Do people still buy inkjet printers?

[So]

*meekly raises hand*

It's a Brother something something that does B&W only and is going on about 10 years old. For ~$100 AR it's been dutiful and reliable. I have replaced the toner cartridge once.

Same here. I have a 6yo brother laser. I print, on average, a couple pages per day, sometimes bursts of large jobs, and have had to replace the toner cartridge ONCE, for $60 (the same as like two toner cartridges).

 

[PhoKingGuy]

I had this like 12 year old Okidata laser in college, that thing was a trooper. 25 dollar toners that lasted like 3k pages. It finally broke not too long ago and I replaced it with a canon multifunction.

I threw the okidata off the top of a 6 story parking structure. It exploded in a ball of toner dust

 

[Kaervak]

A laser printer would be nice, but I print so rarely it's not worth it. I'm still using the second printer I ever bought, a HP DeskJet 832c. I think it's about 12 years old. Steel bottom, heavy, definitely don't build inkjets like they used to. It usually takes me about 1.5-2.0 years to go through a black cart, no issues with the print head clogging either. HP nowadays though, I'd stay away from. Their drivers are ABSURD. Canon are pretty good though.

 

[Fear No Evil]

Laser all the way. I'm surprised they still make inkjets / bubblejets (think they're the same, or are they different?)

inkjet cartridges last a few weeks at most if not used, laserjets can last YEARS if more. Color lasers are also more consistent in quality. ink jets will print maybe 5 high quality prints then it goes downhill from there until the whole head/cartridge assembly is replaced and that will run you almost 100 bucks. Not worth it. Get her a color laser, it will have a bigger upfront cost but very low future cost to run. Avoid the HPs, their drivers are crap, especially the 3600 series. Crashes our print server all the time. :/

😕 WTF are you smoking and can you pass it around so we can all enjoy it? You can't believe they still make inkjets? There is no way a laser can come close to the quality of an inkjet photo printer. What do you think the massive Epson/HP/Canon printers are that artists around the world use to print their photos? Here's a hint, its not laser.

BTW.. Bubblejet is just Canon's term for inkjet. Now put down the crack pipe!

 

[MovingTarget]

I'd rather stick with my 16yr old dot matrix printer. Sure, the print quality may not be spectacular, but for most of my needs it just WORKS. Ink ribbons are cheap and so are the old-style paper with holes in teh sides. You can even get ones that have 4-color ribbons. I'd rather just have a high quality laser printer though. I've had inkjet/bubblejet printers as well over the years, but those things aren't worth their salt by far.

 

[dighn]

Who has a laser printer at home?

All my printers are laser. It's so much better for documents.

 

[cmf21]

I've had an HP 3150 all in one laser that I've used like crazy for years for just text. Toner cost like $15 for a couple of thousand pages plus this thing is a tank and has never had any problems. When this thing breaks, I think I'm going to get a Brother Wireless laser. Still use an older HP Color inkjet for pictures though.

 

[Dari]

I purchased my HP color full-duplex laser printer in June 2007 and have yet to change a single cartridge. Great printer.

 

[AdamK47]

Who has a laser printer at home?

Me.

 

[Imp]

applies.

Ya, that's retarded. My printer was $40, a Pixma cheapo, but the toner is about $60-$70 for a full refill... I know they have to make their money somewhere, but holy shit.

My co-worker just bought a$100 color laser, but the refills are like $70 a pop for the colors. No thank you...

 

[Leros]

I have two printers.

A Brothers b/w laser printer that I use for most stuff. It doesn't always give the best quality. It'll sometimes leave little spots or smears.

I have a color inkjet I use for when I need color or good quality (such as printing resumes).

 

[PliotronX]

A laser printer would be nice, but I print so rarely it's not worth it.

