The "cheap" colour laser printer is just a mirage. All they have done is loaded the price of the toner cartridges and subsidised the initial cost of the printer, knowing you will have to spend far more on toner than you could have believed. The toner cartridges that come with the printer are less than 25% filled and so will very soon need to be replaced with the mind-blowingly expensive full ones.
It's the same principle as buying a "cheap" £40 all-in-one inkjet printer/scanner/fax/copier and then facing a bill of £60 for a set of ink cartridges within a couple of weeks. Been there, done that.
My last bill for ink for a basic Dell printer was just north of £60. The printer (an "all in one" Lexmark clone) came free with a PC, but would normally have cost only about £40.
A warning came up within a week that new cartridges were needed, but I kept them going until the ink ran out two months later, and only then replaced them.
It was £58 to fill the car up and £62 (colour and black) to buy ink cartridges for our HP all-in-one. The fifty eight pounds for fuel will normally last me about 2 weeks, back and forward to work. The sixty two pounds for ink will also last for about two weeks because we use the machine to fax, copy and print all our work stuff.
So it is actually cheaper to fill the car with fuel, than it is to buy the ink to refill the printer.
What do you mean getting? Lets say unleaded is =A31/l or 0.1p/ml. Lets a= lso assume a cartridge holds 25ml of ink so that is 0.25p for the ink. How much are the cheapest cartridges again? Lets say =A32.50 for 25ml or 10p= /ml or =A3100/l.
snipped-for-privacy@o2.co.uk wrote in news:e39578a0-f95b-45ac-8d6d-a8443a671084 @s50g2000hsb.googlegroups.com:
My experience of HP printers is good - but then I only run old ones!
I have several HP LaserJet 6P mono laser printers - v. good as a low volume personal printer (P = personal, geddit?). Original toner cartridges (well, I think they're actually combined toner + drum) can be bought on eBay for under £10. You should be able to pick up the printer also on eBay for under £20.
For colour, I have a HP Color LaserJet 4500. A big old beast to be sure, and the consumable costs were once v. high. But now it's obsolete, a complete set of toners (C+M+Y+K) can be picked up for £40 and will last years (?) in a home/home office setup. OK, you will still have to budget for the occasional drum or fuser, but again these are now afordable and will last years.
I fitted the LJ 4500 with the maximum memory + Ethernet network interface (embedded printserver) + duplex unit, all bought on eBay for a v. modest price. I run it as a networked wireless printer by connecting it to a wireless client device. A solid (very solid!) product indeed. It does fail the Wife Acceptance Factor though, on account of its size :(
The best part is - it only cost £10...
More recently, I bought a HP Photosmart D7460 inkjet for my father in law. Good quality photo printing, Ethernet + wireless (802.11g + Bluetooth) networking. Cost £66 direct from HP. Ink cartridges (of which there are six!) are expensive, but I also bought a 3rd party 'continuous ink supply system' with external reservoirs on eBay. That should see out FIL's lifetime use...
We've tried all of them and have found that HP All-in-One (don't remember model No.) works the best for our needs. Admittedly we go through more black ink than we do the colour cartridge, but it still costs a lot to keep the thing going.
Thanks heavens for "Cartridge World"
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, or we'd go bust paying for the ink on our invoices. :-)
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