Printers?

[Dave Farquhar]

I'm looking for some other people's thoughts on printers. I'll try not to make this ramble on too long.

In 1996, I bought a lightly-used Lexmark 4039. It was a great printer for me for a very long time. It hated refilled toner cartridges, but I'd buy NOS toner for it when I could find it, and it was reliable and economical for me. About a year ago it quit feeding paper properly and none of the fixes I could find online worked. Besides that, parts are hard to come by of course, so I ended up taking it to the recycler.

In the meantime I've been using consumer-grade Samsung laser printers. They're nice and small and quiet, but the volume of printing my wife does (about 1000 pages per month) seems to be more than these printers are really designed for. And the cost per page is higher than I like, especially once you factor in consumables.

I hate to bring in another hulking behemoth, but I see advantages to buying something like an HP Laserjet 4000 or 4100. The toner for them is easier to come by than my Lexmark, the maintenance kits are still available, and I should be able to get the cost per page back down under a penny. And since I have professional experience with those printers, I shouldn't have very many surprises from them.

Anyone see anything wrong with my line of thinking?

 

[Chuckster_in_Jax]

I think you have come to realize what crap ink-jet printers really are. Most are cheap junk and are designed so if ANYTHING goes wrong with them, your best option is to trash them. Ink-Jet cartridges are expensive too. Not to mention they have an expiration date on them, so finding old stock on eBay that's any good is a challenge.

Currently I am using an older HP Color LaserJet 4500N and it has been a real workhorse. In the 8 years I've had it, I have replaced the drum twice and the black toner cartridge twice. I also have an HP 8550N which is a fairly large printer. Got it for $100 off of Craigslist. It will take about $200 to replace the 4 toner cartridges and the drum if I get them off of eBay. eBay is by far the cheapest way to go for consumables.

I also have a black and white LaserJet 8000N. Just needs a toner cartridge I can get for $20 off eBay and it will last for about 2 years before the drum goes bad.

Chuck

EDIT: Whatever choice you make, check to see if the manufacturer has printer drivers for the newer versions of Windows. HP has refused to release drivers that work with Windows 7 for a lot of their products.

 

[Dave Farquhar]

I've known for a long time to avoid inkjet printers, but the difference even in consumer lasers vs. business lasers is coming to light. I think part of the problem is I just underestimated how much we print, and maybe manufacturers overestimate the monthly duty cycle.

Good point about the drivers. I see a driver for the HP 4000 and similar printers for Windows 7. It doesn't look like it's necessarily very full featured, but I don't have complex needs either. If it prints and I'm changing the toner cartridge once a year and fixing it every two or three years, I'm pretty happy.

 

[Jorg]

EDIT: Whatever choice you make, check to see if the manufacturer has printer drivers for the newer versions of Windows. HP has refused to release drivers that work with Windows 7 for a lot of their products.

So true. I have a 2 year old HP 3390 All-in-one. A great printer/scanner/fax.
But no drivers for 64 bit. Actually, the only drivers for it are for XP, but they can be persuaded to work under Vista 32 bit.
Windows 7, hardly working, 64 bit, no chance. Again - two years old and build to last 10!

My better liked companion is my Oki ML-192 matrix printer. If the universe ever comes to an end, it will still work.

Wish list: A HP 7475A Plotter.

 

[MikeS]

...
Wish list: A HP 7475A Plotter.

I just happen to have one that I'd love to get rid of, but I doubt that you'd want to pay shipping to NL...

And amen on the OKI DM printers; they'll still be working when the universe as we know it has ended.

 

[nige the hippy]

Just over a year ago, we decided to buy a second hand HP2600N networkable "office" colour laser, it cost £60, and an hour to clean the optics (red fade).
I think we've had 2 reams of lovely quality prints off it so far, and there is still about another year's worth of toner left from the original second-hand cartridges. I think we were buying new inkjet cartridges every 3 months, and going through the hassle of wasting paper & time when the jets blocked if we didn't print for a few weeks.
definitely worth it.

 

[nige the hippy]

And as far as behemoths are concerned, I have a 4' X 3' x 2' band printer in my shed, that weighs about 3cwt. I'd love to put it to work, but there's no way it's going into the loft with the rest of the stuff!

 

[Chuck(G)]

I've never had the need for anything but a monochrome printer. I've been suspicious of both the color laser and inkjet printers as regards stability of the pigments. Does anyone have 25 year old color print samples that retain their original hues?

