End of Ink printers is near?

[NoTine42]

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.

I can wirelessly print to my circa-1990's HP LaserJet 4l or somewhat newer color OfficeJet from my iPhone, just needed to add the appropriate AirPrint services to the old laptop that is my "print server"

 

[StinkyPinky]

I don't even have a printer. Inkjet models are a huge money waster.

I get any photos I want done at the mall and the occasional time I want something printed I'll drive 5 minutes to my fathers house and do it there (or do it at work)

 

[phucheneh]

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.

'Comparatively cheap' doesn't mean 'inexpensive.' If your ink was $30 and the ink for another HP model using similar cartridges is $60...your cartridges probably have half as much ink in them. It's just how it is, and it's the reason HP and the like want to obfuscate as much as possible when it comes to ink cartridges. You have no real idea of how much your cartridges will actually print (any such rating is uselessly vague given how much ink use varies with what's being printed).

Beyond that, hell, you don't even know how much ink is inside a new cartridge...or how much is inside an 'empty' one. Hint: it sure as shit ain't zero. I recall reading some investigative study into this that found that, at minimum, your average chipped cartridge (the ones that communicate how much ink is left and can't be refilled) has 20% or more remaining. And as if that's not bad enough, some of them simply go off of time- once a cartridge has been in a printer for a predetermined length of time, it magically becomes 'empty,' regardless of how much has been printed.

 

[Aikouka]

I've been using the same HP OfficeJet 6500A for a few years so far, and it's served me quite well. I just wish I could do something like scan-to-network. I used to be able to scan directly to a computer, but I think that went away with a firmware upgrade. :\

If I upgrade, I'll consider a laser printer, but I'd want one that can do just about everything. Either something like this or this.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

It was Spring of 1998 that I bought my first laser printer and stopped being an inkjet owner. I bought an HP 4000. Man, that starter toner cartridge lasted a long time. Four years ago I donated it to someone and bought a Samsung LED (pseudo laser) <$100. Its starter toner cartridge lasted 2-3 years and its replacement seemed to be more expensive than just buying another Samsung unit--which I did and it is wireless that cost me $59.

If I need a photograph printed I'll use Costco for candid and a professional lab for everything else. Otherwise, its digital and stored as such.

 

[mmntech]

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.

Ink is a liquid while toner is a fine powder.

How they work is pretty cool. A drum inside is given an electric charge. A laser is used to alter the charge across the drum to produce an image. The toner is then drawn to these areas and is rolled onto an oppositely charged sheet of paper. Finally, a heating element permanently fuses the toner to the fibers. That's why pages always come out toasty warm.
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/laser-printer.htm

The basic principle has been around for a long time. Photocopiers essentially work the same way but use a photo-receptive drum and regular light instead of a laser.

Nice thing about laser printers is the cartridges last forever with regular home office use. Can't remember the last time I replaced mine. The colour ones have also gotten significantly better. Problem with those is you have to load them up with four expensive cartridges, which significantly raises the up front cost.

 

[Brian Stirling]

With inkjet printers as well as laser printers the per page cost of ink/toner is often related to the cost of the printer in an inverse way. Typically the cheaper printers have smaller carts that result in a higher cost/page. In order to get a printer that has lower ink/toner costs you have to pay more and sometimes a lot more to get lower $/page. The increase in cost when you go to a higher model is more significant with lasers than inkjets.

In the end the net total cost per page for most home users probably favors inkjets and that's not counting the higher electrical cost and longer warmup times of lasers...


Brian

 

[JackBurton]

With inkjet printers as well as laser printers the per page cost of ink/toner is often related to the cost of the printer in an inverse way. Typically the cheaper printers have smaller carts that result in a higher cost/page. In order to get a printer that has lower ink/toner costs you have to pay more and sometimes a lot more to get lower $/page. The increase in cost when you go to a higher model is more significant with lasers than inkjets.

In the end the net total cost per page for most home users probably favors inkjets and that's not counting the higher electrical cost and longer warmup times of lasers...


Brian

Wrong. I bought my HP color printer for $250 on sale (regular price ~$500). It EASILY starts up faster than my Canon inkjet printer which I think I paid around the same price for. On top of that, I rarely use my printer, but when I do, I need to print quite a few pages. With inkjet cartridges, it's like a count down timer which starts when the cartidge was first made. Page count continues to drop even if you don't even use it. And by the time you go to use it, you barely have any ink left.

If you think inkjet printers are anywhere close to as efficient and cost effective as laser printers, you're lying to yourself.

