Considering a laser printer... printer poll

[Jerboy]

For the last few years, I have been using an Epson Stylus 800 or something. I do ocassional color prints, but I'm considering a laser printer since I do alot of text printing. Does this look pretty good? It also works as a photocopier and color scanner. How about this one?. It is just like the first one, except it has fax on it.

 

[DoOLiE11]

my roomate is lookin at the same printer....

seems like a good choice

i'm using a HP g55 right now

does the job and its pretty fast

 

[Jerboy]

<< my roomate is lookin at the same printer....

seems like a good choice

i'm using a HP g55 right now

does the job and its pretty fast >>



Scanner is usually seldom used so, it is vulnerable to becoming a table riser than anything. I really like the features on that Brother, because it can spare these nice features on top of being a printer and costs same or less than equal speed printer-only machine from hp.. Is it too good to be true?

 

[Sunner]

I shun anything that tries to combine lots of functions.

In my experience, that allways end up with a product thats a jack of all trades, but master of none.

Or to put it another way, it can do alot, but it sucks at it all.

Of course thats just been my experience with some HP and Xerox stuff, maybe Brother's is good.

 

[astroview]

I second Sunner's statement, its not great at any of its tasks.

I'd go buy one of those cheap new Laser printers. Of course no color with that but you do get nice B&W. But there are some sub $1000 color laser printers now I believe.

 

[chansen]

I'd say get a Lexmark E210 or E320 if you can afford the upgrade, and a Canon LED scanner. They have a new one that's USB2-compatible - should kick butt.

Then, do your photocopies in software. The only down side is that you don't have a document feeder, but you can get better scanners with that option, too.

For faxing, I've had great success with FaxTalk Messenger Pro. It doubles as a answering machine, and auto-negotiates incoming calls. If you only need fax, there's a ton of programs available.

I've tried Brother multifunctions before, but not those ones. As was already said, they did everything, but did it poorly.

Regards,
Craig

 

[cleverhandle]

I can vouch that Canon's multifunction offerings are no different from the rest of these reports - they fare poorly in all functions under more than minimal use. Unless you really do a lot of color printing, I would recommend a cheap B/W laser like HP's 1200 series (~$350 I think) alongside a decent color inkjet. That gives you the best of both worlds for about $600. For me, I do so little color printing that I would just connect the inkjet via USB when I needed it and hide it somewhere otherwise. The 1200's cartridges give it a pretty high cost per page, but still better than an inkjet, plus faster and quieter. It also has built in PostScript support and excellent Linux drivers if that's at all a concern to you.

 

[BuckNaked]

I think Sunner hit the nail on the head with his statement...


<< Or to put it another way, it can do alot, but it sucks at it all. >>


I decided my best option was a used laser... I got a used but like new HP LaserJet 4 with about 7200 total pages printed on it for $75. It included an extra 4MB DIMM and the PostScript 2 module. I grabbed 2 extra 8MB DIMMS for about $15 and the thing works great. HP 4 is built like a tank and spare parts are easy to come by if you ever need anything. There is a ton of them listed on fleebay or check here refurbed Laserjets. I have never done business with these guys so I can't vouch for there reputation.

Dave

 

[cholley]

it really depends on what you need to print and the volume you need to print.
volume printing is best done on laser due to cost per page but the finished product is not very durable, if you have ever put pages in plastic sleeves and hat the text stick to the plastic you know what i mean.
in the printing process resin dust is melted on to the surface of the paper so thats where the image/text is - on the surface, with ink jet the ink is absorbed into the paper making it part of the page rather than on the surface

 

[Jerboy]

<< I'd say get a Lexmark E210 or E320 if you can afford the upgrade, and a Canon LED scanner. They have a new one that's USB2-compatible - should kick butt.

Then, do your photocopies in software. The only down side is that you don't have a document feeder, but you can get better scanners with that option, too.

For faxing, I've had great success with FaxTalk Messenger Pro. It doubles as a answering machine, and auto-negotiates incoming calls. If you only need fax, there's a ton of programs available.

I've tried Brother multifunctions before, but not those ones. As was already said, they did everything, but did it poorly.

Regards,
Craig >>



I'm not looking for top of the line everything. The Brother I'm looking can do photocopying and faxing without intervening with a computer. Who'd want to go to computer everytime they want to photocopy something? This is like hp multi-fuction inkjet except it's a laser printer and can only do B&W. The printer is 600x600, scanner 300x600 with 1200x1200 using interpolation(something like that). I played around with it at Office Depot. So far it feels pretty good. My concern is reliability and maintenance cost. I'd like to have a seprate scanner, but it's not worth the space it uses.

 

[JoPalm]

I've used 2 Brother Laser printers for the last 5 years. Well one for 4 years then I got a faster one . Works great.