What printer (wireless if possible) doesn't rip you off

[alfredo]

when it comes to ink? My HP is not recognizing my cartridges anymore. I've exchanged them, cleaned everything, and did a hard reset. Nothing. So I am looking for an inexpensive printer for light duty. I don't do photos, just text. Mono laser printer?

[DJ13]

1. Not Cannon

[mrmpa]

32. Don't ream me a new one, but it's Canon, not Cannon

I've had a testy day, grading papers of high school juniors who don't use spell check or use their own innate ability to know spelling. I ran spell check before posting, to make sure everything was okay.

[handmade34]

2. I use a Brother

and am happy with it... I have little to compare it to though. I think they are all outrageous when it comes to the price of ink.

[PoliticAverse]

3. Brother HL-2170W monochrome laser

Wireless and Ethernet.
Cost per page around 1 cent with discount toner replacement.
Can be found on sale between $50 and $100.

[hlthe2b]

7. My choice as well. (see post 6)

[gmoney]

9. yeah, works well

Amazon sometimes has good deal on the high-yield toner, too.

B&W laser, but 95% of the time that's fine.

[alfredo]

23. The Samsung ML-2525W looks good. So does the

Brother HL-2140 Personal Laser Printer. It is on sale locally for $79.95.

[hlthe2b]

24. 2140 is not wireless but is a reliable unit...

The 2170W can be gotten for nearly that price if you search. I got a tremendous deal on it at Christmas and think I paid $75 including a two year unlimited repair warranty.

[alfredo]

26. best buy has it locally. I can send docs to my computer and

print from there.

[PoliticAverse]

31. HL-2140

Every couple of weeks either Staples or Office Depot or Office Max has the
Brother HL-2140 on sale for about $50. It's basically the HL-2170W without
wireless or ethernet.

[Warpy]

4. I've always had great luck with HP printers

although the ink does cost a young fortune. If you do a lot of printing, especially B&W printing, look into a laser printer. They're more money up front, but they're faster and slightly more economical when it comes to cartridges since those last so long.

The price of laser printers has come down considerably over the last 10 years. You might be pleasantly surprised. I've used HP laser printers, too, and liked them.

Some people have bought kits to refill the cartridges to cut costs, but it can be a messy procedure. Get some disposable latex gloves if you go that route.

[Warren DeMontague]

5. *

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nU5gDBPhhEA/SA98xYyf7gI/AAAAAAAAATI/o9NPVVaftgI/s400/2monk+translate.jpg



...I'm kidding. I'm just making fun of the reflexive neo-luddism I see on DU every time anything remotely pertaining to technology is brought up. In reality, I'm fairly happy with my HP Printer but I've had decent luck with Epson, too. They make all their money on the Cartridges, I know that. That's sort of universal.

[hlthe2b]

6. This question came up on a thread a few months back..

You might search.

But, I was in agreement with at least one other poster who have found the Brother laser printers to be extremely reliable and economical. Mine is the Brother HL-2170W. I got a great deal on it around Christmas time. So do your homework for best pricing.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

8. I just bought a Cannon and love it.

The HP I had got an error message saying " Left cartridge need to be replaced," and turned out to be a hardware issue not
worth fixing. The thing was hardly used, a POS.

[alfredo]

22. I'm getting the same error for both cartridges of my HP.

[napi21]

10. I've always had great luck with HP as well. I've been buying my ink cart's on ebay and have

had no problems at all. I always try to keep at least one of each cart. a a spare because the ink ALWAYS runs out at the most imopportune time. MAny times you can get a good deal on 2 or 3 at the same time.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

11. This is a worthwhile topic.

I bought a cheap printer / scanner/ copier and since I don;t use it much I figured that the ink didn't really matter. Silly me. the ink re fills cost almost as much as the printer. In fact, what with the effect of the Bush economy, I have not been able to replace the color cartridge for over a year because it costs too much and does not print for very long.

A few years ago, I went to Costa Rica and when I returned, I printed up photo's for my companions. It cost me several hundred dollars in ink to do so. Since then. my financial situation has deteriorated and I only print what I have to, but you ask a good question.

What printer provides the best value in the long term? I know you can buy a printer for less than than the cost of a carton of cigarettes but if the ink costs as much as a car, what is the point?

DU is the perfect place to ask this question! What is the best value printer on the market, regardless of initial cost? Do I need to spend several hindered dollars on a printer in order to be able to afford to print my vacation (I know, many of us no longer have vacation in their vocabulary) Photo's?

[guruoo]

12. My HP just did the same thing

Glad I kept my 10 year old officejet as a backup

[karnac]

13. i would see if i could pickup a brother on craigslist

laser of course. the toner cartridges could be refilled for about 25 bucks and last at least 2K pages.
if you get a printer from a closing business chances are it has an ethernet connection and you could just connect it into your router and make it wireless that way. I don't like brother inkjets btw.

Ive also picked up a color printer/scanner/copier canon pixma on craigslist for 5 bucks and it was still full. decent quality

[Bitwit1234]

14. WalMart had the Kodak for $69 dollars and the thing about

that is the cartridges are only 10 dollars, and you get much more copies out of the cartridge as you do with a lot of the others.

