Posted on 12/07/2018 12:13:12 PM PST by Alberta's Child
I'm shopping for a new printer for my business; I'm hoping to buy it early next year. Any advice from tech-savvy Freepers who are business owners? Key features I need are:
1. I'm looking for a color laser printer
2. It has to last a long time (my HP 2100 black & white printer lasted more than ten years before I replaced it a few years ago).
3. Despite the long life, I don't use it a lot. I typically print less than 200 sheets in a month.
4. Printing sheets as large as 11"x17" would be a nice feature, but is not essential. Most of what I do is standard letter size and an occasional 8.5"x14" sheet.
5. The cartridges need to last a long time, especially if they're expensive. A single set of cartridges for my old inkjet printer cost almost as much as the printer did when I bought it!
6. I would prefer to buy a well-known name brand (HP, Canon, Xerox, etc.).
7. Size isn't the most important thing, but it would be nice if I could fit it on a standard 15-inch wide letter-sized file cabinet with only an inch or so of overhang on each side. That will dictate where I put it in my office.
Color Inkjet Printer with Scanner, I see at 182 85 + $21.14 shipping
At almost 400.00 for a inkjet it should be cheap to refill! But i you do a lot of printing and can afford the initial cost, and IF you can use 3rd party ink (versus the 40.00 Color Combo Pack Ink Bottle) then maybe...
I think that is overkill for maybe 200 pages a month. At about $1,350 new and expensive toner then I hope you never have to replace anything!
Yes, that is a result of the razor and blades business model , which if applied to automobiles would be like selling cars for about 6,000 and then charge about the same for each tire, and which only fits your model line, and are patented.
However, unlike tires, cartridges can be refreshed, refilled and reused once the ink runs out, and therefore the war is btwn ink sellers and cartridges refillers and the printer companies. In Lexmark Int'l v. Static Control Components the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that circumvention of Lexmark's ink cartridge lock does not violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. However, the printer companies may be able to require you to agree that you will not refill their carts or use 3rd party ones.
That depends on the model, and there is likely a way around it.
We have a HP printer and use third party printer cartridges all of the time. No problems.
Ink printers have been like that forever...I moved to black and white laser years ago and never looked back....never had much reason to print color and when i do, the Walmart photo shop is convenient and cheap.
“Okidata LED printers....real work horses
Easy to change cartridges”
At my last job, we had two Okidata color laser printers, and they were work horses. If onsite repair was required, the guy showed up and you could depend on him. The copies looked beautiful. Cartridges were expensive — they all are — but lasted forever.
My only complaint was that the colors weren’t smack-dab true. So if excellent color copies is most important, this is good. If the importance is an exact match to what you’re seeing on your screen, maye another brand would be better. There were options to adjust the color mix of cyan, magenta, etc., but it always seemed to be a bit “off”.
I did retire 10 years ago, so all these positives and negatives might have changed.
I did retire 10 years ago, so all these positives and negatives might have changed.
I published hundreds upon hundreds of reports with 10-20 pages of color photos and maps. I never had anyone complain about color quality.
In the end, everything is a trade-off. The question was on "workhorse" and I will always recommend Okidata with its individually replaceable color cartridges which are open the lid and drop-in design.
“I never had anyone complain about color quality.”
I didn’t say color quality was bad. I believe I said the copies were “excellent” and “beautiful”, and that’s what most people want. But if a true PMS match of color for science, decor, etc., was critical, I wouldn’t trust the print.
I like Brother too. I have a Brother B&W laser printer that also scans and copies. An all in one but no faxing on it.
I have had B&W lasers from HP and Samsung that failed.
I bought variations of the Brother 8850 laser printer for my office. Some scan, copy, some just print.
We learned to use the Brother cartridges which are more expensive but far more reliable.
They are workhorses.
I used HP for years but finally got fed up with their bloated software and gave up. I really wanted to like them. Their software is hopeless.
Why a laser printer for 200 sheets a month?
I just want to be clear, since I realize this morning my prior comment was exhibiting a bit of knowledge corruption:
A reputable dealer can direct a person to a printer which can meet cost expectations for the life of the printer.
IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PRICE OF THE PRINTER OR CARTRIDGES THEMSELVES ALONE!
This is determined by factoring the total cost-per-page.
I had a simple spreadsheet at the time and could factor a printer for comparison to another in just a few minutes, providing an OBVIOUS result for recommendation and to dissuade the customer’s inclination toward a manufacturer’s advertisement.
I’m positive that there are applications which can do the same as my spreadsheet. It’s simple math to calculate total cost/page. Regardless, a reputable dealer to help a business person make even a minor capital purchase can help manage operating expenses to an expectation - or a budget - without the business owner needing to become an expert or expend meager time doing research on what, for all intents & purposes, is a disposable printer.
Again, my recommendation is for any business not producing marketing materials to avoid color. That’s a much more complicated scenario, considering that the 5% coverage figures for color are all BS for factoring costs of operation (NOBODY prints color at 5% coverage). That part of my spreadsheet was the creme-de-la-creme at the time, showing my customers how adding color to their so-called “copier” was a wiser investment than a desktop color printer (for reasons I’m not going into here for a 200-page/month printing need).
In short, if you consider that I could show one client how to save hundreds of dollars over 5 years by buying a b/w laser printer over an inkjet, and show another client how spending $3k more on a ‘coper/printer’ (MFP) would literally save them THOUSANDS over 5 years in a completely different scenario, you can realize there’s some validity to my recommendations.
A reputable local dealer can remove all of the headache and keep expenses in line with budgetary expectations.
One piece of advice to all business owners reading this thread:
Keep a separate expense category in your books for toner purchases (inks if you have them now), NEVER combine purchases for multiple machines if it can be avoided and use the memo to identify the equipment by model or equipment ID. These small things can make analysis of prior outlays easy. Otherwise, just as the manufacturers hope for most businesses, the toner/ink purchases become buried in the books, having succumbed to effective advertising for the original purchase.
That’s not an effective business strategy for managing expenses.
Again, I recommend inkjet for no business. Ever.
But we are dealing here with someone who only prints about 200 pages a month, which a $100 Brother laser copy/scan/printer should work fine for, with replacement toner for under 20.00, versus spending the equivalent of dozens of these printers more.
Again, I recommend inkjet for no business. Ever.
Which presumes there is no need for the OP to print in color, which is simply an unwarranted presumption. And if 11"x17" is not essential but color printing is, then one option is if the poster can get a inkjet in good condition for about 200 which uses 17ml color carts that are less then 3.00 a piece. Or, buying a 300.00 laser copy/scan/printer would be an option.
Let us if anything was of help, by God's grace.
Your presumption exposes that you only read one comment: You should read all of my comments in this thread.
It’s rather academic and I cover all of that, including finding a local dealer. A business owner should never be without a local dealer to help manage purchases and expenses via toners/cartridges. Who the hell wants to become an expert on printers every 5 years instead of running their business? That’s why my clients had my trust and I had their business.
That first cited passage was a poor attempt to cite my knowledge on this topic and has no bearing whatsoever on the OP, btw.
I’m not expending any more time on this.
I will be putting together a short list of potential options for further research, and then making a decision on this early next month. Based on what I've read here, I will also consider the possibility that separate printers for color and black/white printing might be a possibility. There is really just one reason why I haven't considered up to this point, and I'll address that when I post a response to someone who brought it up.
In the meantime, I'll go through this thread and post responses to some questions/comments that are of particular interest.
THANK YOU ALL AGAIN!
I will consider that, but since I don't get a ton of use out of these printers and they tend to last a long time, it never seemed to make sense to me in the past.
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