works fine with FOSS drivers.
Has anyone had any experience with the line of Xerox solid ink color "lasers"?
You unfortunately got hit with the double whammy of buying an unreliable color laser and experiencing the results of Carly's efforts to lock down consumables. Regardless of manufacturer, color laser is four times more complicated than B&W. It is best to steer clear of unless you really need it. You should know that all of HPs consumer grade and "small office" printers are crap. They are designed to minimize component costs and maximize profit. There is a huge increase in quality with the better office grade printers and they are priced accordingly. Trying to go cheap on a color laser is the wrong way to go with them since it is a guarantee that you'll be stung. The issue with the cartridges dying prematurely because of their "smart" chips is only a factor for the printers designed during Fiorina's tenure. The pre-Carly printers don't pull that crap and will serve dependably for a long long time.
Basically, the the easy way to determine the good printers from the bad ones is to look for those that have a 500-sheet tray or better (or two 250's on some models). These are the good workgroup printers from HP. Because of this reliability you can get a 10-year old HP for a great price and be confident that it will work well for many years to come.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Indeed, I have a 2650 DTN and it has one of these dreadful chipped cartridges. Even when you know they are still full of toner the damned thing refuses to print. I will NEVER buy an HP Laser printer again. BTW: anyone knows of a webpage that lists color laser printers that are not "chipped"?
I've used the Brother HL-5250DN printer in a small business environment for several years. Its Postscript interpreter (BR-SCRIPT3) is pretty good. The printer has a network connection and can duplex, yet it is quite affordable. Toner is affordable. Works great with Linux and Cups. Should be fine for any OS that can render output in postscript. No, I don't work for or sell Brother products. I just like the printer.
I have polydactyly, you insensitive clod!
Brother has a whole bunch of different models. Even one with a scanner on top that does copying, faxing and scanning. They don't have chip protected toners, so you can get toners from anyone that builts them. Completely legal. ...
They have network, no network, wireless
Over here in Germany you can get the best deals on the standard network model, because they sell large volumes. So it is 20% cheaper than the sticker price.
On pricing you have to check what they have in the US.
everything has a PS option these days. I replaced an aging lexmark model K tank with a lightweight, fast lexmark 250dn duplex/network. Of course it has 16M, PS3, PCL6 etc.
The real problem with the K was the ports - it has a paralell port and an optional, wonky, lexmark 10Mpbs tcp/ip adapter. that worked sometimes.
Are we all sure USB and 100M will be the standard in ten years?
Never used the offical lexmark drivers with the 250dn. it just works. I'm at 7000 pages over last two years. Shrugh.
I have an HP LaserJet P2015DN and a Brother HL-5370DW, both work great. I much prefer the HP as it's faster and quieter, but the Brother was less than half the price (on sale). The HP also feels a lot sturdier and has a vastly superior user interface compared to the Brother.
I am a big fan of the Okidata page printers, and so I'd recommend one of their color page printers. These aren't laser printers, although they use the familiar image drum, toner, and fuser print technology. Unlike the laser printers (where the image is laid down by scanning a laser across the image drum), the Oki printers use a fixed array of LEDs to lay down the image. This eliminates the need for the optical path and high-speed, high-precision moving parts that often fail in laser printers. The printers also use a system where the toner cartridge, image drum, and transfer belts are separate, user-replacable items for each color.
There are three models worth considering for home or home-office use:
1) The C3400n is the low-end model, and depends on its drivers for protocol support, so I don't recommend using it unless you know you're an all-Windows shop.
2) The C3600n is the mid-range networkd printer, and supports all of the popular network printing protocols (HP, Unix, Apple) and languages (PCL5, PostScript3), so any computer that's likely to be running today can print to it, and you're likely to be able to keep using it long into the future regardless of driver support.
3) The C5650n is a workgroup printer adds duplexing and higher print speeds to the features of the C3600n.
I have a C5300n (basically a predecessor to the C5650n) that's been powered on 24/7 since I got it some 6 or 7 years ago. It has a duplexer and additional RAM, and I have had no mechanical problems, and have done no maintenance to it except replace consumables. Almost all of the likely wear parts are user-replacable: in addition to toner cartridges, you can get replacement image drums and fuser belts, so I expect to be able to keep the printer running for another 7+ years.
