I still have a Dataproducts B600 lineprinter, which I used to use for software development at home. It's a band printer which does
600 lines/minute, and mine is in an accoustic case just like:
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's actually a faster 1000-2000 lines/minute version, although it looks pretty identical.)
Hardly ever use it anymore, but not plucked up the courage to actually get rid of it yet. In terms of service life, mine is effectively brand new, as it hasn't even had 10 boxes of paper through it during its life, which is what it would expect to get through in 1 - 2 days of normal use.
That's becoming less of a problem as more of them offer network interfaces. If you can find something that works under Linux, it will generally have a standard printer interface to it (PCL or PS) that any sensible driver can deal with, you're not stuck with one of these &deity;-forsaken "WinModem" printers that renders bitmaps on the host PC.
I'd have to check but I'm pretty sure that I've only just put the 3rd toner cartridge (long life version) into my LJ1200 and the page count wa= s about 25,000 when I did that. Even if it's the 4th cartridge thats still= about 8,000 pages each.
Slight aside, but a few months ago I came to use my old Epson inkjet and found all the LEDs on the front flashing, and the printer totally out of action. Every permutation of powering down and pressing buttons I tried had no effect.
According to Epson's support site: "When all the lights flash, that indicates a maintenance request. If your printer is under warranty contact the EPSON Connection Technical Support or an authorized Epson servicer for assistance."
Bugger, I thought - it's a pretty old printer and there's no way it's worth paying anyone to repair; so into the bin it was going.
However, I kept googling for a bit longer, and came up with the link below. I described an incredibly convuluted procedure for pressing buttins, switching on/off etc, which I tried. It did the trick and the printer works as well as it did before.
Apparently the lock-up is a feature built in by Epson: they reckon that by the time the printer has processed X number of pages or Y number of ink carts or is Z months old, it needs servicing. So kindly they lock it down for you until you acquiesce and take it to an Epson dealer.
Bastards! I *cannot* believe they can get away with that. Certainly the last Epson I'm ever buying...
But beware buying a new cheap mono laser that takes expensive toner cartridges. I bought an HP LaserJet 1018 very cheaply on a special offer at Staples - £49 against the usual street price of £79 to £99.
Genuine HP toner cartridges cost £72 at Staples and £63 at PC World. So down to Cartridge World and I got a remanufactured toner cartridge for a mere £29.
Wonderful, except that the toner is grey, not black, and it has the consistency of sand. Not much of it will actually stay on the page, and if you try printing half tones (photographs) as part of your documents they suffer from severe banding.
Yes, I took the cartridge back and got a replacement from a different batch. It was just as bad.
Having bought a genuine HP toner cartridge for £63 the printer again works beautifully and copes well with text and photographs. The toner is black rather than grey and it all adheres to the page rather than needing to be vacuumed out of the printer and off the shelf that the laser printer sits on.
I also have an older HP LaserJet 4 which has none of these problems. It is totally reliable, accepts cheap off-brand toner cartridges and the powerfully hot fuser roller makes sure that the toner sticks firmly to the paper. As long as you don't mind the toner being slightly grey, the results with cheap toner are just fine.
So I would recommend getting a good secondhand office laser printer if you want to use cheap toner. If you really must buy a new cheap personal laser printer, resign yourself to always having to use the manufacturer's genuine (expensive) toner cartridges.
I have exactly the same issue - the vast majority of output in my house is B&W but we do have occasional need for colour. So binning my Epson Stylus Photo 760 inkjet in favour of a monochrome laserjet isn't an option; I wouldn't mind running them in parallel but for the fact that I know the inkjet would always be bunged up every time I wanted to use it if that was only fortnightly, say.
I don't know much about laser printers, especially colour ones - but if I bought a colour laser printer as a replacement for the inkjet, and continued using it >95% for monochrome work, would the consumables work out far more expensive (for B&W output) than if I bought a monochrome printer? Or does that depend on the printer? Are colour models inherently any less reliable?
That varies greatly according to brand. My Epson Stylus inkjets have always suffered from some degree of clogging - they have fixed print heads and interchangeable ink tanks, and cleaning the print heads is a time consuming rigmarole that wastes expensive ink.
My HP DeskJet and Lexmark inkjets have an easy solution to clogging. If the print heads clog, pop out the cartridges and wipe the ink jets with a moist cloth. They work perfectly straight afterwards.
I'm not over enamoured by Epson either with their "chipped" cartridges. OK the HP LJ CP1515 also has chipped toner carts but there is a simple user accessable over ride...
I has some particularly stubborn ones in an HP 895Cxi, and they needed a wipe over with a cloth dampened in meths. After a couple of hesitant test pages, they worked fine.
Peter's LaserJet 1018 gives about the same number of pages per cartridge as mine. The HP cartridge is quite compact and is claimed to give 2000 A4 pages at average coverage. My first full cartridge lasted slightly longer than 2300.
What's annoying is that these cheap printers tend to come with a part filled cartridge, so you have to buy an expensive replacement quite quickly.
Why not run a test print every couple of days? I run an A3 photo through my Epson printer twice a week just to keep it all fluid. The last time I had to clean the nozzles was when I came back from three and a half weeks in the Caribbean - a small price to pay. ;-)
If they have three or four times as many of the components that are likely to fail, I think you can draw your own conclusions.
I bought an HP1022n a couple of years ago, and ordered a couple of toner cartridges with it. IIRC, they were £25 each direct from HP. However, the original cartridge hasn't run out yet. It's probably not the same cartridge as yours, although it lists a number of printer numbers just adjacent to 1018.
However, I've noticed a number of HP inkjet cartridges have gone up by about 50% as the pound has dropped over the last several months. That's actually stopped me buying an HP printer I was considering.
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