[Maine-ah]

21. I have the kodak printer, and I love it!

[librechik]

27. I love my office HP Officejet J6480 All-in-one--

It does everything at the touch of a button (copy, scan, scan to PDF, email, fax)

I like it so much that when they went on clearance sale at Office Depot I bought one for home, too.

But I like the sound of the kodak--I'm sick of buying expensive ink carts.

[tech9413]

15. For reliability and cost I use an old HP Laserjet 4P

Even if I bought the manufacturers cartridges at $100 a pop it prints for about 3 cents a page. I've been buying "re-manufactured" for about $30 and if you buy from the right vendor, they work just as well as the original.

I've got two of the HP psc series and the only time I had problems was trying to refill the cartridges. I know the ink is expensive so I only use them when I have to do color.

Laser sounds like the best bet for you.

[Motown_Johnny]

16. the printer that doesn't rip you off is the one you don't use... but

I would look into the Kodak as the above post mentions.

I like my HP but I don't print much so the cost of the ink isn't much of a factor for me.

[Rosco T.]

17. Check your local Office Depot... Samsung CLP-315W

it's a color laser, but they have them clearanced for about $120 (originally $350). Easiest wireless device I've ever set up. Toners are relatively cheap, and good print quality.

[HopeHoops]

18. I won't bother with anything other than HP anymore. The 8000 is wireless, inexpensive, easy on ink.

It is also screaming fast. As for laser printers, they can actually cost more to operate than some of the newer ink jets (toner vs/ink cost). They ARE going to be faster, but that's the reason to buy them now. I've got a 1020 and a P1006 (wired) and both are great printers. As for other ink jets, the C7280 (wireless) and the C4280/4480 (wired) are good options. Stay the hell away from Lexmark - there's a multi-page list of reasons for that. Epson made great dot matrix printers but their inkjet/laser printers blow chunks and Cannon printers eat ink/toner like Rush Limbaugh pops pills.

[MilesColtrane]

19. I would not recommend a Cannon.

Chipped ink cartridges make it hard to go to a cheap, third party source.

Sometimes even full Cannon brand cartridges will register as empty due to the chip not communicating with the printer properly.

And, the most frustrating of all, my printer takes 5 different cartridges (2 black, 3 color). If one of them goes out, you can't print anything.

Do you just want to print a black and white document, but your cyan cartridge is out? It doesn't matter if both black cartridges are brand new. It will not let you print.

GRRR

:mad:

[Urban Prairie]

25. I just change the settings to print only black and white (monochrome) with my old Canon printers

I like the idea of separate color cartridges instead of one black and one for all colors, like my Epson printer/scanner has, which I purchased because Epson models had the only Linux-compatible CUPS/SANE drivers at the B&M stores in my area back in '06.

[GaitWayDem]

20. Canon MX860

I agree that Canon ink cartridges that are chipped are a pain, but...

We have a MX860, does everything, I reload my own ink - I bought refillable cartridges over the internet, and bought a chip resetter. You remove the chip off the old cartridge, and mount on the new one, which has a low profile stopper that won't hang up in the printer (very important)

Once set up, they work like a charm - reset the cartridge, refill and go.

[mopinko]

28. whatever you get, look through the options for run past empty.

not sure if ink jets have this option, but most lasers do. they will make it hard to find, but it is in there somewhere. it lets you keep printing even tho it is telling you it is empty. they usually continue to work for a very long time.

they are all getting more and more obnoxious about all this lately, tho. i used to buy aftermarket carts, but i was in office max a while back and all the shelf slots that used to have them had a little sign about "WTO blahblahblah". you can still get a lot of them on the internet.
i have an hp laser that sometimes refuses to accept aftermarket carts, even though it does it in wording that makes it seem like you could get them to work if you make a call to tech support. having talked to hp tech support in the past, i would rather spend my last dime than do that.
back in the day you could refill anything, these days they have 'ink lever indicators' which actually just calculate when to cut you off from the ink supply.

i wish there was an open source for printer firmware, and an easy way to update. it would solve all this wasteful nonsense.

[Gin]

30. I have a Cannon MP560 and I like it...has 5 cartridges....bought replacement

ink off Amazon at a good price...used to fill my own but it got too messy...so far so good with the cheaper option...I print pictures and see no difference.

I have had cannon's for years...got the new one for scanning and wireless..

Cannon offers tech support once your warranty expires, for 10.00...it's a one day deal, but you can call them 20 times for that 10.00.

[littlewolf]

29. brother 5240 mono laser works great for me

wireless printer .....

[jmowreader]

33. Get nothing but a laser

I've got a Brother HL-5240 (which has PostScript, and you probably don't need that) and it's nice--I can print all year on one cartridge, and I print a lot.

The low-end Brother would be okay for you, and HP makes some REAL sweet lasers. (I would love to have one of their color lasers--turns out Mac OS X has a PostScript interpreter in the OS, so you can plug in any printer and get nice output.)

[alfredo]

34. My wife wants me to go color, but then that means inkjet

or big money for a color laser.