I've had enough of HP's outrageous ink prices, and not being able to print because a color cartridge I never use anyway is empty. I never print photos and almost never print in color. The whole business model of inkjet printers is basically a big scam to sell you a printer that's built like trash and then gouge you on overpriced ink. The ink for the Officejet Pro 8600 I'm using now costs as much as a new printer to replace. I ordered a Brother monochrome laser MFP. Toner cartridges are $30, can be refilled by the end user if you're a cheapskate, and don't dry up over time or get wasted by self cleaning like ink. Home users who are only light to moderate printers are also saying they often get several years out of a cartridge. Inkjets aren't even very good for what most people do with their printers. The text is much sharper on laserjets. Laserjets are much faster. Most people don't need to print in color, and even if they do over the long run a color laserjet will be much cheaper than an inkjet. The vast majority of people should be buying monochrome laser printers, especially now that they've gotten pretty cheap.
I only buy Brother printers these days. Got the MFC-490CW right now. I get compatible 3rd party ink off Amazon for $0.48 a cartridge. Most people don't consider Brother for home printers but if they knew how cheap the ink was they might reconsider. The color accuracy is kind of crap but I don't care.
I got one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Brother-MFCL2700DW-Wireless-Networking-Printing/dp/B00MFG58N6/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1421133793&sr=8-5&keywords=brother+monochrome+laser A toner cartridge that would last the average person several years is $30. But you can buy bottles of toner and refill them yourself for next to nothing. You basically just pop off a cap and dump the toner in. Brother doesn't seem to care about you using refills.
The only issue with laser is the price once parts go. A new fuser may not be cheap and although you may never print enough after so many pages it will demand a 'maintenance kit' (rollers etc), for our HPs they are £250 a go!
The Brother monochrome lasers are cheap enough on Amazon that I would have no qualms about tossing it in the trash and getting a new one if it starts requiring any serious maintenance.
Working in a print room my toner usually only lasts a couple of days before I have to replace the cartridge, depending on the workload of course. Term starts next week so I'm up to my eyeballs printing lecture notes and examples sheets. I'm surprised that the department doesn't go the refill route if it's so much cheaper than just buying new cartridges. I don't handle the purchasing though so I don't know how much it costs us, I just know we're on a contract. Maybe using new cartridges is more reliable than refills. @grim It's for my work computer which is running windows 7 enterprise. I've started using the vokul app again to control media playback via speech and want to be able to have my phone in my pocket rather than connected to the speakers, this way I won't have to shout to my phone every time I'm away form my desk and someone walks in.
@cmdr: Don't get me wrong laser is great and reliable, just 2 months ago I finally decommissioned a 12 year old HP 4100dtn that had done 950,000 prints! If you keep them in working order they go on forever. @Arma: I will have a look and see if I can find a native way to do it on Win 7. Your MFDs at work will be on toner inclusive contracts, you will pay a set price per copy and all toner and parts/service will be included. I have just agreed a contract with a new supplier for 2 new ones here and gotten the price down to £0.0035 for mono and £0.035 for colour, it means including capital costs for the hardware we are going to save £12,000 over the next 5 years on current figures. Buying new devices actually saves money even when you spend £11,000+ purchasing them! As you are a school you will probably be on really low rates anyway.
I bought the monochrome Brother HL-2270 laser printer back in 2012. Just replaced the starter toner a few months ago and it got used quite a bit. Usually toners make you replace them earlier than you really should.. so I could've squeezed more prints out of that thing if I wanted to shut off the safety mechanism... but I had already bought a replacement high yield toner for it a while back. In all seriousness though, you don't necessarily have to go cheap for the toner. You can get first party stuff on sale while you're using your current one since they last forever.. you literally can wait for a sale.. and since they don't dry out like ink cartridges like everyone mentioned, you can just have it sit there while you wait to replace your current one. The Brother high yield toner for my printer was only $45.. not that expensive for estimated 2500 pages.
I've had a Dell E525w laser printer since 2017. I think I paid about $150 for it which was a heck of deal at the time. I love it when it's working but it's being having so many problems and I'm tired of trying to figure out whats wrong. I don't want to go back to an inkjet so I ordered a new Cannon MF644Cdw. It's probably the most I've ever spent on a printer so I hope it doesn't give me any issues.
I’ve had zero issues with my brother monochrome laser printer. It just works. Can’t even remember the last time I had to change the toner. I do sometimes wish the little screen on it had a backlight, but it’s also another thing that could break. I never print photos because screens are everywhere. It’s just used to print documents and it’s really good at that.
My Dell was ghosting images and it would print a yellow tone down the left side of the paper. It also seemed to struggle with bar codes. I could live with all that but it also goes through toner like crazy. It seems like I'm only getting 200 pages out of some colors while others never seem to need a refill. As of now I have 4 spare magenta cartilages and 0 cyan. Sometimes the toner cartridges need to be removed and reinserted several times. It also complained about paper weight and needed to be set to my altitude. But like I said, when it worked it was awesome. It was fast, quiet, and connectivity was perfect.