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End of Ink printers is near?

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The Day Dreamer said:
I have another question - Laser have laser inks or Toners? Can Toners be called Ink as well? because I heard that its a kind of powder.
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I guess it could be called ink by laypeople - it serves the same purpose as ink. But technically toner is dry particles whereas inkjets use liquid ink.
 
People print their own pictures still? Why?... Walgreens for pennies and done in minutes.
I have a black laser printer at home and that's all I need.
Ink jets died for me a decade ago. What a waste of time and money.
 
I've had a color laser at home for over two years, and couldn't be happier. In printing over two full reams of paper, I've had to replace the black toner cartridge once, and it was less than $30. Haven't replaced any colors yet.
 
I have both a laser (HP 5L, damned thing is a tank in disguise) and an inkjet printer (HP Envy) at home. For general printing needs, the HP 5L is the go-to device. For things like kids school projects, making copies and scanning the wireless Envy (which is much smaller and nicer looking than the typical laser printer) gets used. When I find an all-in-one wireless color laser printer with a similar form factor to my Envy then I will upgrade. I don't need a behemoth laser printer sitting on a shelf in my living room.
 
DaveStall said:
Yep. And some of those color lasers that require multiple toner cartridges can drain your wallet in short order when it comes time for a refill.
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Correct, again, taking Canon as an example, its PG-211XL costs $40 and prints around 350 pages, that 11.5 cents per page. By comparison, the toner 131 costs $75 per color that a total of $225 and will print 4500 pages, thats 5 cents per page BUT the initial cost is huge, more than 500%...
 
DesiPower said:
If you compare canon, a typical PG-210XL costs around $19 and prints 400 pages, costing 4.75 cents per page. By same comparison, and a laser toner cartridge costs $64 and prints 1600 pages costing 4 cents per page. So you see the cost of ink is not that different compared to toner
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Toner is often far cheaper than that. It just all depends on how you want to buy it. I googled Canon Toner and the first thing that came up was the 131 cartridge. So I'll price it.

Standard capacity:
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-Genuine...d_sim_e_5?ie=UTF8&refRID=12NTETRRVWA6WVNKC6K7
$69 for 1400 pages, 4.9 cents per page.

High capacity (131h):
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-Capacit...d=1427989438&sr=8-2&keywords=canon+131h+black
$81.38 for 2400 pages, 3.4 cents per page

Remanufacturered:
http://www.amazon.com/LD-Remanufact...d=1427989438&sr=8-1&keywords=canon+131h+black
$39.99 for 2400 pages, 1.7 cents per page

Knockoff:
http://www.tonerpirate.com/canon-13...jOJumppxSkg2CB8EoFmQJujzHiTc0dkVW4aAvQ38P8HAQ
$27.95 for 2400 pages, 1.2 cents per page
 
dullard said:
Toner is often far cheaper than that. It just all depends on how you want to buy it. I googled Canon Toner and the first thing that came up was the 131 cartridge. So I'll price it.

Standard capacity:
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-Genuine...d_sim_e_5?ie=UTF8&refRID=12NTETRRVWA6WVNKC6K7
$69 for 1400 pages, 4.9 cents per page.

High capacity (131h):
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-Capacit...d=1427989438&sr=8-2&keywords=canon+131h+black
$81.38 for 2400 pages, 3.4 cents per page

Remanufacturered:
http://www.amazon.com/LD-Remanufact...d=1427989438&sr=8-1&keywords=canon+131h+black
$39.99 for 2400 pages, 1.7 cents per page

Knockoff:
http://www.tonerpirate.com/canon-13...jOJumppxSkg2CB8EoFmQJujzHiTc0dkVW4aAvQ38P8HAQ
$27.95 for 2400 pages, 1.2 cents per page
Click to expand...

Well, if you are looking at remanufactured and knockoffs then injkets are much cheaper too, heck, you can get ink and refill the cartridge and it's like pennies to a dollar.
 
i recognized the evil that inkjets represented years ago. I purchase and resell a lot of used IT equipment so I constantly see high quality laser printers, color included, go for cheap.

I don't ever really go for printers because of shipping costs, but I could probably profit off of just parting out the toner, NICs, expansion cards, fusers, etc. on them and turn a profit.
 
We have one of those combo inkjet/copier/scanner/fax units from Canon. It's about five years old, I guess, and is probably the least relevant piece of electronic gear in our home. It just sits there 99.99 percent of the time hoping in vain that someone will send a job, any job. Even just a test page.
 
Markbnj said:
We have one of those combo inkjet/copier/scanner/fax units from Canon. It's about five years old, I guess, and is probably the least relevant piece of electronic gear in our home. It just sits there 99.99 percent of the time hoping in vain that someone will send a job, any job. Even just a test page.
Click to expand...

We have one also from Epson.

The use as a scanner/copier is the main purpose.
Because it is also wireless; it sits off out of way.

The cheap 5 year old laser is setup on all systems as the default printer.
 
dullard said:
At home, I've gone through many printers (overuse) and have yet to need to ever print in color. If I want photo-quality printing, I use a service with calibrated and regularly-maintained photo printers. Heck, even your local Walmart would print better than just about any inkjet people use at home and have it delivered right to your door at a fraction of the cost of printing it yourself.