Laser is actually more suitable for seldom usage because toner is not wasted on flushing print heads after sitting for more than a day. I've had a Samsung ML-1710 for half a decade priced at just over a hundred bucks and I refilled the original cartridge with toner for twenty bucks once. Crisp text on any paper, not just specially coated. I personally won't buy an inkjet ever again.

 

[Modelworks]

That's fucking bullshit if the printer stops printing because of low toner/ink when there is clearly still stuff left. Printer manufacturers are some of the biggest con artists around.

Yep.
Lexmark is a big one at selling printers at cost but cartridges will make up for that loss.
Printers almost never have a way of telling how much ink is in the actual cartridge, instead they use a formula based on how much ink is in a full cartridge and how much data for that color has passed through its processor and assuming that is the ink level.

 

[Jeff7]

Yep.
Lexmark is a big one at selling printers at cost but cartridges will make up for that loss.
Printers almost never have a way of telling how much ink is in the actual cartridge, instead they use a formula based on how much ink is in a full cartridge and how much data for that color has passed through its processor and assuming that is the ink level.

I've heard that some makers of industrial tooling are like that. They sell you the tool holder for next to nothing, but then they make money by selling you the consumable cutters that go into the holders.

 

[Modelworks]

I've heard that some makers of industrial tooling are like that. They sell you the tool holder for next to nothing, but then they make money by selling you the consumable cutters that go into the holders.

Yeah, and the printer makers do another trick of only filling the cartridges part way that are included in the box.

Lexmark printer at walmart $35
Includes Lexmark #15 Color Ink cartridge which can also print B&W
Replacement cartridge $32


Nice of them to use up all 3 colors to print black.

quote from pcworld

At $22 per quarter-ounce, a Hewlett-Packard color ink-jet cartridge is more expensive, by weight, than imported Russian caviar.

 

[ShawnD1]

Laser is actually more suitable for seldom usage because toner is not wasted on flushing print heads after sitting for more than a day. I've had a Samsung ML-1710 for half a decade priced at just over a hundred bucks and I refilled the original cartridge with toner for twenty bucks once. Crisp text on any paper, not just specially coated. I personally won't buy an inkjet ever again.

That was another thing that pissed me off about ink printers. I had to use special printer paper.

If I try to print ink on a transparency, it doesn't work. I need to buy special transparencies that have little bits of paper embedded, which cost about 5x as much as regular transparencies. Ink printing doesn't work with tracing paper, nor does it work with loose-leaf paper. Ink also doesn't work on certain types of glossy paper.

Laser printers will print on anything. Lately I've been printing on spare unlined loose-leaf paper that I found in my basement. I've also printed on tracing paper, so I can use all of that instead of throwing it in the trash and buying new paper.

 

[Modelworks]

T

Laser printers will print on anything. Lately I've been printing on spare unlined loose-leaf paper that I found in my basement. I've also printed on tracing paper, so I can use all of that instead of throwing it in the trash and buying new paper.

They are also great for making printed circuit boards. Toner is little bits of plastic melted to the paper so it is waterproof. You can use pages of a magazine to print out a circuit board design , place the image on the copper board, use a clothes iron to heat the print well then drop the board in water. The paper will dissolve and the toner will remain stuck to the board. Then you just drop the board in muriatic acid+peroxide and a few minutes later you have your circuit board.

 

[WHAMPOM]

My mom wants me to find her a new one. Even worse she wants color. I can't convince her otherwise. She's aware of the cost of the ink but she says since she can afford it why not?

All I can think of is this:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers

Buy her the cheapest color inkjet on closeout and when it runs out of ink, buy another cheap one. Cartridges cost too much and if you dont use them enough dry out.
Personally I use a HP laserjet 5L B&W, it's old and still on the orignal toner. It's old, slow, but reliable and works everytime I need it.

 

[WHAMPOM]

Yeah, and the printer makers do another trick of only filling the cartridges part way that are included in the box.