As someone mentioned above, a lot of printer manufacturers and retailers are basically using the razor model now. Give the printer away and charge for the cartridges. In light of this, I recommend at least thinking about the following:
Troll through sites like slickdeals.net or fatwallet.com and look for awesome printer deals. Especially around Black Friday coming up, and frequently from Office Depot. A lot of times between the coupons you can buy from ebay for a few bucks, (like 100 off of 300) and some instant in store rebates, you can get a 300d dollar printer down to 50 bucks, or 100 bucks. I've even seen them get the price down to -50 where you get PAID to take the printer. Given that this brand new printer comes with toner (granted, not a full cartridge, but enough to justify this method), just use the printer till the toner runs out, throw it away or ebay it, and get yourself a new printer again. Rinse, repeat.
I mean, why not? If they are going to use that kind of a business model, it only makes sense to adjust the buying strategy to fit.
This is what I did, and it worked out quite well for me. After my research I came up with a few conclusions. Here's an outline of my situation and what I discovered.
-I'm Canadian
-Black and White laser printers print thousands more B&W pages per cheaper black toner cartridge, compared to colour laser printers.
-Just 3 B&W toner cartridges for a colour laser printer is likely to cover the cost of a B&W laser printer.
-Networked B&W laser printers are waaaaay cheaper than Networked colour laser printers. By going networked, your OS support is fairly indifferent. You still need drivers, but XP/Vista/Win7/OSX/Linux probably have them.
I opted for the Brother HL2170W. It was on sale for $80, which was a price I couldn't beat. Then I picked up some TN360 toner cartidges from 123inkcartidges.ca, for under $30 a piece. Those print close to 3000 pages each, which puts the price at $0.01/pg (excluding cost of paper)
The cheap OEM TN360 toner has the same quality as the 500-pg starter toner. The starter toner lasted 562 pages according to the web-based UI. That's at 600DPI (fine for text and printing out maps), with toner save OFF. (makes it look like crap) I'm about 2000 pages in now, and the toner is going strong, so I expect it to last at least 2800.
A few months back I dunked my printer in a jug of water by accident. (was watering plants - knocked it over and doused it while it was turned on) I yanked the power cord out, dumped the printer/water on the floor, and dried it out with a hair drier as soon as I could. So far it's been printing same as usual.
Conclusion: Decent, cheap printer with super cheap and adequate toner.
Note: I tested this printer with XP and Ubuntu - it works just fine for both. I have it connected over Wifi to my WRT54GL. It cuts out occasionally, but that's related to the number of desks it has to broadcast through to reach the router. Had totally solid wireless before I moved it, and still is solid when wired. (as should be expected - oh, and I moved it after the water dunking...)
I have a cheap $50 Samsung printer that works perfectly. Got it in 2002. The only thing I'd do differently is get the network version, although I do have it connected via SAMBA/Cups and it automatically loads windows drivers to new systems that try and print. Just bought 2 toner replacements for $50 ($25/each). With my use, the second will probably go bad before I get to it.
I'd avoid any printer that requires use of THEIR drivers. That remove most directly connected printers. Go for network, PCL and Postscript printers.
Avoid the inkjets. IMHO, ink dries out every year and costs about $35 to replace. It is cheaper for me to pay $1/pg for color prints than to have a working inkjet. I do have an all-in-one (fax, scanner, inkjet), but have never replaced the ink.
I used to work in an office with a Phaser 850DP crayon printer.
It required a lot of work to get it calibrated to print colours anything near what basically all other printers produced (e.g., for a given colour blue, it would print it very differently from the small range that other printer makes/models produced). Their colour profiles were whacked, and after hours on the phone with their tech support, I gave up and created my own by hand.
The printer refused to print grey under almost any circumstance. It would instead print a murky beige. In some applications (like Illustrator) you can explicitly choose a 1-ink black but in most this is not an option. This was never resolved and resulted in a lot of trips to Kinkos to use their laser printer when it was important to actually have grey.