I guess I never quite saw the point of $50 to $100 yearly ink bills for low quality printing when sub-$300 lasers have been around for two decades.
Click to expand...
Agreed!! I have the same empty color cartridge in my printer that was when I bought it!! I only purchase Black ink cartridges!!
 
Historically laser printers photo output was pretty bad relative to inkjets, but newer ones have closed the gap quite a bit. However, if true photo quality is required a good injet still smokes the best lasers. And, color lasers are a lot more expensive than mono lasers so the cost advantage of laser ink (toner) is lessened when color is involved.

At high volume mono lasers kill injets, but at lower volume color inkjets still rule particularly if photo quality matters.


Brian
 
we have a printer that we only use when forced to. I use it maybe twice a year, and only black and white.
 
Rakehellion said:
This. Businesses have been on laser for years now.
Click to expand...

Worst thing to ever happen... Holy crap, my last job used laser colors for years and it was painful the amount of shit people printed and threw out within a few hours. Knowing that each color toner was $200+ made it even worse.

Seriously, f*ck. We had boardrooms equipped with working projectors, just had to plug a laptop in which a lot of people were setup with -- despite them almost never undocking them. But no, let's print out a 4' x 5' poster or 50 copies of photos to hand out knowing that most people will probably never look at them or that they'll still ask for a PDF afterwards.

... And I want a MFD for home use. Damn they've gotten cheap. And my cheapo $40 Canon from 2008 is running out of ink again.
 
DesiPower said:
Well, if you are looking at remanufactured and knockoffs then injkets are much cheaper too, heck, you can get ink and refill the cartridge and it's like pennies to a dollar.
Click to expand...

It depends on how frequently you use the printer.

For frequent use, those numbers might be accurate.

For occasional use, inkjet cost a lot more because they need to run a "cleaning cycle" and then you are lucky to get 10% of the supposed page quantity out of the cartridge.
 
If true photo quality matters the ink is only about half the cost as good photo paper isn't cheap either.

Making 8x10 prints or the practical equivalent at 8.5x11 is probably in declining demand given the rise of high resolution tablets and laptops, but if you want to hang something on your wall it's not really cost effective to hang a UHD TV to output digitally so you're going to want an actual print.

For most people the largest inkjets they're likely to have is 13x19 and maybe that's big enough, but to get bigger than that owning a printer capable of doing a good job gets to be pretty expensive. Looking at the large format photo printers from Epson, Canon or HP the floor for a 17" photo printer is above $1K and larger printers like the 44" versions are going to be more like $4K -- not for the average person.

The top photo printers use pigment inks that resist fading and are rated at 100+ years. No, you wouldn't want to hang it in direct sunlight, but so long as it reasonably placed with some limits on direct sunlight a print should last a long time.

There may come a time when it's more practical to hang a UHD display on the wall and feed it with digital images/video, but it will probably be quite a while before you see that for less than about $1K per display.


Brian
 
Coincidence I was going to ask about the latest and greatest printers. Decided on a Samsung monochrome all in one laser (not the best but free, from work rewards). I scan a lot so that was a requirement.
 
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Working for an automotive shop that does lots of alignments, the whole 'why do inkjets even fucking exist' thing bothers me way too much.

An alignment setup is essentially the rack, the physical equipment for reading the orientation of the wheels, and a Windows PC. All together, it costs somewhere in the realm of $60,000-100,000. Or more. They all need a way to print in color, so you can give your customer a pretty sheet with red numbers that you turned into green numbers.

What do they do that with? An inkjet. Checking Amazon right now...a $200 inkjet. With four cartridges that cost about $80 to replace. They last about a month. Oh, also, we have two alignment machines with this setup.

HOW DOES THIS MAKE MORE FISCAL SENSE THAN A SINGLE NETWORKED COLOR LASER PRINTER?!?!

I mean, I have the answer...it looked better on paper when the equipment was initially bought. Some jackass is probably getting bonuses for decisions like this. Who cares about the long-term expenditure; this is cheaper NOW. Ugh.

If it's okay for the government to do things like mandate more fuel-efficient cars, why can they not outlaw inkjets for business use?
 
rh71 said:
Coincidence I was going to ask about the latest and greatest printers. Decided on a Samsung monochrome all in one laser (not the best but free, from work rewards). I scan a lot so that was a requirement.
Click to expand...

I actually just purchased a new printer and I needed large format (13x19) as well as scanning in large format so I wound up with an Epson WF-7620. It's a bit of a beast in size, but being able to print and scan at 13x19 was a must.

After rebate (instant) it was about $150, but the real cost is the paper and ink. Photo output is very good with the right paper as you'd expect from Epson and we'll see how the ink costs pan out.


Brian
 
i bought a HP envoy inkjet last dec for $99 bucks at Office Depot. Love the wireless and i can print from my phone. just replaced the ink and it was 29.99 at walmart for a black/color combo pack.

i dont call that expensive.
 
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