Be Excellent To Each Other

I want a printer that will print in a nice prompt fashion that is actually reasonably economical to run (as opposed to inkjet printers). So figure a laser is the best option. I realise the actual printer is probably going to be a bit on the expensive side but then that should be made up for by the economical printing.

So anybody got any good ideas? Or is there an inkjet that will provide speed and quality?

It's worth considering what you're actually going to be printing; according to this for consumer grade stuff an inkjet will actually print better colour images than a laserjet. That article does confirm thought that if you're printing high enough volumes (> 2000 pages a year) and buy refilled toner cartridges a laser printer will essentially pay for itself over time.

I have this: http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/prin ... -620ND/SEE

It's Massive! but it works well for me. Kids use it for homework, we've had it about 18 months now and the toner levels are all still about 2/3rds

I think it takes about 20 seconds or so to print the first page, and then the next follow on straight away, taking about 2-3 seconds per page or so.

Malc

I'd probably not get near 2000 a year but speed is a reasonable issue and being able to print on paper that isn't super special coated glossy stuff to avoid being soaking wet... Also quality isn't really an issue.

I have a Xerox 6130 colour laser in the office. Best printer I've had here and the longest serving. With aftermarket toner it's also dirt cheap to run with no discernible quality difference.

It's an out of date model now (mine must be getting on for 4 years old). However it plays nicely with Macs and Linux and connects via a network connection which not only saves on USB faffing but also anyone can print to it.

When it was new I had a problem with the imaging. Xerox came out and fixed it. For a printer that cost about £160 I was amazed they did on-site visits. I was fully expecting to have to send it back! Got a whole new imaging unit and a new black toner free of charge!

It's also worked out massively cheaper than inkjet even using good quality aftermarket inks. The Epsom inkjet I used to have was forever going wrong. It would clog up, smear ink everywhere, you'd go on holiday and come back to find the ink had dried up. Total nightmare.

I buy all our printers from these guys.

http://www.printerland.co.uk/

Before I had the Xerox I had a Samsung colour laser which ended up being smashed in rage after a mere 9 months because it was so shit. It was a small footprint model which looked attractive but the entire thing was so compromised and toner thirsty I wanted rid. The paper feed broke as well and Samsung refused to honour the warranty (apparently I wasn't supposed to put paper thicker than 90GSM through it!!!!).

Tip - When choosing your model check the memory, processor speed and compatibility with OS's. Otherwise you'll find that some models may not play nicely with non Windows systems and large images may take an age to print.

Obviously, take a look at how much new toner costs - colour laser toner can be expensive.

I'm now running on "compatibles" from a reputable supplier which are a fraction of the price.

Obv I don't recommend doing that while the printer is still in warranty. However Xerox weren't as stingy as Samsung with the "starter" toners they included with the unit. Think it was well over a year before I had to replace them and that is in a business environment.

Mine were £52 delivered for a full set of all 4 which will last me about 18 months.

Thanks Mr Chinny.

We use compatible cartridges on a large scale. There's a less than 5% failure rate

Been into the service menus on mine.

It's done 4467 pages since new*. New toners went in about 6 weeks or so ago and are showing as nearly full.

I got it August 2008. So that's five years. It cost £156 delivered.

The set of genuine toners which I bought in March 2009 were - £177. They lasted me until a few weeks back when they were replaced with non genuine for £53.

So cost has been approx 7p a page. Let's say 8p as I did get that new toner and as I say I've put new toners in a few weeks back.

If I'd not bought genuine toner the first time around cost would drop to 5p a page.



* Wonder how long the imagers good for?

Assuming the non-genuine's lasted as long, of course.

That's true. They were advertised as the same capacity though but no way of knowing until I've used it.

Been digging around more in the service menus that I have never looked at. Imaging unit is on approx 80% life left on the graph. Don't think that's bad at all for 4000+ prints!