The ink was quite thick and on pages with a lot of coverage, the paper had a strange tacky feel, smelled like a Crayola carton, and was noticeably heavy.
It took about a month to warm up when you powered it on.
In sum, not an experience I'd want to repeat.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
I hope you leave trees alone someday.
I forgot about HP's scanners. I have a Scanjet 5490C in my office. Cost about $1300. It's in perfect condition and is totally unusable. Why? The power supply failed, and HP decided in their infinite wisdom that they wouldn't bother keeping a supply of replacements in their parts warehouse. There are two versions of the power supply - a low current one for the scanner, and a high current one for the scanner with the optional automatic document feeder. Guess which one it needs?
I've seen the $80 power supplies going used on eBay for $200, because they're next to impossible to find.
I replaced the HP with a Kodak i65. More expensive, but scans both sides at once and is built like a battleship. No jams or failures in over 50,000 pages scanned so far. Not that I'd buy a $2000 scanner for home though, but the HP wasn't low-cost enough when you consider how much lower in quality it was than the Kodak.
That formatter board I mentioned, it cost $1280 to replace, and failed again within a year. The fact that the HP service guys never used any kind of test equipment didn't really instill confidence either. Between those two HP printers and their document finishers (stapler/stacker gadgets), I threw about $17,000 in the dumpster. We were glad to get the floor space back.
Putting moderation advice in your
Agreed. I rescued an HP Laserjet 4M+ fro the trash at work; was thrown out because the output rollers were old and not longer grabbing the paper very well, so paper was jamming there. An easy, temporary fix was to sand the rollers a little, bit I eventually bought a replacement roller kit for around $20, later bought new pickup rollers and a "NetDirect" LPD card. For maybe a total of around $40 and some elbow grease it's pretty much a new printer.
The 4M's are EVERYWHERE - I see them at banks, medical offices, and lots of other businesses. They last forever and supplies are VERY easy to find and affordable. The toner cartridge lasts a long time.
There is one issue with older HP's (the LJ4 series at least) that comes up: the infamous "Paper Size Error"; it's actually an easy fix.
The actual cause is related to a solenoid which hits a lever that momentarily halts the pickup roller mechanism's rotation, preventing it from feeding another sheet of paper too soon; this enforces an appropriate "gap" between consecutive sheets of paper. The lever has some felt on it as a cushion, but over time the felt deteriorates and gets sticky, and the solenoid sticks to it just long enough for the mechanism to do another, premature rotation, which causes an overlapping sheet of paper to get picked up, thereby confusing the printer into thinking it got fed a really long sheet, hence the "Paper Size Error". This happened to me, and it took me a while to figure it out; I had to run the printer with the left side exposed and observe the paper feed cycle. HP 's solution was bogus (forgot what it was). I just cleaned remnants of the old felt and stacked some clear tape on the lever; been working perfectly fine ever since, and I did this several years ago.
As long as you aren't afraid of opening up the left side of the printer, it's easy to find and fix the problem - I'd hate to see a great printer thrown out because of a little piece of felt!
We apologize for the inconvenience.
It's worth noting that the cartridge that comes with a printer is 1/2 to 1/4 the amount of toner of a replacement cartridge.
I just bought a new dell colour laser for $199.00AUD, with ethernet and a linear print path!
We bought it for home casual use (100 pages/month) because we were sick of ink jets that clog up when you don't use them regularly.
For that price, it will be cheaper for us to chuck the printer when the toner runs out! (I know, enviromental madness, but economic sense)
46137
I'm surprised no one has given this link:
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting
TANSTAAFL. If you take home cartridges purchased by the company that pays your paycheck, those losses will impact their ability to pay you and the other folks who do stuff like what you do... increasing your workload per dollar.
It is more like a free breakfast for you, that the company will pay at dinner time.
See... As any other production or management loss, cost for getting more office supplies due to employees pocketing said office supplies carries over to the final product.
Which means, that if company is doing good and its accounting wizards are up to specs - you are actually benefiting the company cause you are creating money flow.
Sure... you are increasing production costs, but they are going to dump them into the consumer's lap anyway.
