Printers

OK, I went and bought the Epson Workforce 2540, which uses pigment based in. Here are some sample scans of the two printers:

Epson Artisan 835 with Dyer based ink printed on 67. lb Staples White Coverstock:



Epson Workforce 2540 with pigment based ink printed on the same 67 lb. Stapes White Coverstock:

The important thing is Andy,  how much the ink refills?
The machine probably comes with low page cartridges.

I do the same with Laser (Brother HL2130)
Toner refill $53
I use Generic $18 (2,600 pages)

I wonder why the printers are so much cheaper in Canada.

An old B&W laser is definitely going to be the cheapest way to go for B&W prints.

I've printed out about a half dozen pages on cardstock and have been very happy with the results. Next thing I am going to try is 100% cotton paper.

Andy,

Glad you were able to find a printer you are happy with.  I came late to this thread, but last year I replaced my HP printer for an Epson WF-3540 and have been printing Steiner pages on 67lb cover stock from Staples for the past year and have been very happy with the quality of the print and the level of ink usage.

So, I finally took the ultimate challenge and printed a page of 100% cotton paper with the my pigment based ink printer. Cotton paper is notorious for absorbing ink and causing the image and text on the page to get fuzzy.

My new Epson 2540 printed a nice clean crisp page. The images themselves were a little faded, but they weren't fuzzy. And the text was as crisp and clean as a laser.

It seems to scan OK. I don't have anything to compare it against, and I don't use the scanner that often.

I've been trying to find a scanner that has a document feeder that will scan double sided pages. That way when I get paperwork in I want to keep, I can just scan it and shred the original. The ones I find a extremely expensive.

There's a company here in the US that will scan your stuff in for you and provide you with a link to download the PDF. The books/magazines you send them are destroyed in the process. You pay per 100 pages scanned. I think it's $1.00 per 100 pages.

Just remembered the site is called 1dollarscan. I may just use that site.

I have a couple of years of Aquarium Fish Magazine I may send in to get scanned. They sell all the issues as PDFs, but I bought them once. I am NOT buying them again.

A few years ago,  I used to buy pallets of bulk Computers and printers from dispersing agents from
companies closing or upgrading, then re-sell at the flea markets.

Hewlett Packard was not considered a good printer even then, amongst our circle, and we often just gave them away.

My $39  Brother Laser printer works faultlessly over about 2 years now,  my original thought, at $39 if was no good
one could just recycle it.
Downside,  a noisy little fellow when warming up,  and, if you accidentally forget to click on "this page only"
in a Steiner *.pdf,  it will print out 85 pages, the only way to stop it, is to rapidly pull out the paper tray.

Generic Toner $18   for 2,500-3,000  pages. (Black only no colour)

I can't imagine that ANY inkjet printer is cheaper to operate than a laser. In my opinion, the purchase price is MUCH less significant than the cost-per-page to operate.

It has been my experience that inexpensive inkjets use twice as much ink as higher-priced models.

At the very least, you should do a little Google-Fu and try to find some printer reviews. CNET and PCMagazine usually rank/review the latest models.

Good luck.
Kirk

Agreed.  For color printing, if you are printing more than a few hundred pages each month, the color laser printer will be far more economical than a color inkjet in the long run (and definitely much faster).  I haven't used an inkjet in almost 2 decades.  My father still uses an inkjet, but he only prints out half a dozen pages a week at most.

We do a lot of cardstock printing.  I can tell you right now that color laser printers yield significantly different results when printing on thicker than normal paper.  Make sure you have the correct paper type setting before you print, but even then, results among different models (even same brand) can vary.  So test your print beforehand if possible.  A printer that does excellent on 20lb paper may not print well on thicker paper or different paper types.  Also, for thicker paper, best to have a printer with straight-feed option.  Someone gave me a very nice HP color laser printer, but it doesn't have straight feed-thru, so cardstock printing comes out real lousy depending on how extensive the color coverage.  I've never been a big fan of HP laser printers, and that only reinforced my bias.  On the other hand, I know many who are quite happy with their HP.

In my experience, color laser printers usually don't last anywhere as long as the monochrome printers.  Of the 3 that I've had, one failed within 2 years after relatively light use.  That one did the best with 110lb cardstock printing, but unfortunately that model has been discontinued.  I would not be surprised if the reason that color laser printer failed was because we did most of our cardstock printing on it.  We now "space out" our cardstock printing into small batches.  I've had one monochrome laser printer fail, but after 5+ years of heavy use.  All my other monochrome laser printers continue to work fine.

Don't print labels with your color laser printer, especially if you don't have straight feed-thru.  It's not worth the cleaning aggravation if a label gets stuck in the mechanism.

Read the online comparisons/reviews -- they will be more accurate than my non-statistical experience.  Of course, I'm referring to consumer grade color printers, not the commercial duty printers.  We typically print a few thousand pages per month.

Just my 2 cents worth.  Best wishes on getting a suitable printer...

k

The manufacturers usually recommend only using water and Q-tip. That's how I used to do it. I wouldn't recommend using Windex/ammonia on electronics in general. At most, maybe use some rubbing alcohol if absolutely necessary.

Sorry it didn't work out for you. Hope the next printer will suit your needs much better.

Most of our laser printers are made by Brother. I think you will be reasonably happy with it.

On my monochrome laser printers --
After the first few hundred copies, I suggest you take the toner out once every 1-2 weeks and evenly rotate it along its lengthwise axis about 3-5 times (once every week if you print 100+ pages per week). It's been my experience that the toner cartridge will last noticeably longer (at least 25%-50% more copies) when printing out basic copies (little or no graphics) if you do so. Apparently much toner is actually wasted (i.e., never used up or shifted into the toner waste part of the cartridge). Rotating the cartridge seems to reduce that waste significantly. Just be careful not to jam the cartridge or break the cartridge chip (if there is one).

I don't make enough prints on my color laser printers to go to the trouble of rotating the toner cartridges, so I don't have any numbers to indicate if it would help on the color cartridges -- but I assume it would.  It is a hassle with so many color cartridges, so I don't bother.  But since the color cartridges are so expensive, if you plan on doing a lot of color graphics printing, it may be worth your while to rotate them.

Enjoy your laser printer.