 

[Brian Stirling]

Wrong. I bought my HP color printer for $250 on sale (regular price ~$500). It EASILY starts up faster than my Canon inkjet printer which I think I paid around the same price for. On top of that, I rarely use my printer, but when I do, I need to print quite a few pages. With inkjet cartridges, it's like a count down timer which starts when the cartidge was first made. Page count continues to drop even if you don't even use it. And by the time you go to use it, you barely have any ink left.

If you think inkjet printers are anywhere close to as efficient and cost effective as laser printers, you're lying to yourself.

Please ... unless the fuser is on all the time and eating a crap ton of electricity it will need to be warmed up before printing can start.

Usually, if you haven't printed anything in a few minutes the fuser is turned off until a print job is sent and then it has to warm up again. The warm up process usually takes about a minute. Meanwhile, with an inkjet, the print job starts immediately -- nothing to warm up.

In an office environment with many users the fuser may be left on or is stll warm from the last print job so the waiting time can be less, but for home use most print jobs are going to require warming up the fuser.


Brian

 

[JackBurton]

Please ... unless the fuser is on all the time and eating a crap ton of electricity it will need to be warmed up before printing can start.

Usually, if you haven't printed anything in a few minutes the fuser is turned off until a print job is sent and then it has to warm up again. The warm up process usually takes about a minute. Meanwhile, with an inkjet, the print job starts immediately -- nothing to warm up.

In an office environment with many users the fuser may be left on or is stll warm from the last print job so the waiting time can be less, but for home use most print jobs are going to require warming up the fuser.


Brian

Pleas stop, I actually HAVE a modern day laser printer and had an inkjet printer (pretty nice one too). The laser printer starts up way faster and can print its first page at a fraction of the time that my inkjet would have its first page printed. And that was from a cold start, zero power. If it started from sleep mode, it would be even faster. My inkjet would freakin' cycle through some stupid pointless sequence for what seemed to be forever. I'm assuming it was running a system check, possibly cleaning heads. And THEN finally, something would print. Freakin' annoying. This was typical behavior of some of the nicer Canon/Epson inkjet printers.

Again, first page out, HP laser printer winner, no contest. You have to be running some crap inkjet printer that isn't checking alignment, and doing a general system check at start up in order to have its first page print "immediately." There is no "immediately" with inkjet printers, at least not on nice ones.

 

[Red Squirrel]

With how cheap it is to get prints done at places like Walmart unless you're a professional photographer and want to make prints yourself on a commercial grade printer that you buy for your business, there's not really any reason to print photos at home. Consumer grade bubblejet printers don't even print all that nice anyway. You can print maybe 1-5 pages that look really nice then the heads start to clog and smear and a bit more after you're out of ink. For the cost of replacing all catridges and heads you can print a whole album at Walmart, or even get a book done through a company like Shutterfly.

For documents, laser is also more crisp and much more economical, as the "ink" does not dry out, it's already dry powder. I have a laserjet and I still have the original toner it came with. My only fear is that by the time it does run out I might not be able to get the toners for this unit anymore. Not sure for how long they keep making toners for each model. I find even the consumer grade laserjets are pretty good quality. I had a small unit that brought me through all of college. It went to my parents and eventually it stopped working but it lasted quite a while and was cheaper to run than a Bubblejet. I still have a laserjet which I've had since I lived with my parents and I still occasionally use it.

 

[Darwin333]

I still have a need to print out forms to sign and send back, not always the best idea to do it at work.

Yall haven't jumped on the E-sign wagon yet?

Personally, as big of a nerd as I am, I have a printer..... in the closet and haven't used it in a long time. Print heads are probably all clogged by now so I will likely just throw it out when I need the space.

 

[marvdmartian]

Y'all all please stop! I'm using papyrus and charcoal, and printing is slow, but starts immediately! 🙄

Actually, I picked up a Kodak all-in-one, back when they were still being made (another thing that ticks me off, about Kodak's bankruptcy). Had it for at least 5 years now. It's not fast, it's not the best quality, but all I use it for is basic printing, not photos.

And a set of cartridges (1 color, 1 black) costs me $32. Roughly what the color cartridge for an HP or Lexmark inkjet runs. :thumbsup:

 

[Captante]

I have a nice Canon Multi-function which I very rarely use to print anything aside from the occasional photo. So far I've only replaced a couple ink-cartridges and obviously its still a total rip ... if the day comes I needed to buy a whole new set I'd just trash it and buy a new one because it would be cheaper!