On the other hand... if company is doing bad and its accounting staff is comprised of clowns instead of wizards - well... you will not earn your retirement there anyway.
The cost of office supply you stole will end up in the hands of the poor jerk who ends up in your place after you (and maybe couple of your replacements) leave for greener pastures.
Cause... if a lost box of toner or a pack of printing paper is what will bring the company to its knees - you better get your ass out of there ASAP.
Also... On a side note.
If it is a kind of company that pays attention to every sheet of paper used - it is generally a case of being "Penny-Wise, Pound-Foolish".
Someone in mid/upper management has time to write such penny pinching strategies - he/she has nothing better to do, or is not doing what he/she should do.
Ship is sailing to waters unknown with no one at the helm, while the captain and all the officers are debating what color should they paint the stairs to the engine room.
Again - get out of there ASAP. And don't lose sleep thinking about the cost of the life boat you are taking.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
While there are a lot of choices out there (I like Canons and HP's personally) look at the cost of consumables (toner and the fuser drum) to help decide what to buy. Color is nice but the consumable costs are often higher than plain old B&W printers, and sometimes are hard to find as refills. Once you find some that have an affordable cost per page you can decide which best meets your needs. I don't use PS so while I like the old Brotehr H1440 I picked up on sale for around $50 a few years back it probably won't meet your needs. It had acceptable output so I bought it based on low initial price and low (at the time) price per page.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
When buying a new printer look at the price of the consumables, not the price of the printer unless you are going to be printing less than 100 pages per year. The way the manufactures make money of the cheap printers is by selling cartridges that print a ridiculously small amount of pages. For ink jet printer users that don't print more than a few pages a month that is OK because they dry out or clog before they are empty. But for laser printers and people who regularly print you spend more on the consumables than the printer in the long run.
You talked about a color laser printer. Again look at the price of the color cartridges. Unless you can set your printing to a black and white mode, you will be using more color than you expect.
With all that said, I like the brother printers with their separate drum and toner assemblies. The cost per page is significantly less. ~$90 for 8,000 pages vs HP at ~$185 for 10,000 pages.
Remember it is the price of the consumables that is important, not the price of the printer (IMHO)
RLH
For my sins I was a printer/copier/fax tech for many years before taking up networking.
I have to agree with the postsers complimenting the B&W HP laser jets. Nearly every HP Laserjet I have come across regardless of age, still works great. They are easy to service and very well made.
The 4000 series is a personal favourite
However HP colour lasers, not so good. A very complicated mechanism with only average to poor print quality.
When it comes to colour lasers, I have had very good experiences with the small Samsung models.
The OKI LED printers are great in the larger
models.
Inkjets are crap.
Keep in mind when buying a laser printer that you need to factor in the price of Fusers & Imaging Drums. A lot of the cheap ones have limited cycles and are worth half the cost of the unit to replace. HP or Brother would be my recommendation.. BUT not their lowest end. The HP P2xx series are where you should start looking.
move along, nothing to see here.
I've been damn happy with my 2+yr old HP LJ 3055 MFC (multi-function) scanner/printer/fax. It supports PCL5 out of the box and was network ready. The starter toner that comes with it was good for 3000 pages and replacements aren't to expensive ($80) and they're good for 5k pages.
On the Linux/Mac front, the printer has both CUPS and SANE drivers for printing/scanning and if you want full access to the fax capabilities from your computer, simply use KDE 3.5 and the HP blob, which gives kdefax the ability to view/send faxes directly.
Fast Turtle
If it's a huge waste, it might not be your smartest move.
Just buy some bulk toner and refill your own toner cartridges for a couple dollars. It's easy, albeit a bit messy.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
Instead, I'm going to present a different perspective.
You state that you printed about 30,000 pages over 16 years.
Rounding up, printing 2,000 pages a year on an old used HP Laserjet II, II, or IV might cost you between $0.10 and $0.12 a page when you calculate the cost of energy and supplies even if you get the printer for FREE. That amounts to between $200 and $240 per year. (FOREVER!)
