In the market for a printer/scanner

[STERKOFF]

For scanning documents, download the HP Smart app. It takes a picture but auto-sizes to the document and adjusts so the paper Background doesn’t have any grey tones.

This summer I investigated “mega tank” printers. They have large ink bottles instead of cartridges.
While there doesn’t seem to be any perfect mega tank printer, we got an Epson ET-2750 this summer. For school work type printing it’s been good so far, but I won’t know about the ink bottle economy for a year or so.

So I found a pretty good deal on a Brother "Inkvestment" AIO so I will see how that goes... We have a Brother AIO at my office and it has really been a good printer for the last couple of years. As a side note, I was looking at my HP Laserjet 2300dn information page and after 15 years I have a page count of 13,400. Considering the toner cartridges have a rating of 6,000 pages I realized that I am on only my 3rd toner so far and I put it in a year ago... Duty cycle is 30,000 sheets per month max, lol. I wonder how long the fuser and other parts will hold out??

 

[NoTine42]

So I found a pretty good deal on a Brother "Inkvestment" AIO so I will see how that goes... We have a Brother AIO at my office and it has really been a good printer for the last couple of years. As a side note, I was looking at my HP Laserjet 2300dn information page and after 15 years I have a page count of 13,400. Considering the toner cartridges have a rating of 6,000 pages I realized that I am on only my 3rd toner so far and I put it in a year ago... Duty cycle is 30,000 sheets per month max, lol. I wonder how long the fuser and other parts will hold out??

Years back, I had an old Laserjet 4 series and it was great for black & white printing and toner lasted a very long time. Unfortunately they stopped making those toner cartridges and photosensitive drums don’t last forever, even with refills. I never had to replace the fuser on that printer, just clean the pickup roller a few times.

 

[ElFenix]

our secretary would kill for a laserjet 4, a model m, dos 6, and wordperfect 5.

 

[KillerCharlie]

Instead of wireless, get a cheap raspberry pi and make a print server.

 

[Red Squirrel]

our secretary would kill for a laserjet 4, a model m, dos 6, and wordperfect 5.

The good ol days!

I kinda miss the Corel suite actually. Was super popular in the school system, I think they got it for free. I have a copy somewhere that came with our first computer in year 2000. I think it's version 10. I should install it in a VM for old time sakes.

 

[LikeLinus]

Instead of wireless, get a cheap raspberry pi and make a print server.

Out of curiosity, why? Our Brothers Laser runs on Wireless and we've never had a problem. Seems a bit silly to have to buy more hardware and have the potential for issues down the road. Over-complicated? This is for a home office.

 

[13Gigatons]

Recommend simple B&W laser printer for everyone. Every Black Friday they have these for a great price.

 

[thestrangebrew1]

Forgot about this thread. The wife pulled the trigger and bought a really cheap canon IIRC w/o really going off of some of these recommendations. It's cheap. Like I'm scared to move it for fear the plastic is going to break. It does an ok job printing wirelessly, except sometimes I have to go to the room it's in to turn it on, then go back and print. Since we're doing distance learning but she's going to be teaching from her class, she's been using the school's printers if she needs to print anything, which isn't much right now.

 

[Captante]

Unless there is a reason you need color, I'd go with a black/white laser printer over an inkjet. I like Brother's laser printer/scanner/copiers. They just work.

My Brother HL-2270DW laser printer is 8 years old and still on the original toner cartridge ... admittedly I don't print a ton but I do use it regularly thing is a tank. One bad thing about Brother though is IME their wireless just sucks... ethernet is fine as is USB.

My preference for MFD's (multi-function device) is however Canon especially for color. They seem to have the best combination of IQ and performance plus the wifi printer utility is effortless ... a MAJOR pro if installing a bunch of them!

I have this: Canon MG-6120

Just make sure you buy a model that's been around long enough for quality generic ink to be readily available ... Canon brand ink is insanely expensive.

You couldn't give me an inkjet printer for free.

Those Epson jumbo-tank inkjets have a comparable price per page to laser and offer better IQ then most consumer level color lasers.

 

[Scarpozzi]

Recommend simple B&W laser printer for everyone. Every Black Friday they have these for a great price.

My wife started grad school in like 2007ish. The school was charging 5 cents per copy and she was doing a medical program. I opted to buy her a Dell laser printer and it was the best deal for the money. I think at the time it was maybe $130, but good for 6k pages, was screaming fast. It got her through school and just when it was ready to upgrade, it got knocked off a table and busted into a million pieces.

I ended up buying a Canon Color Multifunction from Staples this past year for $190. I set it up with Gmail so scan jobs are Emailed. It's pretty decent as a 1200dpi copier. It's huge though, so I have it in my garage at the moment. It's really helped with the home office situation we were in the past 5 months.

 

[Captante]

Years back, I had an old Laserjet 4 series and it was great for black & white printing and toner lasted a very long time. Unfortunately they stopped making those toner cartridges and photosensitive drums don’t last forever, even with refills. I never had to replace the fuser on that printer, just clean the pickup roller a few times.

I worked at a place which specialized in refurb HP printers years ago ... the Laserjet 4 was a decent seller but it was the Laserjet 5 we just couldn't keep in stock.

The actual HP factory refurbs were literally better then NIB (tested twice and had full warranty) so they sold out lots of 200-250 units in less then one full sales-day every time.

We also had IBM-refurb's which were clean and reliable but only had a 90 day warranty and then our "refurbs" *(read: used POS) both of which sold as fast as we could get them.

My wife started grad school in like 2007ish. The school was charging 5 cents per copy and she was doing a medical program. I opted to buy her a Dell laser printer and it was the best deal for the money. I think at the time it was maybe $130, but good for 6k pages, was screaming fast. It got her through school and just when it was ready to upgrade, it got knocked off a table and busted into a million pieces.

Hardware-wise Dell printers are fine ... software however is often a different story. Their drivers and utilities are largely buggy garbage... if however Windows has a built in working driver and you only setup one or two units you may never notice this.

After the last purchase/install of 5 Dell color lasers turned into a freaking comedy show by the time I got it all working right I will not be buying a Dell printer again any time soon.