Printer technology…or why does my printer use so much ink?

[DaveTN]

It seems every time I turn around my printer is flashing “!!!!!†and I’m spending fifty bucks on printer cartridges.

Anything new on the techology horizon to get this cost down?

[dralarms]

Pen and paper.

[DaveTN]

Pen and paper.

What’s this pen and paper you speak of?

[gjohnsoniv]

Nope, how else are the companies supposed to make their money?

[TripleDigitRide]

My fairly new Kodak printer doesn't seem to go through ink quite as quickly as my previous printers. The ink has been cheaper, too. Still not as good as I think current technology could allow, but who knows.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch using Tapatalk 2

[Oh Shoot]

It's simply the way the profit model works on printers. For the most part the device is cheap for its capabilities, the supplies over time provide the real profit.

I'm still using a ten or twelve year old HP inkjet, was less than $200 then. Probably have spent 10 times or more than that on carts. Still been quite the bargain all in all.

- OS

[mikegideon]

Personal color laser printers are cheap now. You just need to do some research. We kicked all the inkjets out the door awhile back.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I quit using inkjets, but used em a lot from the very first 300 dpi slow as molasses HP black'n'white inkjet circa 1986. At that time, if you needed 300 dpi on a budget, it was either that $600 or $800 hp inkjet or a $2000+ apple 300 dpi laser writer.

I eventually liked epson color inkjets a little better than HP color inkjets, but usage pattern had got to the point of not printing at all for a month or three then suddenly needing to print hundreds of pages, then months more of dis-use. Every time I need to use the inkjets it took a long time to coddle the printer and more than likely the ink tanks had dried out just sitting. Also needed special expensive paper to get a high quality output.

HP color laser costs a lot more, but the toner doesn't go dry and it will print on just about any kind of paper. After it sits un-used for a few months it will spit out 1 or 100 pages just fine any time you hit the "print" button.

If you do a lot of black'n'white printing and not much color and want to minimize expense, you can get a cheap as dirt black'n'white laser printer for most of your work and keep a cheap color inkjet for the color jobs. Nowadays the network-capable printers don't cost a lot more than other types. The kind with an ethernet jack on them. Hook up a network printer to your router and then print from any computer attached to the router. Easy and convenient.

[Glenn]

Second the recommendation for laser printers. Unless you need color, get something like a brother 5450dn. Under $200. Network capable, auto duplexing, around 30 pages a minute for about 2¢ a page in consumables

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Second the recommendation for laser printers. Unless you need color, get something like a brother 5450dn. Under $200. Network capable, auto duplexing, around 30 pages a minute for about 2¢ a page in consumables

Oh yeah, the "d" part of "dn". duplex networked. Its worth a few more bucks if ya gotta spend the money anyway, to get a duplex printer and they are not that expensive any more. The duplex ones will automatically print on the front and back of pages which saves paper and avoids having to manually run pages thru twice when you are printing brochures, booklets, manuals.

[jgradyc]

Get a laser printer. The inkjets dry out pretty fast. I'd recommend a B&W laser printer if you don't need color. If you do need color, I'd set the default print to B&W and only use color when you absolutely must have it. I have an old Samsung ML-2010 that uses $30 cartridges that last for about 4,000-5,000 pages. It's toner is powder so it never dries out. I think I paid $60 for it refurbished about 6 years ago. My current cartridge is over a year old and still printing fine. My wife has a newer color laser. We just ignore the low toner warnings for color and only replace the black toner cartridge. Sometimes the color is awful, though. I'd get the black-only laser printer if it were up to me. If you want something badly enough to get it printed in color, you can email it to Office Depot, Office Max, Staples, etc.

Edited June 2, 2012 by jgradyc

[Sam1]

+1 on that

if you don't print off a lot of pictures just get a color laser printer. (like above) I had a Samsung ML-1740 (B&W only) for 3 years and it never used up the toner that came with the printer... total was $70, gave it to a friend in 2010 and she is still using the same toner. switched over to a dell color laser in 2010 and all the toners that came with it have at least 50% remaining. Think it only cost me $175 but can't remember exactly.

The color lasers work fantastic for everything except photographs, there are some available that will do nice photos, but they're pretty expensive. You can pick up color lasers for $100 or so now, but when you look at them take note of the cartridges and see how much the replacement remans or generics will cost. Some of them are as low as $20/each and some are over $100 each depending on the model

[Sam1]

just did a quick search on tigerdirect and this is the first one that popped up, they may have better deals, but samsung lasers are pretty good quality

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7220553&CatId=2712

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Those are some pretty crazy prices for a color laser.

I'm on my second HP color laser and haven't been dissatisfied though there are less expensive ones. Print quality for photos is in the eye of the beholder and last I heard expensive paper and expensive 6+ color inkjets can make the best pictures if you have the money and patience.

I buy cheap "hard glossy" paper from staples and the HP color laser makes a pretty good looking print for my tastes, but maybe somebody else would want better. The "hard core glossy" paper is the stuff so slick you can't effectively mark on it with pen or pencil. Takes a pretty good color image considering the cost.