I have a small Brother laser next to each system (easy to refill the cartridges) for on-the-spot printing and a Xerox DocuPrint (11x17 paper with duplexing and hard drive) on the network. I bought the Xerox at a going-out-of-business sale for less than $100, complete with replacement toner kit and a few reams of large-format paper. It had less than 1000 copies on the clock and was only 6 months old.

 

[Dave Farquhar]

I bit the bullet and bought a 4100. One of my Samsungs is color and I like having it, but to be honest, I use the color capability a few times a year. It needs a developer unit and possibly other work. The 4100 buys me time to do that and shop around for the parts. The 4100 is a bit beat up, but only has 26,000 pages on it. If I continue printing at current volume, it should last 17 years before it needs a new drum. I'm not sure the rest of the printer will last that long, considering it's already at least 7 years old. But 5-6 wouldn't surprise me.

I hooked it up and my wife already has printed about 10 pages on it.

I appreciate the sanity check, definitely!

 

[Chuckster_in_Jax]

I bit the bullet and bought a 4100.

Good choice. That should last you for years. The parts you would ever need for it will be around for quite some time too

it should last 17 years before it needs a new drum.

My experience has been that the drum will go bad after a couple of years even if it hasn't run out of toner. Depending on how much printing you do, you may be replacing the toner cartridges before the drum goes bad.

 

[Dave Farquhar]

My experience has been that the drum will go bad after a couple of years even if it hasn't run out of toner. Depending on how much printing you do, you may be replacing the toner cartridges before the drum goes bad.

Oops. I forgot that the 4100's drum is in the toner cartridge. We don't quite print 10,000 pages a year. I'm anticipating having to replace the toner about once a year. I figured $50 replacement cost based on 4inkjets.com's price for remanufactured cartridges. I've seen cartridges as low as $20 from the usual secondhand sites, but I'd better research shelf life if I'm going to buy that way.

The fuser and rollers are still good for about 170K pages, if the rest of the printer lasts long enough to print that many pages.

At any rate, with some luck and careful planning it looks like I can keep the cost per page between .25 and .5 cents per page. My color Samsung is old enough that I could get aftermarket cartridges for it, so it was running me about 1.5 cents per page. My B&W Samsung was running more like 3.1 cents per page. That B&W Samsung could have turned into a very expensive mistake.

I'll replace the imaging unit and clean the blades in the color Samsung so I can use it for my occasional color printing, and see if I can unload the B&W Samsung to someone who doesn't print as often as I do. I wonder if I kept that box?

 

[Jorg]

Oh, I forgot to mention (denial, I think):

My first laserprinter was an Apple Laserwriter, that I got for free (beginning of the 90's! Quite a present).
However, it took quite some time to transfer a 300dpi page from my XT through the printers serial port.. no Appletalk for me.

 

[Chuck(G)]

My first laser was a Panasonic KX-P4450, that could even emulate a Diablo 630 or Epson FX-80, as well as supporting PCL. It stayed in use for many years.

 

[Dave Farquhar]

I remember the KX-P4450 but forgot it could emulate those earlier printers. That would have made it really nice for older computers running older graphics software. I could have hooked that up to my Commodore and had a blast with it. My first laser was a Panasonic KX-P4410, which was nice and small, and one of the first sub-$400 lasers on the market. I sold a ton of those. The toner cartridges cost $15 and were good for about 1,500 pages I think. The HP Deskjet 500 was a popular monochrome inkjet at the time. I think it sold for $300 or $350, and the ink was $25 and lasted either 500 or 1,000 pages. All I had to do to sell a 4410 was to show the customer a Deskjet 500 first.

That 4410 got me through college, then I gave it to my sister and it got her through college. Then it needed a new fuser, and by then (six or seven years after I bought it) I couldn't find one.

No wonder I wanted a Laserjet 4100. I keep ending up with orphan printers with non-existent supplies to keep them running.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Until I finally decided to shelve the KX-P4455 (PS version of the 4450), it was doing yeoman duty for me. Since the big (445x) Panasonics share the same toner and drum, etc. with the Panasonic copiers and plain-paper faxes, it was never a problem finding supplies or replacement parts. I'll bet that I could still find a replacement drum on eBay if I looked today. Those big Panasonics were built like tanks--and weighed about as much. I still have the printer; awaiting scrapping (very messy to scrap these things). The last 4451i that I had used a NS32016 CPU in it; I think the 4455 uses a flavor of the 68K, but I'm not certain.