Mostly just use it to copy/scan things I either want to store digitally or print with my Brother monochrome laser.

 

[Brian Stirling]

Pleas stop, I actually HAVE a modern day laser printer and had an inkjet printer (pretty nice one too). The laser printer starts up way faster and can print its first page at a fraction of the time that my inkjet would have its first page printed. And that was from a cold start, zero power. If it started from sleep mode, it would be even faster. My inkjet would freakin' cycle through some stupid pointless sequence for what seemed to be forever. I'm assuming it was running a system check, possibly cleaning heads. And THEN finally, something would print. Freakin' annoying. This was typical behavior of some of the nicer Canon/Epson inkjet printers.

Again, first page out, HP laser printer winner, no contest. You have to be running some crap inkjet printer that isn't checking alignment, and doing a general system check at start up in order to have its first page print "immediately." There is no "immediately" with inkjet printers, at least not on nice ones.

I actually have a modern day laser printer AND a modern day inkjet. The technology behind the laser printer involves the use of a heating element called a fuser and that item requires time to warm up.

If both printers are powered up from cold the inkjet will likely go through an initialization sequence that can take about a minute. This sequence involves head homing and in many cases some ink flow to check/clean the heads. If, however, you leave the printer on it will accept a new print job and begin printing almost immediately.

Laser printers do not have the same initialization sequence but does require the fuser to be warmed up. Different lasers require more or less time to power up the fuser just as different inkjets require more or less time for its initialization sequence.

After both have been powered up and its been some time since the last print job they will go into a sleep/idle mode. Then, when the next print job is sent they have to come out of sleep and prepare to print. For an inkjet that is pretty much limited to pulling in the first sheet of paper and beginning to print. With a laser, however, it must warm up the fuser that had been turned off in sleep/idle.

So, if both are started from cold the time to print the first page is likely to be about the same with some lasers being faster than some inkjets while some inkjets are faster than other lasers. I'll call that a draw.

Once they've been powered up and a print job is sent with both printers in sleep/idle the inkjet is almost always going to be faster to print the first page.


Brian

 

[sdifox]

It's them dang schools!

For personal use, I rarely needed more than the B&W output of my old LaserJet 4L
But kid's homework prints often need color.

You still have a computer with parallel port? I remember paying a grand for my 4L.

 

[mzkhadir]

I like the xerox wax inks.

 

[nickbits]

I quickly tried to find a laser that has all the features I want and came up empty.
Color (don't need photo quality but decent)
2 input trays plus manual feed slot or 3 input trays
Scanner
Airprint
Networked
Closest one I found was $600 and the color toners were $100 each
Doesn't seem economical when an ink jet is $200 and ink is $20 a set

 

[sdifox]

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.

Genuine Brother TN-650 is 107 from amazon. It's rated for 8000 pages.

DR620 is the drum, 100 bux for a genuine one and good for 25k pages.

newer version of my printer is 8710dw, which is 300 at amazon.

 

[Brian Stirling]

My recent inkjet purchase, an Epson WF-7620, is a large format printer that prints AND scans at 13x19 in color. Cost me $150. Is wifi. How much would a color laser printer that prints and scans at 13x19 cost?


Brian

 

[sdifox]

My recent inkjet purchase, an Epson WF-7620, is a large format printer that prints AND scans at 13x19 in color. Cost me $150. Is wifi. How much would a color laser printer that prints and scans at 13x19 cost?


Brian

I am not aware of any 13x19 laser. They top out at tabloid. I don't print 13x19 though.

 

[DCal430]

LMFAO you can buy generic ink so cheap now. For a black and white text page you can print for less than a penny a page.

 

[NoTine42]

You still have a computer with parallel port? I remember paying a grand for my 4L.

Technically, yes but it's network card broke, (which is a problem for a print server) so now I'm running a "newer" laptop with a USB to parallel (IEEE1284) cable (like one of these: http://www.amazon.com/CNE35805-Parallel-Printer-Adapter-Cable/dp/B000BV8604 )

 

[Scooby Doo]

LOL weird.. I haven't printed anything black and white for years now. I do like my canon Pro-100 (cost only$100 after rebate), but the ink ugh. However there's nothing like seeing the results on 13*19 luster paper.

Haven't seen a laser that can do really quality color.

 

[thescreensavers]

I got a Used Laser printer of CL, bought high yield toner for 12 bucks

My Printing costs were like 11 cents per page with my stupid hp inkjet

Now with laser I'm at 1-2 cents per page (Not factoring cost of printer)