(OT) Printer

[David]

Hi,

Can anyone recommend a reliable all-in-one printer, (hopefully) one that does not 'read' cartridge serial numbers to enable the use of compatibles ?

Thanks

David

[Tim Watts]

Laser or inkjet? I assume you mean injet when you said "cartridge" - but...

[Muddymike]

I use an Epson BX300F which is happy with £4.00 cartridges I buy from a market stall.

Mike

[David]

I'm not that bothered, either way as long as it can reproduce colour and is relatively small, not like an office printer.

Thanks

David

[Huge]

There is no such device that meets your specification.

[John Rumm]

Samsung CLX 3305 (or 3305FN if you want fax and network connectivity).

Its a colour laser - so cheap to run (compared to an inkjet), no clogging, head cleaning etc to worry about, and produces remarkably decent looking photographic output even on plain paper. A full set of toners will set you back the cost of three sets of inkjet carts, but they will print twenty times the pages.

[Nightjar]

The only time that should be a problem is if you are refilling ink cartridges yourself. If you buy a compatible cartridge that is listed by the vendor as suitable for your printer, there is no reason to expect it will not work.

The things to watch for are that there is a delay between a new cartridge type coming out and the compatibles becoming available and that Epson fit their cartridges with chips with that have hidden features. The result of the second is that compatibles that have been working perfectly well on previous printers won't work on a newer model, even though it takes the same Epson ink cartridge. There is then a delay before a revised version of their chip that will work is available from the compatible manufacturers. Neither is a problem unless you want the very latest model of printer.

Colin Bignell

[David]

Thanks John, sounds ideal.

David

[David]

Thanks Mike,

There are a few peeps that have trouble with carts not being recognised though.

David

[tony sayer]

We've just scrapped the Canon Inkjet we had purely on the high running costs, the carts were tiny and hardly lasted anytime at all.

We now have the HP 8600 on the network. It has its faults and throws a wobbly with paper feeding sometimes, but very cheap on running and carts are a decent refill-able size!...

[David]

Thanks Colin,

I have been having a lot of trouble with the Lexmark Prospect SE Pro 208.

The device states that the cartridges are empty when they are not, replacement compatibles did work then stopped, now the bleeding thing says that there is a problem with the printhead even if the original carts are put back in .... It reads the cart serial number and records the useage.

I cannot even scan a bleeding document now, I'm currently waiting for 'support' to respond.

I only print about 50 sides a year, if that.

Thanks

David

[David]

(snip)

Thanks Tony,

sounds good, we usually go for HP, but were seduced by the 5 year warranty and 'XL' carts that came with the Lexmark.

Most of the printing I've done seem to be test pages :-(

David

[ss]

I just recently bought a HP 1050 just basic but does the job for me. £35 at Tesco. One thing I always check for on google or Utube is if the cartridges can be refilled as I do my own. I probably get around 6 carts worth using tesco ink for around £6. You should also be able to google if you can get a work around for any chips.

[Tim Watts]

That looks interesting.

I am looking for a colour laser all-in-one and HP are getting worse reviews for poor build quality recently.

This - or it's fat sister the CLX-6220FX that handles duplex are both interesting.

John - have you run the scanning on the CLX 3305 from a linux client over the network? If that doesn't work, it then will have to have scan2smtp email which the CLX-6220FX *I think* does, but the 3305 does not mention in the web specs.

Cheers, Tim

[fred]

In article , tony sayer writes

Have you had any problems with the HP Control Centre software over the network?

We got an HP 4500 series all in one networked colour inkjet (HP 4550 I think) to use as a low volume backup to a colour laser and it has been a total ball-ache.

First, the software takes an absolute age to install, in these days,

30mins per machine (3 networked plus another roaming lappy on wifi) is totally unnecessary and out of order for a few drivers and a bit of support software.

Second, I chose it so we could all use the scanner as a networked resource but the software/driver is so badly written that each machine grinds to a halt for 5s every minute while it polls (yes polls) the printer for some reason (100% cpu for the duration, known bug, no fix planned). To avoid this meant installing the printer on USB on one machine with only remote printing available to all machines and scanning only on one.

Third, it is a budget model but everything is soooo slow, it seems to wait about, thinking for ages before it does anything. Press a scan button and you think it is broken as it takes so long to open the scanning popup on the connected computer.

In summary, absolutely dire although compatible (print head included) carts are available at quite reasonable prices.

To modify the old IBM adage I figured no-one would get fired for buying an HP printer but I have felt like binning it more than once and paying the loss myself. In my eyes they have slipped badly from the Laserjet 4 days and I wouldn't have one again.

John's suggestion of the Samsung looks interesting but there doesn't appear to be any compatible toner available yet, hopefully it will be available soon. 45quid for a 1000 page colour cart means it's not quite in Dell 1320C territory yet (now discontinued and not an all in one I know).

[Mike Barnes]

David :

Go for a laser instead. I have a Xerox 6015N and it's very good.

[mark]

I bought a Samsung Colour Laser, about £130 at the time. I do very little printing so its suits me. Beware: The colour toner cartridges supplied are only about a third full. The cost of replacing them totals around £200, or it did when I did the calcs. Also be wary of pressing the wrong button or you'll get a full page full colour test print.

mark

[John Rumm]

With the 3305 you can get the carts for around £35/each - so about £140 a full set. The Mono cart is bigger and does about 1500 pages (colour 1k).

It does ship with "starter" (i.e. not full) carts - but they are not taking the pee quite as much on those since they are half full and good for 700/500 mono/colour.

[John Rumm]

Not tried the Linux drivers for it, but since I have a customer's machine sat behind me as I type I could give it a go if you want...

There is not a massive amount of sophistication available on its front panel - but looking at the (non network) version I have here it has Scan to PC, and Scan to USB (i.e. a flash drive plugged straight in to the printer) - its probably not got the UI sophistication on the printer to make tapping in email addresses easy.

The windows software allows typical TWAIN style scanning and "pull" scans. I expect (but have not verified yet) that it can also push a scan to a CIFS/SMB network folder on the network version.

(I have a feeling if I were buying one for me, I would go for a slightly posher model than the base one)

[John Rumm]

IME inkjets are a PITA for that volume... you use most of your ink unclogging the thing!