Lexmark printer at walmart $35
Includes Lexmark #15 Color Ink cartridge which can also print B&W
Replacement cartridge $32


Nice of them to use up all 3 colors to print black.

quote from pcworld

More of a scam then you think. I was reading the package on a closeout Printer and the "special" color cartridge held a reduced amount of ink.

 

[GeekDrew]

So true. The #1 absolute worst thing about Windows is that network printing is impossible. Google search for "vista print spooler"

Color lasers are also more consistent in quality. ink jets will print maybe 5 high quality prints then it goes downhill from there until the whole head/cartridge assembly is replaced and that will run you almost 100 bucks. Not worth it. Get her a color laser, it will have a bigger upfront cost but very low future cost to run. Avoid the HPs, their drivers are crap, especially the 3600 series. Crashes our print server all the time. :/

I approve the IT purchases for my office, including printers. I'm also one of the first to hear about it if something's gone wrong, or if a particular model sucks. In my experience, laser printers are *wonderful* for monochrome, or for large volume color, or when print speed is a priority. Ink jet is still less expensive for low-volume color printing, depending on the printer you buy. HP's consumer inkjets are absolute crap. I've had better luck with their office-grade inkjet printers, but I still don't recommend them. I've had excellent success with every Canon inkjet that I've tried. The cartridges seem to have an abnormally long shelf-life.

As for drivers. Perhaps the problem is that print spoolers aren't as easy to set up as just installing printers and drivers and letting Windows do the rest. It probably *should* be that easy, but it isn't. We have a lot of laser printers (both mono and color), and I very, very rarely have driver issues. When I do, it's generally because some admin has installed a different driver on the same server that is capable of supporting a printer that is using a driver other than the latest installed driver. As a result, I'm trying to standardize all of our HP printers on the HP Universal Print Driver, and I'm having excellent success.

On that note, whatever engineer decided that it would be a good idea to allow printer redirection over within terminal services needs to be drug out into the street, and shot.

 

[zinfamous]

Laser all the way. I'm surprised they still make inkjets / bubblejets (think they're the same, or are they different?)

inkjet cartridges last a few weeks at most if not used, laserjets can last YEARS if more. Color lasers are also more consistent in quality. ink jets will print maybe 5 high quality prints then it goes downhill from there until the whole head/cartridge assembly is replaced and that will run you almost 100 bucks. Not worth it. Get her a color laser, it will have a bigger upfront cost but very low future cost to run. Avoid the HPs, their drivers are crap, especially the 3600 series. Crashes our print server all the time. :/

wow. this advice, like most things you post about life, is very, very misinformed, or simply 10 years out-of-date. (actually, none of the info in this post of yours was ever true.)

seems like you're repeating something you read, and have no experience whatsoever with an inkjet printer....which is kind of strange.

Did you know that inkjet technology transcends simple office tech? Microarray chips are stamped out onto slides using the exact same tech--this means expression data of millions of genes, onto one tiny mm-measured square, printed out at once. There is simply nothing "outdated" or inferior about inkjet technology.

 

[mmntech]

I haven't used an inkjet in years. Operating cost is just too high for volume printing. Then again I never print anything in colour.

 

[Excelsior]

Laser FTW.

 

[Ronstang]

Who has a laser printer at home?

Back in 1991 when I was getting my MBA I quickly learned I needed a computer, and a printer if I wanted to be able to do my work from the comfort of my own home at any time of the day....and completely avoid the stupid computer labs at school.

To get the quality of print I wanted I had to buy a laser printer, which was $1000 at the time. I have never been without a laser printer since.

 

[0roo0roo]

My mom wants me to find her a new one. Even worse she wants color. I can't convince her otherwise. She's aware of the cost of the ink but she says since she can afford it why not?

All I can think of is this:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers

if she can afford it why do you care? assuming it is a quality printer then photo prints are a good thing. minor luxury to print out at a moments notice on the fancy paper.

but yes otherwise mostly its poor print quality for 99% of use vs laser.