Non-genuine toner may cause more wear on the image drum, but it doesn't sound like you're using it enough to be much of a problem. Bear in mind the image drum is on a clock - the percentage is calculated based simply on the number of prints you've done vs. the maximum number of prints the manufacturer has deemed possible on the unit - not any kind of measure of the actual performance of the unit. As a general rule of thumb, most image drums can do virtually that entire cycle again before they're genuinely knackered. The key will be when you start getting poor quality prints - the drum is where the image is actually composed before the toner is transferred to the paper. It's what the laser essentially "draws" the image on.

Good advice, you should do this stuff for a living.

Heh, I'd love to, but alas the mechanics of the electrophotographic process have long since started to bore the piss out of me. Macs are cooler!

I'd avoid film reviews.

I've worked at Konica Minolta and Lexmark and have experience with Canon and Samsung devices - but generally only the big office copiers, not smaller units and certainly not stinkjets, as they're hilariously* known in our trade.

A colour laser is naturally going to be faster and more economical than an inkjet, but slower and less economical than a mono laser. They're also often noisy buggers. There are all sorts of engines and methods out there, but the vast majority of colour lasers have 4 print heads and 4 image drums in order to generate the image (built up with a mix of cyan, magenta, yellow and black toner). Therefore, colour lasers are much larger than their mono counterparts to house all the internal gubbins and there's more that can go wrong. Also, depending on the engine design, some colour lasers use a little cyan, magenta and yellow even when printing grayscale or black only images. Still, mostly these things are pretty reliable.

HP seem to have a solid reputation, but I've never worked with them myself. I quite like what I've seen of Samsung's devices, but everyone tells me they're awful. They're new to the industry though and seem to be improving all the time. Lexmark's mono lasers are pretty good I think, but I was never too sure about their colour jobbies.

I'd do some sums really: find a couple of printers that look good, then find out how much replacement toner cartridges cost and what their average yields are to get some idea of how much each will cost in real-world terms. Normally a new machine will come with a full set of toners, but these will be 'starter' cartridges designed to get you going, but to konk out before too long. Manufacturers normally have to sell the printers at a loss these days and they make all the money back on the consumables. Some companies are therefore fighting hard to control toner sales - as I was leaving, Lexmark were introducing region encoding into their toner cartridges!

*Not that hilarious.


Edit: I meant to say that colour lasers are never designed to produce amazing quality colour images. They're designed for you to print Excel spreadsheets out on with coloured cells. Sure, they'll print photos, but the quality will likely be worse than what a more specialist inkjet can manage.

The edge of my first imager had a fault so the image went magenta towards the top left. I also remember an old printer at work where the image faded at certain points where the imager was worn out.

But at 80% after 5 years, if I use it for another 5 years even with cheap toner I'll be fine! To be honest if it broke tomorrow I would have said it had done a satisfactory life.

The last time I had a printer for 5 years it was my Amstrad DMP2000. In fact I was still using it as a backup when my first inkjet (a Canon BJ100) had yet again drunk all its ink. It was as a noisy as hell slow 9pin dot matrix but so simple it couldn't go wrong. Happily worked in Windows via a parallel port and any Epsom 9 pin driver.

Although you had to be careful not to touch any of the metal parts on the connector and the PC at the same time. It would give a nasty nip!

Again, as Zio said, it isn't an exact science in any way - even with 80% health it could still crap out tomorrow. It's just a guess vs. the number of pages printed.

They're built to last. The biggest problem you might get with one so old is light damage - they're very sensitive to light. That's why they always come wrapped in black plastic or card. But obviously the interior of the printer is meant to be dark enough to protect them.

They're a consumable, so they have clocks put on them so you'll eventually hit the manufacturer-determined 'limit' of the part and be forced to replace it - see what I was saying about manufacturers making all their money out of consumables these days. If you can get into the Service Mode, most printers will have an option buried somewhere to remove the lifetime restriction and allow the drum to continue to be used past it's life limit. Of course, you will start getting shitty images, but normally the drum will just run and run.