Newer energy-efficient printers from Samsung, Dell, HP, and others print black-and-white pages for about $0.008 (yes - less than a penny a page) and color pages with saturation averaging 15% at between $0.08 and $0.12 per page. In other words, if you do your homework and spend between $150 and $250 in year one, your subsequent years may cost you between $16 and $30 a year depending on your print mix and volume.
Right now, I support a wide mix of new and old printers. We have a few legacy apps with weird drivers that require us to print only to HP Laserjet 4's. Until we re-engineer those apps, we buy old replacements on Ebay. The HPLJ4 energy draw is enormous and some employees that use them at home have reported flipping breakers and restarting cable boxes as all the lights in their home dim during warm-up prior to the first page of each print run. Yes they are solid. But operating costs are higher than new machines and this is not environmentally friendly.
On the other hand, if you live in a building with older electrical service and would enjoy aggravating others....
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
http://www.marketingcomm.qut.edu.au/news/news-event.jsp?news-event-id=13650
What is the risk from our home printers?
It all depends how you use them and what the ventilation is like in your home. If you print a page or so from time to time, in a reasonably ventilated house (some windows opened), it is unlikely that particle concentration would reach levels of concern. If however, document after document was printed for a long period of time, in an enclosed room, then the particle concentrations could reach levels of concern.
Have you tried lying to Windows, pretend it's a LJ5 or LJ4.
Were I work we have a "no print" policy and just archive everything on a file server. About a year ago I had to look at purchasing a small enterprise printer that was both green in the power consumption and also in the consumables sense with cost in mind of course. The issue I had with most printers is that the drum and toner had to be replaced on a regular basis and toner print capacity was not that good. So after doing all the math we went with a Kyocera FS series laser printer with a long life ceramic drum and rather large toner carts. The up side is this printer works with OSX, Linux, BSD, Windows, you name it and the print quality is very good and isnt slow when going from a sleep mode to printing a page like many printers I reviewed. So its about 2 years on and we have used two carts and no drums versus our old HP that would be on its second drum and fourth cart. Also I have noticed our office staff as of yet have not been able to make the printer jam, a miracle considering the HP printer kept jamming every few days thanks to our ham fisted sales team.
Definitely go for an HP Laser. I have a LaserJet 4050tn (PCL5/6 and PS) I got used from my work. The thing has printed almost 250k pages and shows no sign of stopping. The regular maintenance cycle for them is 200k pages, and you can usually get at the very least 10k pages out of a toner, which are just $80. Drivers for everything under the sun too. I haven't run into an OS that can't use it. I use the ethernet card to hook it up, but it has parallel and even AppleTalk. Their business class printer have cool web interfaces too. The 4200 has a 4-Line LCD screen that you can control over the network with a simple perl script.
If you're in Vancouver, or are willing to go there to get a good deal, check out http://www.pcgalore.com/inventory/580
I've been using an HP 2600n for about a year (so far). It seems well built, the print quality is great. A full set of four toner cartridges are about $300 though.
Look in the weekly circulars, or whatever, find the CHEAPEST thing out their, buy two or three, when they wear out, do it again
I got 8 (eight) super cheap pixma 1600s with ink cartridges, each cost a dollar less then the replacement cartridges
aint very ecological, but it works
did not catch the memo!
Brother doesn't put kill chips in their cartridges, plus they often have a good duplex unit. I could easily re-fill and re-set the counter. I think Brother is better than Ricoh, HP, or Samsung, which I have used in the past.
The LaserJet printers are nice, but I don't care for the photo print quality. I have a pair of HP 7310s I have had for years, and they have never had a single problem. I use them for Scanning, Faxing, and Printing both Black&White and Color.. Even Photos. The only issue I have is with the price of the cartridges, and the generic ones screw up the print quality. I have them hooked to Linux, OSX and Windows and all functions work perfectly on each. I don't use Wireless, I have it networked connected over hardwired Gigabit LAN. I also have a Solaris 10 box, and it does not support the fancy stuff, but it prints OK.
The closest thing I have had to a problem is the one in my office is ancient, and the FAX feeder pulls in double pages occasionally because it is just so old. So I pretty much send multipage faxes out of the one upstairs because it never misfeeds. Otherwise, it just works.
I just re-read the summary.
