Grrr .... printers !!!

[Brian Gaff (Sofa 2)]

Yes laser seem to be almost as cheap these days, though I only have a black and white one which suits me as I'm printing stuff for others to read out. Brian

[Andy Burns]

I've got a huge colour, dual bin, duplex colour laser, which takes forever to warm up, and is fussy about paper feeding ... also a mono laser smaller than a shoebox that can easily be moved onto a shelf out of the way when not needed.

[Steve Walker]

Find a cheap laser printer. It'll just work when you want it and the toner will last you many years at that rate of useage.

We had exactly the same problem. Our current printer is an office grade colour laser that had only printed around 2500 pages, that we bought as "spares and repairs" for £2.20 on Ebay - it turned out to be fully functional, just needing new toner and a new power lead. Third party toner is less than £80 for a set and lasts us (with much heavier usage) at least a couple of years. Way, way cheaper than new inkjet cartridges every month or two!

SteveW

[charles]

Beware of cheap toner if you want accurate colour printing. My (second hand) laser came with "compatible" toner cartridges; once I replaced them with the maufacturer's own, decent colours became possible.

[DJC]

Laser

Not a good idea for occasional use, the solid ink is a wax that needs to be kept heated for use. If you only use occasionally and turn the printer off then, just like an inkjet, there is a lot of waste as it needs to go through a cleaning cycle on start up.

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[The Natural Philosopher]

To be fair my HP laser jet is reasonably calibratable via a web interface to get more accurate color rendition with 3rd party cartriges. But as you say, they differ.

[DJC]

If leaving a laser switched off for a month or more it is best to release the pressure on the rollers? usualy using the 'envelope' setting does that. Otherwise there will be a flat spot on the rollers; which may recover after a bit of use albeit with a lot of clunking sounds and possibly jammed or misaligned paper.

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[tabbypurr]

Solid ink (wax) gave great colour, but was crazy expensive on consumables (and marketed as cheap on consumables) and the print was of course fragile.

NT

[Roger Hayter]

What about dye sublimation? I gather that is still used by some professionals, and is supposed to be relatively UV stable. I don't know about mechanical strength. Is this something different from "solid ink"?

[The Natural Philosopher]

What utter codswallop

There is no 'pressure on the roller's and the envelope setting is entirely software

[Dave Liquorice]

rollers;

Inclined to agree. From my LJ1200 which has a firmware date code of

20010214 (14 Feb 2001?) and probably really is nearly 20 years old and had a rest in a cupboard for several years:

Total Pages Printed: 21377 Pages Jammed in Printer: 31 Pages Mispicked In Printer: 23

I think that varies by printer. Pretty sure the colour laser does alter some of the roller spacings between "thick" and "thin" material settings. Set to normal paper thick stuff won't feed, set to thick and printed quality on thin stuff drops.

[Andrew]

My Canon Pixma 1200 sometimes isn't used for months and it then has to go through the head-cleaning routine for ages before printing, which is the main annoyance. Also during periods of inactivity the paper sitting in the slightly off-vertical feeder tray tends to curl up with the changes in humidity requiring a few minutes with a hot dry iron while the head is cleaning.

I currently have a 7-day shop B&W cartride which prints fine but the PC thinks the cartridge is 'empty'. Time will tell.

I almost bought a Brother B&W laser in Staples and it was wasn't much bigger than a shoe box.

TBH it is easier to take a memory stick to the library and pay them to print the few occasional pages that I need.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Set an alarm to force you to print something every few weeks? But my Epsom usually responds to cleaning. Although may take a while after cleaning for the fresh ink to soak the heads properly.

Thing with a cheap laser is the actual printer may fail of its own accord even with little use - that happened to my cheap Samsung mono. Making it just as expensive overall as an inkjet and cheap carts.

[Jethro_uk]

It did cross my mind (this being a Linux house with a 24/7 server, a simply cron job could be set up). However this is the real world, so:

1) When I actually do want to print something, the cartridges will be empty ... 2) The additional wear and tear causes the printer to pack up when it's actually needed (less likely I grant you).

[Martin Brown]

It is only if you want photoreal printing that calibration really matters. Ordinary colour graphics you can get away with murder but if you print flesh tones with either a green or purple cast it looks bad.

Not had that problem myself. The clone cartridges for the Dell are pretty good. The only problem I did encounter once was poor adherence to certain smooth media types that were 120gsm card and cheapest clone toners. I solved it by using slightly more expensive ones (a full CMYK set still costing less than a single official OEM cartridge).

[Martin Brown]

HP inkjets do seem to be more tetchy than other brands. Canon seem to have mastered the intermittent printing problem more than most. All bets are off if you keep it in a south facing window over the radiator.

You were unlucky then. My cheap Samsung ML2550 mono printer is still going almost 15 years after I bought it. The duplex mechanism still works too even though it sounds like it is about to fail at any moment. It is ugly and noisy but it gets the job done.

[Dave W]

I think you have to distinguish between 'remanufactured' and 'compatible'. The former may well be filled with different toner to the dregs already in there, but the latter should be consistent with the other colour cartridges.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No,they are not.

Compatibles use whatever they use and each one seems to be different.

Having been a little involved with printing, both by laser and by 4 color etc, I can assure you that colour repeatability is amongst the really hard things to achieve.

It's not uncommon to have to do a trial plate make if you want real color photo reproduction.

[R D S]

There's no accounting for it in my opinion. I've skipped a bunch of injkets over the years for the problems you describe.

I tried to do more with lasers but they have problems of their own, spotty streaky printing so having to remove and clean drums. I've a Brother HLsummat on the floor in front of me that has been barely used but I can't get a decent page out of. (Drum page yield in my experience is vastly reduced in low usage as I think just starting the printer up knocks a percentage off its life so for the odd page you won't be getting the documented 1000s)

Anyway, currently I've a Oki 5650 if i'm going to print a decent sized run of stuff.

And 2 Brother MFCs for lighter use, one always seems to need it's heads cleaning despite being in daily use, And another I got for a tenner from eBay, sometimes goes a couple of months without use and prints like a new machine. (same non oem inks)

I think laser or inkjet, if they are of a mind, they'll f*ck you over.

[tabbypurr]

It's like most things, if you know your subject you can gets lots of printing for next to nothing. Laser carts are affected by ammonia, so if you have a litter tray don't be surprised to see the cart not last well. Low use carts are subject more to doctor blade failure IME.

NT