Edited June 3, 2012 by Lester Weevils

[jgradyc]

Color prints made with inkjet or laser used to fade badly over the years. I don't know if they still do, but I'd have any important color pictures printed at Office Max, Staples, etc. Regardless of the cost of color lasers, the cost of color cartridges is still high. My wife's old Samsung CLP 510 costs $153 + tax and shipping to replace the toner. That's why I prefer a B&W laser printer. I'd bet you could find one refurbished for less than $100 online. Either way, both the color and B&W laser printers will be far more economical than an inkjet. The inkjets are so expensive to use that vendors literally give them away in promotional packages because they know they'll quickly recoup the cost in selling you inkjet cartridges.

EDITED: I just did a quick eBay search and found several monochrome laser printer for under $100, including a clone of my old monochrome Samsung ML2010. I'd suggest buying from a vendor with a return policy instead of eBay, but you can always use an eBay search to ID the printer that you want.

Edited June 3, 2012 by jgradyc

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Tech changes so fast and I only study up on it when I need to buy a new printer, so my info is a little over 2 years out of date. May not be anywhere accurate any more. Was of the impression that hp toner is pretty color-fast but wouldn't expect it to hold color for decades. Maybe it would hold color pretty good in a picture book not often exposed to light. I have some 10+ year old color laser prints in picture albums that don't seem to have faded but maybe they have. In principle it ought to be "fairly color fast" because it is fine colored plastic powder that is melted into the paper. If concerned with longevity you also want to get paper that is unlikely to yellow. Sometimes it is called "acid free" but I think there are acid free papers that will yellow, they just take longer to yellow, then there are "archival quality" papers. I don't go looking for such, just buzzwords a cousin tells me.

The cousin is a real good pro photographer who actually made a decent living at it his entire life. Been a few years since I picked his brain on the topic, but he was of the opinion that black and white darkroom prints are the closest to true archival quality, with good odds of lasting 100 years or more. He does some of his photography with expensive 8X10 bellows film cameras. Maybe he has one bigger than that. He showed me giant b&w darkroom prints of close-up desert landscapes, in perfect focus from a few feet away out to the mountains, and you can take a magnifying glass to the giant print and see details, almost count the grains of sand in the foreground.

Anyway last time we talked he was using agfa (edit: remembered the name wrong think it may have been hasselblad) 2.25" format image sensor cameras for digital work, and printing on an epson inkjet that costs thousands of dollars. He said with the correct paper that system can make a picture that will last a good while. But when making high-dollar family portraits for rich folk to hang on the wall for decades, he still advises b&w large format film. Or at least he did last time we talked.

So unless one wishes to descend into the rabbit hole, one must settle on the level of quality and longevity which one can afford.

The old tektronix color wax printers were considered real vivid images for awhile, for ad proofs and such, but dunno if they are in the running anymore. They were expensive. That line of printers are still being made but under a different brand name which I can't recall at the moment.

Maybe I'm reporting old info, but some of the inexpensive brands of home/office color laser were spec'd 1200 dpi, but featured fixed-size dots. Because dots can't sit on-top of each other, if you want a wide color gamut composed of cells made out of mixed patterns 3 colors plus black dots, with fixed-size dots, it can get noticeably pixellated even with 1200 dpi. For instance with a 2X2 grid for 600 dpi "color cells", you would have a max of 4 shades of magenta, or a max of 4 shade of cyan, or a max of 4 shades yellow, or 4 shades gray. Plus the permutations of mixed assortments of 4 dots containing 4 colors. That is a pretty narrow color gamut at effective 600 dpi. You could use 4X4 cells for 300 dpi and the color gamut is still rather small, 16 shades of each color plus the mixed permutations.

Maybe it is just BS marketing, but the HP color lasers have "ColorRET" tech, 600 dpi but they claim to be able to modulate the size of the dots, resulting in a better effective dpi with a wider color gamut. It doesn't compare to a real expensive photo printer but doesn't do that bad a job on ultra-white hard-surface glossy paper. And the hard-surface paper isn't especially expensive, basically the same kind of paper used for "slick" high quality picture magazines.

Edited June 3, 2012 by Lester Weevils

[SonnyCrockett]

I bought a Lexmark.......one of them all in ones for my home office

Ink is 5 bucks and lasts me months before swithing

[mcurrier]

Continuous ink system, about $39 new on eBay.

[ironsniper1]

I got a old hp laserjet 4 printer I use it's awesome and they last forever

Edited June 4, 2012 by luke9511

[Sam1]

The old tektronix color wax printers were considered real vivid images for awhile, for ad proofs and such, but dunno if they are in the running anymore. They were expensive. That line of printers are still being made but under a different brand name which I can't recall at the moment.

They still have wax printers available, we've switched a few of the office printers over to them that do a lot of publications and other things that need to be higher quality. Photos and graphics on them are amazing but the Xerox machines that we use are pretty high dollar, I think even the smaller ones are pretty expensive. The wax blocks themselves are pretty cheap, but printers are way expensive over a color laser.

[peejman]

What settings are you using? Do your print-outs really need to be "top quality"? My printer at home stays set to "fast draft" quality. While not publication quality, they're perfectly fine for my purposes. It think it uses less than half the ink per page as "normal".