30,000 pages over 16 years? That's nothing for the business class workgroup printer the Silentwriter was.
My suggestion is go buy some cheap laser printer that meets the specs. Almost anything will handle that quantity.
Look at energy cost and per-page cost, not just printer cost, using the 2,000 pages per year figure as a basis for calculation.
Assume it'll last five years and you'll have to buy a new one.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
These were engineered to last forever and parts are cheap & plentiful on eBay
Downside - big & ugly, my wife hates it.
As others have said here, HP, HP, HP. And by "HP" We mean "HP LaserJet". Inkjet is straight out the window due to cost-per-page and the unavailability of refills after a number of years - never mind the cost.
Until recently, I was using an HP LJ IIImv. It died due to electrical overload (PCB not fuser), but I got it used for $30, and it lasted me 5 years and about a box and a half of paper. I've seen HP LJs last 10 years and 10s of thousands of pages without any significant part - and even at that age, HP is awesome about providing replacement parts for their older printers.
Absolutely, positively avoid anything from Brother, Dell, Canon, or Epson, as well as any sort of MFD. Brother printers don't seem to be all that reliable (even the "HP clones") or don't use standard languages; Dells break surprisingly fast/don't life up to the MTBF ratings, and Epsons are likewise iffy on drivers and quality. Canon is pretty bad about EOL'ing their products "early" as well, and don't tend to play nicely with standards.
MFD (multifunction device) printers are to be avoided due to the driver issues frequently encountered with such devices (ie you can still use the printer but scanning becomes impossible after a couple years).
If I were to buy a new printer today and I had money to burn, it would be a small office color laser from HP. Or maybe just their 'entry level' @ $150, which doesn't do color but does do 24ppm as well as support PCL5e.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Only 30.000 pages? I got an old HP Laserjet 6p (must also be like 12 years old now or so) which has done over 100.000 pages by now and is still going strong, and I know that the old Laserjet 4+ we had at work did much, much more than that. But you are right, the old printers were built to much higher quality standards. Back then, a laser printer was something expensive and was expected to last a long time. Today's printers are not built to the same mechanical standards. That's why I would choose a model for which you can replace faulty parts easily, like for example the Kyocera models.
HP used to make really really good printers
I have and still use one that I purchased back in early 1990s
Is HP still making excellent printers, or are they making junk, just like the others nowadays?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I'm so tired of this shit. Mac's have a pretty UI but are proprietary as hell. It amazes me that a forum dedicated to open source/linux has so many fanbois. It's completely schizo. I'm ready for Steve to take the dirt nap and see the company spiral down the tubes or dedicate itself completely to consumer products, i.e. ipods and iwhatever.
Oh, no you didn't. Brother does NOT have good Linux support. I've got an older - yet still USB - Brother 1435, and the OpenPrinting record for it considers it a paperweight. Sure, there's a driver for it - but it's a pain in the ass to get set up, doesn't work consistently, and is a lost cause on x64.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
You see them a lot at thrift stores and yardsales. I've bought two in the last two years, one for $5 (20k lifetime pages printed) at a yard sale and one for $15 (80k lifetime pages) on Craigslist. Picked up a network card on eBay for $12. Got the postscript ROM and some extra memory for about $30 more.
For $47 you won't find a better black and white laser printer. I'm still using the toner cartridge that came with them, but you can pick up re-manufactured ones for about $50. You'll get about 3000 pages on average before you need new toner.
I was given an HP CP1700 Color InkJet printer for free, when its LCD display stopped working. Bought a network interface on eBay for $25. It has 100BaseT, USB & parallel interfaces, prints up to 17" x 20" with individual (CMYK) color cartridges. Once I pulled out the internal battery it stopped checking whether or not my cartridges were re-manufactured. Refills are about $20 and last quite a while. It has AWESOME print quality - and I can print from XP or OS X 10.6
I also (!) bought a LaserJet 4MV for $10 at the local thrift store - I remember when these sold for $3800! It makes a slight buzzing noise, but I can print magnificent 11x17 600DPI pages. Re-manufactured toners are about $60.
I installed a LaserJet 4 for a client in 1993, which has been in continuous use turning out over a million pages with no service repairs, ever - just new toner.
