I have been looking for a cheap printer to replace the gummed up inkjet my wife used to use before we bought her a laptop. I now get irregular e-mails requesting that such and such letter/recipe/birth/marriage/death etc. attachment should be printed on the office m/c.
I don't leave my PC switched on so networking won't work and she works at the other end of the house so picking up copy is inconvenient.
I confidently expected dot matrix printers to be dirt cheap by now and half promised one as a birthday pressie. 150ukp they must be joking!
For 70ukp I can get an entry level laser inc. usb cable. Is there something I should know?
Dot matrix is a bit old hat these days, I don't know why you would want one of those! But the cheap HP mono lasers for as you say around 70 quid are good for the price and work well in my experience. If you want something a bit more fancy, if you double the budget you can get a networked colour HP CP1515n laser printer for around £150...
Wouldn't dream of using anything but a cheap laser - so long as B&W is all you need.
Used to use one at work (an earlier version of the current cheapest one at Dabs, the Samsung ML-2240 Mono Laser Printer) - did thousands of pages without any significant problems.
To be expected. They are now a low volume, specialist market (used only when one wants multipart output, etc.)
I bought a Samsung for about 85 quid a couple of years ago (reduced from
160). I really bought it because it could do scanning and photocopying too, but occasionally print on it. Probably equivalent now to the basic model you're looking at. Seems fine but consumables are a little expensive...that's the area to research.
Blocked nozzles. Smears if new prints are handled before drying - or if old prints get even slightly damp. Slower than laser. More expensive per page. Generally need slightly better paper than lasers.
For less than 70ukp you could get an ex-office HP laserjet with a built-in network interface (so you both could use it) and access to cheap supplies of toner from remanufactured cartidges.
Try your local tip ( Ahem...waste recycling interface ). You should be able to take your pick of inkjet printers at a fiver a pop. Look out for the HP Deskjet printers that use black ink cartridges like the one pictured in the link below - they have an ink level indicator on them. More often than not the black ink cartridge is practically full.
The same that's wrong with a cheap laser. Expensive consumables. Lightweight components. Poor paper handling options. Proprietary drivers. Poor quality output.
Very few people will pay the price of a good printer. Nor will they appreciate the difference between a good printer and s**te.
Bought a cheapo Samsung laser from CPC because I was fed up with the ink costs of my Canon. Every time I needed it meant intensive cleaning - and most of my stuff doesn't *have* to have colour. It's done over 500 pages on the original fill and I've got some toner waiting to use which cost under 20 quid off Ebay - and should do twice as much.
eBay 260293631150 HP 4050, fast, reliable, built like the proverbial brick outbuilding and designed for many thousands of copies a month. One toner cartridge should last you a few years.
Yes monochrome lasers are very cheap these days. Been using an LJ1200 for years now it just works and produces nice clean crisp text that doesn't smudge or wash off in the rain.
Seriously looking at getting the HP Colour Laserjet CP1515n previously mentioned as No.1 Daughter is now doing much more homework that needs colour print outs and the Epson Stylus Photo 890 I have is very greedy on expensive and occasionally hard to come by ink. Not to mention the quality on ordinary paper is not that good.
Be aware that some of the cheaper end of the range printers are "host based" ie they rely on the host computer to do the grunt work. This almost invariably means that you must have it plugged into a windows machine.
Yes. Dot matrix are now only used in proffesional applications like printing thousands of fan fold stock pages on a heavy duty basis.
They are built to last, and to be extremeley cheap to run. Ribbons last years..and cost peanuts.
A cheap laser will pay for itself over an inkjet fairly quickly. I preer old but good HP stuff ex ebay.
The scale goes inkjet: ultra low capital cots, very high per page cost. Laser jet. Middling on both. Dot matrix. fairly high purchase, ultra low ongoing costs. Line printer (if they still exists) Ultra high purchase cost but best of all speed wise and per page costs.
I stopped using my ( several over the years ) Epson inkjet colour printers for mono work years ago - it's a PITA - not even used it for colour for about 2 months now ( a CX3200 ).
When I want to print photos or colour it almost always needs head cleaning and I can go through 2 new ink cartridges just to accomplish that ( not to mention the time & frustration it takes ). Obviously the more often it is used the less likely this is needed but I rarely have need for colour printing.
I use a networked HP LaserJet 5 with a jetdirect card and an additional sheet bin feeder and duplex unit plus additional memory. The standard paper tray holds 1 ream ( 250 sheets of A4 ) and the sheet bin feeder at least an additional ream depending on the paper weight. The toner cartridges at about £10 - £15 on ebay last ages and the last one I bought was a 92298X high capacity one for about £12 - good for 10,000 pages IIRC. You can sometimes pick these printers up on eBay for as little as £25 ( excluding the extras ). For cheap and reliable mono printing it's great.
The duplex unit also means you use about half as much paper and the printouts are half the weight and thickness - good for printing out big eBooks for ringbinding. These printers are real workhorses and as reliable as hell. They were quite expensive in their time just for the basic printer. It's my default printer on the network and as it has a jetdirect card, no other computers on my network need to be switched on to use it. Connected to my router.
I used to use a LaserJet 5 without sheet bin feeder and duplex unit but when those items became available on eBay already attached to a LJ5 I bought the complete unit, for £100 and sold my older LJ5 for £40 on eBay. Can't complain at that.
LaserJet 4's are almost as good. Choose your model carefully though - there are some 4's not up to the job.
BTW I have a few spare Jetdirect cards for these printers.
Re dot matrix:
I have an OKI Microline 193 - been in the loft for years unused. It has an A3 cut sheet feeder attached - very rare.
Dot matrix do have some advantages over all others though that's why I still have it. You can print on multipart stationary and you can ( with simple, DIY adoption ) use them to print Braille ( sp ) for the optically impaired.
I have a couple of other oddball DM printers stored in the garage too - can't remember the models now - maybe they should go to the tip, been there for years.
Get yourself an older LaserJet if you don't need to print multipart.
The other option is what I use. I have two (actually, several but I only use two) HP LaserJet 4M+ machines. 12ppm, networked, PostScript. Each has a large paper tray and a duplexer, and they (apart from the duplexers) cost penuts on eBay. They have required zero maintenance, and even genuine HP toners are quite cheap on eBay. All the major consumable components are part of the toner cartridge.
Yes, a bit big, but fine for me. I have a Xerox DocuPrint C20 (PostScript) for the occasional colour output. And they all work with Windows, OS/2 and FreeBSD.
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