Great Little Printer [vanity]

personal experience ^ | July 01, 2009 | Attention Surplus Disorder

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

This an unrestricted tout of an "incredible" printer. It's a Brother HL-2140 monochrome-only, but there are a few other brands like this.

Monochrome only, laser printer, the cartridges are REALLY cheap, and they have significant life. The cart that comes with the printer is good for 1000 pages. The replacement ones are 1500 pages.

Tired of having to refill or rebuy ink-jet printer cartridges, especially since 98% of my printing is just monochrome anyway. This little dude was SIXTY BUCKS at Fry's, including the cartridge. It's USB-only (no parallel input) That may have SOME impact on one's ability (in Windows) to designate the printer as your default printer.

This litle champ is just awesome. Of course, it's brand new so I can't give you the 5-year life report. But it is fast, and for $60 on sale, maybe $80 normal, it's a completely ridiculous steal of a deal.

[Born Conservative]

Just bought this model a few months back,and it blows away my old Samsung monochrome laser printer.

[GOPJ]

Thanks - I hate my HP Photosmart printer.

[martin_fierro]

I’ve got an old HP 4L that just keeps on tickin’.

[proxy_user]

I have the 2170, which is the IP version. IP printing from one of my computers stopped working, and nothing I could do would bring it back. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the driver, but in the end I had to set it up with USB.

Only my main computer can’t print over the IP interface - all the other ones can.

[catnipman]

Also, you can probably refill the existing cartridge by buying a refill kit on ebay. On ebay, search for the model number plus refill. A kit usually consists of one or more bottles of toner, plus instructions on how the reset the page counter. Lots cheaper than new cartridges.

[JoeProBono]

[TomGuy]

I had a few ink jets. They were pathetic.

The last one was a Lennox. The printer died before the first ink cartridges were empty.

I don’t do much printing, so I had a problem with the ink jets clogging and drying out.

About 3 years ago now, I ran across a Minolta laser for $200. I jumped on that bargain. It still is on the original cartridge and still prints the occasional pages.

On Black Monday of last November, I ran across a Xerox color laser for $149. I couldn’t pass that up.

[Theo]

Have you tried printing onto card stock? Does it jam? Is it networkable?

Thanks for the heads-up, ASD!

[Marysecretary]

Me, too. It just bleeds ink.

[Dutch Boy]

I am on my 3rd Brother printer. Got rid of my first one when XP didn’t have drivers. The second when I upgraded to a network printer. I never had a problem with any of them. My current is the HL-5250DN. A 30ppm duplex network printer for less than $200. My next printer will also be a Brother.

[Marysecretary]

ATLEX also sells ink cheaper. I pay 15.00 for one ink cartridge (I need 8 different ones) for my Epson R1800 through Epson but only 10.99 for them on Atlex.

[The_Media_never_lie]

I have one, too. It’s a gem.

[Brad’s Gramma]

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

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45 posted on Wednesday, July 01, 2009 12:41:31 PM by Jim Robinson (Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jimrobfr)

[Last Dakotan]

Brother makes good products. I own their;
A) Machine Tools
B) Printers
C) Label Makers
D) Fax Machines
Do they make anything else?

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

“Have you tried printing onto card stock? Does it jam? Is it networkable?”

Doubt it’s directly networkable, as the only spigot into it is USB. No parallel port. (And someone correct me if I am wrong) but I believe that (USB only) has an implication about designating said printer as one’s default printer. I was NOT able to do so, but I had a bunch of 1-page docs to print in a mild hurry and I couldn’t screw around with it or look around for a workaround. Hence, for each of those (20 or so) docs, I had to select the Brother printer each time as the printer of choice. PITA, but I suspect there is a workaround somewhere.

Have NOT tested it on anything but vanilla paper. Print quality is excellent, by the way, no issues at all.

I can’t give you the multi-year torture test results, I’ve only had it for 60 or so days, but I printed out a 58 page doc today and it just blasted it out, maybe 12 pgs a minute, no problem.

I’ve had zero problems with it so far of any kind.

This printer was indeed to replace an older Epson inkjet which, as someone posted, I didn’t use all that much, so yeah, the insides get glurky and sometimes the fairly expensive carts have very poor life. Then you get into those issues where you’ve used up the black ink and need to repl the cart, but they only sell them in pairs.

I’m just thrilled with this litle sucker, it was silly cheap and works great.

[Orange1998]

My problem Quicken does not print on it, you can only PDF print. Quicken says they are working on it.

[Matchett-PI]

bttt

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

!!??

Does that (issue) include Timmy Turbo Tax??

[JackOfVA]

I have an HP 4000 purchased in 1999. It’s at 240,000 pages now with the only maintenance required a roller kit to replace all the rubber parts in the feed path a couple years a go and a fuser kit at 200,000 pages.

A toner cartridge is $120 and I consistently see 12,000 to 13,000 pages per cartridge. That works out to about 1 cent / page. Paper is around 0.8 cents per page and my total cost per page is a bit over 2 cents, considering consumables, repair parts and original printer price (around $900).

My experience with the house brand toner cartridges from Office Depot was not good - poor quality print and short life.

Jack