They really don't make them like they used to. Considering the cheap-ass shiny crap that HP turns out today, with its DRMed ink and toner cartridges programmed to stop working long before they run dry, I'll stick with this vintage stuff a little while longer...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
the photo of the printer in the title of this article is an HP LaserJet 2100...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
After I owned this printer for the first year or so, I noticed it was quickly replaced with a newer model that uses totally different supplies, too. This is typical for HP's products these days - and becomes a real problem when you run out of a toner and want to grab a replacement locally, so you don't suffer a lot of downtime.
This is typical with everybody, not just HP.
After three different HPs in the past 4 years, I bought a brother. Plugged it into my network (ethernet, it sits next to my WiFi AP) and am printing from a few Linux machines, three OSX machines(tiger, leopard and snow leopard) and two Windows machines(XP and 7). The drivers for the Brother (HL-5250DN) are far less invasive than the HP drivers I kept having to deal with. While it's not a PostScript printer, it does PCL which all these operating systems seem satisfied with using.
I probably won't ever use an HP again. We'll see how long the Brother lasts, but it's been a year now and it is still going strong.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
...our 4100N here at the office is using the same toner cartridge since 2005 ; it complained it was almost empty since... 2005. But it's still running, and running strong.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
I've put in three kyoceras, one printer, one MFP, one copier with an add-on print card. Mechanically perfect, very cheap to run because the drum lasts forever. More expensive, yes, but worth it. They have all been in without problem for several years, fairly heavy usage, and I expect them to continue indefinitely.
I work in Desktop Support for a number of large hospitals in the public sector.
I go through more HP Printers that most in this forum have probably ever seen, and half of them, especially the low to the mid range HP Laserjets, both colour and B&W, are cheap plastic garbage.
2015n - lasts about 6 months, I scrap about 4 a week of these
2055dn - slightly better, however still cheaply made
Even the "robust network printer" the 3005n are really not as robust as they say they are.
Granted most of these are scrapped because are users are far too rough, have no idea how to treat equipment and generally just abuse the hell out of them, but i'd be hard pushed to see a 3005n last past 15 months.
You could alternatively go for something in the 4xxx series, but they are certainly not budget printers and would probably take two people to lift. You won't be having one of those on your desk next to your pc.
Buy another make than HP - their printers have really just gone far, far downhill in the last few years.
We have a few Brother printers - they still go strong.
Your better off going with a cheap Laser Printer like the Samsung ML-2510 or the inexpensive Brother units. Watch the Staples sales, look for rebates on websites, you can find these things for $40-$60. They'll print 1000 pages initially. The refill (which costs more than the printer unless you use a refill DIY kit) does 3000 pages. My samsung works with (comes with) Linux, Windows, & Mac drivers. When it dies, I can replace it for LESS THAN THE PRICE OF INK for my old inkjet printer.
I ran a book shop for about a year, and then a book cafe for a year after that before we sold the place.
When I started the book shop I bought a pretty cheap Samsung ML-1710 (i think) for the point of sale, it worked without a glitch through those two years. I printed quite a lot, probably an average of 30-40 pages a day since I printed all the day reports on it.
The place has gone through two owners since then (sold the place in late 2007), but I know that as of last month, the current owner is still using it. If the owners after me used it as much as I did, that would be ~50k printouts. I think that's pretty good.
When I needed to get a new printer for myself last month I got a Samsung ML-2571N and I've been very happy so far. It's network connected and was automatically detected my CUPS from both my Arch machine and my roomies Kubuntu machine. It does PostScript 3 and is pretty fast. No color though, but as others have said, unless you really need it, you're only setting yourself up for some serious toner cartridge expenses.
Elvis
Like you, I have stayed with PS printers because they are not locked into either Windows or Mac -- though I have both, plus Linux. About 6 months ago, I needed a printer, and the Brother PS printer with networking seemed to be the perfect solution. Wrong!
First, you must install their drivers and printer "management" software. Yes, it has drivers for both Mac and Windows, and you can download their drivers from the net for Linux. The print quality is good at 600x600, but not as good as my lexmark at 1200x1200. It's ok.