They put these things into Service Modes because a lot of manufacturers have managed contracts with customers where the customer is billed per page printed - so it's not in the manufacturer's interest to go through consumables any quicker than they absolutely have to!

We have just found out this with the Xerox printers we use. yes I know I work for HP

Wait, what the fuck? HP uses Xerox printers?

On one project yes..

They're all made by Dell anyway.

I believe the Xerox 3320 is a samsung.

Re-badging happens a lot. I probably shouldn't say this but...

Well, just before I left KM, one of the sales guys came in to show us a new office printer they were shipping out to customers. KM doesn't really go in for small laser printers, so I straight away suspected it was a rebadge. When I actually saw it, I immediately said to the guy "this is a rebadged Lexmark, isn't it?" He sort of panicked a little, and asked how I guessed.

I'd guessed just by looking at it to be honest, but then he showed me the web administration page (most network printers have onboard web servers to allow their settings to be changed remotely). It looked exactly like the Lexmark web admin utility, just with KM logos. Until you clicked one of the status monitors, which would then ask to load a Java applet, very clearly stating the publisher's name "Lexmark International".

Bit of a problem, having shit like that shipping out to customers.

This thread is proving quite informative. HC does shed loads of document printing and uses an inkjet — I reckon she's spending somewhere in the region of £50-100 a month on ink and I've been pestering her to get a colour laser printer as she rarely if ever needs photo quality. Good work chaps!

She definitely needs a laser then! That's crazy money to be throwing away on ink cartridges!

I seem to spend about £20 every few months on ink, as whenever I go to use my printer the ink has dried out...

Another Amstrad story (switch off now) but for some reason in the late 80's/early 90's Germany were way ahead of everyone else adopting mono laser printers. Amstrad Germany were baderging Brentwood for them but the development and manufacturing cost were prohibitive. Margins were also way below what Sugar would expect and the engineers thought producing them would be a pain the arse.

Sugar wasn't prepared to make them but gave the German division permission to source their own printers and rebadge. So they went to Sharp, did a deal and the LD6000 was born:

Ditching the inkjet was the best thing I did. They only come into their own for photo printing or specialist applications (such as my CD/DVD printer).

And to be honest, for photo printing you are actually better off sending the prints to an online service. Suspect it actually works out cheaper than buying genuine ink + photo paper.

I bought a Xerox printer as I trust Mr Chinny's advice and was impatient. It's considerably larger than I expected. In fact the box is something I'm considering renting out as a separate house.

Colour lasers aren't small, that is a downside. But it has LED's right? Everyone loves LED's.

Mine lives on top of my office filing cabinet. I can't see the display without standing on tip-toes.

Remember what I was saying about colour lasers often containing effectively 4 print engines for each colour? That's why they have to be so bloody big. KM used to do a fairly small one, but it was really fucking slow (for a laser) as it would need to rotate each of the four image drums to make up the image as the paper went through.

The HP Laserjet Pro 400 disagrees

The Samsung I had was this one which was half the size of my Xerox:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-CLP-300N-Network-Colour-Printer/dp/B000M2E7QY

The Samsung ended up being dropped onto concrete several times. I have never had so much satisfaction from destroying a piece of electrical equipment let along one that was 9 months old. Pile of shit.

[edit] It was 8 months. And frankly it was on borrowed time after 6 months as it drank its way through toner, was generally slow and the paper feed problems started to develop.

Obviously I've quit this job now and I've been trying to explain to my paymasters that they could really just get someone fairly junior in this position and train them up. One of the call-handlers tried to go for it before they recruited me and I gather they pretty much laughed at her because she had no technical experience, but she understands the systems here, she deals with the actual field engineers every day, she has existing relationships with our customers and basically I think my bosses are tools.

Anyway, I typed up this guide for her to give her a basic understanding of how laser printing actually works, just in case she wants to try her luck at applying again. I figured I'd shove it here in case anyone is heavily constipated and has used up all other available toilet reading material, or have otherwise exhausted the entirety of the rest of the Internet.