[spiderowych]

which printer is most affordable to buy, and it would be nice that it is good for future savings???

[IJ24]

spiderowych, on 16 June 2011 - 11:37 AM, said:

which printer is most affordable to buy, and it would be nice that it is good for future savings???

There are lots of options when buying printers but definitely, the savings will not be based on the one time purchase because most likely, you also have to look into its running costs and consider the amount that you will be spending for toner and inkjet cartridges to be guaranteed of the best savings.

[IJ24]

IJ24, on 25 June 2011 - 07:54 PM, said:

spiderowych, on 16 June 2011 - 11:37 AM, said:

which printer is most affordable to buy, and it would be nice that it is good for future savings???

There are lots of options when buying printers but definitely, the savings will not be based on the one time purchase because most likely, you also have to look into its running costs and consider the amount that you will be spending for toner and inkjet cartridges to be guaranteed of the best savings.

Oftentimes, most people will first look into the price attached to the merchandise without even looking on the amount that it will cost them in the future. I agree that the amount of saving that can be saved will only become prominent once the machine has been tested.

[Laser88]

Generally, if you're printing higher volume,Laser Printers are your better option. They're pricier up-front but will cost you less in the long run through ink and toner costs.

[waldojim]

Cheaper laser printers end up costing more in toner than a good inkjet will in ink. Inkjets can also provide superior photos.

If you want a nice inkjet, I suggest looking into Canon. Most of their higher end printers use multiple individual ink tanks, which is both good and bad. The huge upside is that their ink works out to be far cheaper than most other brands. Print quality is also top notch.

If you want to go laser, understand that they need different paper when printing pictures, photo quality will not be up to the standards of inkjets. That said, for text, documents, etc, you can't beat a laser printer. The only recommendation here - DON'T GO CHEAP. Cheap lasers use tiny, expensive toner cartridges.

[LiveBrianD]

I have a fairly large color/duplex laser, Brother MFC-9840CDW, and although text is perfectly sharp, images have these tiny little annoying colored lines on them sometimes. Additionally, it takes quite a while to warm up, about two minutes. (Meanwhile, in that time, I could pull out my Epson Stylus Photo 870 inkjet from 2000 or so and print a few pages with it, and compared with newer inkjets that one is kinda slow. Heck, it's nice that there are drivers for it under Windows 7 64-bit!) I had a canon D680 or so, and it wasn't bad, but unfortunately they stopped releasing new drivers for it, it's from 2002 I think, and there are no windows vista/7 64-bit drivers.

Basically, what I think: If you print photos a lot, or maybe just a small amount of text, use an inkjet. If a lot of text, laser. Note: I don't know why, but a friend's HP Photodumb inkjet is always cleaning itself, wasting ink, while I had my epson up in the attic for at least a year and when I took it down to use it, I just had to use a q-tip to clean the ink nozzles, and it worked perfectly again. btw the reason is because the black toner in that Brother printer was leaking toner onto the paper, and I hadn't gotten around to buying a new toner yet.

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 04 December 2011 - 03:59 PM

[slgibbs1]

I have found the cheapest overall printers are the ones with separate cartridges for each color instaed of a 3 color cartridge. I have a continous ink feed system and I do a lot of printing. I have not bought a cartridge in over 2 years! If you are all thumbs, it's still better to just replace the yellow cartridge when there's still magenta and cyan left. You can also go the refill the cartridges route, but it takes patience!
I also have a color laser printer, for things that need to be waterproof, but only run it when absolutely necessary.

[axe40]

Is there any need to look for an expensive printer when you got less budget but want something that may last for long?

[WinfieldZenith]

This post contains excellent information that is helpful for those who want to buy an affordable printer. Thanks!

[brainout]

I think it depends a lot on what you need the printer to do, the most. Also, on your own psychology of reading, if most of the printing you do, is for yourself. It also matters if you want dedicated printing, printing/copying/scanning/faxing. The more things a machine can do, the more ways a machine can go wrong.

I don't like printing, period. Paperless is much preferred. What I must print, are usually legal documents, spreadsheets, individual financial statements for other people, tax forms. So I don't need and don't want, color printing. I don't see the point of printing photographs. It's easier and faster to just get them processed at Walmart or other commercial place. However, if you have business applications requiring printing in color, then you need a good color scanner and printer. The one I saw most recommended at Amazon, was the Epson line. Almost bought their color printer (which I think is laser, actually, don't remember) which had a 11 x 17 scan flatbed. Then decided against it. But maybe you'll like that.

I have, three color scanners, two of which are Brother MFC (meaning 'multifunction') machines. I just got my second MFC machine by Brother (not yet installed), 8480DN. There's also a DW version which some friends of mine like a lot.

Got the DN, at Amazon a few months back. It was cheap, only $300, but it had what I wanted the most, PCL 5 emulation and color scanning for legal-sized paper on flatbed. As for 11 x 17 flatbed, solved that problem by getting a separate Fujitsu S1500 scanner which allows full-scale reconstruction of 11 x 17 if you just use its carrier sheet, and fold the 11 x 17 paper in half while scanning duplex. Nifty thing.

I find injet output fuzzy, too wet, and generally substandard. So prefer laser. Actually, my main laser printers are old HP 4 and 5, because I don't need fast output, but do need compatibility with my DOS and Win98 machines. These same printers work fine on XP. I have no idea if they will work on Win7, but they will work if I ever go to Linux dual-boot. I don't plan on using Win7 for my main work. If I ever upgrade to Win7, it will only be for internetting. And it's not even good for that, because it wipes out email compatibility with email clients like Outlook Express (you have to go to Outlook, instead).

So the last important consideration you need to evaluate, is whether the printer can operate with the OS you plan to use. Most printer companies have a Driver section in Support, where you can specify OS to see if they have drivers to go with that printer. That's how I shop for printers: I first go to Support, look for drivers and manuals. You can tell from the manual if the printer will do what you want, as you want it to work. Saves time in deciding.