However, the IP printer "drops off line" after some period of non-use, and nothing short of turning it off for some period, then back on, then logging out and back in will restore the connection. I can't see how to "keep alive" the connection, but it means that I have relegated it the back burner. It spends most of its time turned off, and I only turn it on when I need to print -- though it seems to have an excellent "green cycle".
Personally, I will never have another Brother printer. Will probably do either Cannon or Lexmark again. All of them seem to give you something to hate. What ever happened to REAL customer service?
Few like Lexmark it seems - and I admit, their InkJet products suck - but their Laser products are fantastic.
Do this, next time you go to your local retailer (a dirty one, like Lowes or Home Depot) notice what they are using - Lexmark T-Series printers.
They're very very popular printers. In my experience they are extremely versatile, reliable, and durable printers - not to mention compatible. Everything has PS and PCL and will print with any driver used.
Every HP product I buy has major software issues - the drivers for most platforms are bloated beyond belief, HP is slow to release new drivers for new platforms (For example, I have a LaserJet 3100, and 3100SE, Good Luck finding any useful software for those printers!)
If the HP drivers are not the problem, the printer itself has software issues, random error messages requiring reboots of the printer etc - done with HP Printers for good. Threw them all away.
It's a shame most geeks can't look past Lexmark's terrible InkJet offerings and see the quality laser products Lexmark has to offer -- if every bank, retailer, hospital, school I go to has one instead of some similar HP unit, there must be a reason - it's not like they are cheaper or anything.
Oh, Samsung and Brother units - Eh, I've had bad luck with Samsung drivers (i.e. ML-1710 - VERY popular printer was lacking OS X drivers for the longest time, it may still be as an example)
Both Samsung and Brother printers seem pretty noisy, light duty, feature simple, and take forever to warm up, and like to make their warming up noises any chance they get - like you add paper - oh time to warm up again?
This link describes more or less what I did, too. The result is a printer that looks like a postscript printer on my internal net.
The 1020, though, doesn't have its own network connection and I would agree with AaronW's post that he probably wants a printer that will just live on the network on its own.
cheers...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
Had this problem when I was sysadmin at a school. The color printer would go unused for months at a time, then a flurry of activity.
Made a cron job that send a simple color page that used all 4 jets and about a square inch of each color. Ran that once a week.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
The OP wanted the same two things I want:
* Reliability
* Open standards
The whole point of the 1980s in computing was that if we created an open standard, we would not be tied in to some corporation or another's business plan involving planned obsolescence and product line lock-in. The whole point of reliability is that you don't end up hucking the thing in the landfill after only a few years of use. Open standards is another form of reliability, ensuring that the printer can stay in use as long as it is physically operating.
The above are good design standards.
What has happened to printers is the process of democratization, which is when consumers demand a cheaper product and get it -- but because that was never a realistic notion, they get a plastic piece of junk with corporate product line lock-in. Until you buy a business-level printer, preferably a network printer, you're going to get one of these cheap pieces of junk.
Futurist Traditionalism
Having spent 2 years as a sysadmin suckered into supporting 40+ printers at a major University (luckily I got out of printer support a year or two ago), here's my advice: 1) "personal" = 2 years lifespan. Get something that's marketed as a "workgroup" or better printer. The home models are not built to last. 2) Don't buy anything without a wired Ethernet port. 3) In terms of OS compatibility, anything that supports IPP (port 9100) should work fine. If it has LPR or CUPS drivers for Linux, Mac will support it fine, and pretty much everything has Windows support. Generally if the manufacturer supports Linux, they support everything. 4) My personal experience is that Xerox is the best, HP is a close second. I'd stay away from Kyocera, even their million-plus-page models break all the time. 5) A laser is a must. 6) A good test for features is whether or not the printer supports SNMP. If it has both a web interface and SNMP support, it's actually designed for a business environment, and will generally support all OSes and have good functionality. (Mind you, my personal printer at home is a 100-pound Xerox N4525. It does up to 11x17 borderless. I bought it as enterprise surplus with over 1,000,000 pages on it two years ago - for $20 - and I haven't even replaced the toner yet.)
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