I do not need photo printing, but as long as I can print images in color and bits of text in color I will be alright (budgets, sketches, diagrams, etc.).
Let's say I need a color printer 40% of the time, while the other 60% is B&W only.
Eventually, I've been browsing the user manuals for several of the Brother printers I'm interested in. While I like the features they promise in their leaflefts, I found myself not liking their drivers very much. Their drivers looked outdated to me just by looking at their manuals, but that could be because I'm used to the flashy HP drivers.
Do you guys have any other suggestion I could look for? Either, it be a b&w laser printer or for a color inkjet printer that does not have to be "photo quality".
I need the scanner/copier feature, thus I'm looking for a multi-function device. I do not need a fax and WiFi/Ethernet may be welcome if they do not add to the price (USB only is fine).
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I asked those same questions in 2004, at a time when I had far more time than money. And at exactly the same time our families Lexmark printer was starting to crap out.
To a large extent I love my wife, but when she is a print acholic, her printing habits started eating us out of house and home.
So I got on the internet and started researching. And soon discovered 99.99% of internet printing information is worthless.
But luckily I discovered a few gem web sites, the nifty stuff forums, and Steves digicams. That taught me how big a rip off most inkjet printers are. But at the time it was possible to buy non chipped Canon printers that could use dirt cheap third party prefilled cartridges, that dropped my printing costs from the Lexmark cost of 30 cents a page down to about a penny of consumable ink costs per page for B/w text output. And 2 cents for mixed color output. So I bought a non-chipped Canon pixma ip4000 for my wife for $100.00 at the time. Even if my wife did not need a photo printer. Later I decided to refill my depleted Canon cartridges, and that got my B&W costs down to about a 1/3 of a cent per page and a penny for mixed color. Using proven inks that would not damage my printer thanks to the nifty stuff forums. And while I had no success refilling Lexmark or HP cartridges, Canon cartridge refilling is super easy. Meanwhile, while I seldom print, I used microsoft ICS to network our computers together so I could print off her printer. ( and no I did not have to buy the $60.00 more expensive ip4000r networked model to make it work. )
Later on I bought a dirt cheap used laser multifunctional printer, with copy, scan, and fax and also networked them together. And because I live in a rural area, and have frequent in and out going faxing needs, I estimate every time I use my fax it saves me $10.00 in gas
rather than taking a trip to town. I still print to the inkjet, its far cheaper. By now I estimate I have saved a grand in gas, not bad for a $60.00 used printer.
But my wife as a tax professional ever needs to print a pile of tax forms fast, you can't beat the speed of a laser.
Why worry about comparing the advantages ink jets or B/W lasers, why not have both? Especially in a multi computer user family!
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