Printers

[Flinders]

Depends on:
-how many pages you print- inkjets are cheaper if you don't do as much

-if you need colour- lasers are more expensive in general, but a B&W laser is less eye-watering than a colour one

-if you need lightfastness ( if you do, you'd need a pigment-type inkjet, expensive, and so are the inks, cheaper inkjets and inkjet inks are not
lightfast; lasers, I don't know about lightfastness)

-waterproof- if you need this, laser, if you don't need it often, you can get spray-on waterproofing for injet-printed pages. Or for things that don't need to fold/bend, like posters, use a laminator.

-special and/or textured papers; you need an inkjet, lasers use paper only

-speed; if you are doing lots of copies of a document- lasers are far and away faster.

I have a large (A3+) pigment printer for work (inkjet) costs me well over £100 for a set of manufacturer's ink. Speed- of a snail with a bad leg. But it will print on all sorts of stuff, like even specially-prepared canvas, and heavy card through a direct flat feed, and it's colour rendition is darn near perfect. When I don't need the pigment inks, I have a cheapo inkjet which I run on cheapo generic inks. Both will print on 'printable' DVDs. There is a laser in the family which is good for waterproof B&W on paper, and large runs of documents (where it is far faster). All depends on what you need it to do.

[[XAP]Bob]

I believe it is common practice, when selling a new printer, to include only a partly-filled cartridge or cartridges. That's one way they keep costs down!

They are 'demo' cartridges...
Infuriating...

[Flinders]

I believe it is common practice, when selling a new printer, to include only a partly-filled cartridge or cartridges. That's one way they keep costs down!

They are 'demo' cartridges...
Infuriating...

That's because back in the day when companies made their money from inks and not selling printers, at one point a new printer with full cartridges cost less than a set of inks...so when we got wise, they put smaller cartridges in new printers. When they wre forced to allow generic inks, and printer prices went up, they 'forgot' to change the inks back to full ones.

[jawaka]

I'm glad to find this thread as I bought a laser printer: I didn't think it so expensive and as I didn't use the inkjet printer so often it seemed to always have blocked nozzles or dodgy printing for one reason or another (head alignment etc) . As the laser printer does (supposedly a 1000 sheets )it should keep me going for 2 years.
I didn't need colour so a b/w laser printer has been really good for me, never a duff sheet. However I now see that a toner vacuum is recommended at change of cartridge, mainly to catch the particles of toner left behind . The toner particles are toxic and so fine that they pass the filters on an ordinary vacuum and will end up passing thru the vacuum and into your lungs. the toner vacuums are about £200+!!

I bought it at pc world so contacted them, but they had never heard of a toner vacuum.

I am wondering whether it is good economics to ditch the laser printer after it runs out and to get another. I think my saving on inks for the inkjet makes sense to do this.
Inkjet printers are a sort of hire purchase: the machine is a deposit and buying the inks are your repayments!

[Flinders]

You could use a mask and clean it outside, I suppose.

[meic]

Toner vacuum cleaners make sense for people who work at servicing laser printers.
I think that the rest of us who change a toner cartridge once a year or so can afford to "live dangerously".
There is a bit of tape than comes on the hole in the new one, remember to shake the cartridge before removing the tape. DAMHIKT.
Transfer the tape to the one that you remove and you probably will not even see any toner powder.

[Vorpal]

You can use a normal vacuum cleaner. I recommend replacing the plastic hose with a rubber one, or getting the sort of hose attachments that copier / printer technicians use. Although I have to admit that I cleaned a printer without replacing the hose, but the printer was on last legs, anyway, so I just couldn't be bothered. It didn't do my printer any harm, but static can damage them.

An ex-partner was a Xerox tech, and his vacuum cleaner was a standard commercial brand with special anti-static attachments.

[mjr]

Strangely, I've a development to report: my old laser printer is probably going to be put back into occasional use even though it's only got a parallel port which none of my computers do any more - because I just bought a second-hand JetDirect adapter (parallel to ethernet) for £1.50... these things used to cost us about £100 way back when.

[Cunobelin]

I think that your diagnosis of the current problem is correct. Printer cartridges are expensive eg they do say that the price of printers is kept low by a cross-subsidy from selling the ink. For starters you need replacement cartridges and your printer will try to self-clean. I think there's generally a deep clean type of setting you can actuate through a menu although all that uses up more ink.

I can't help with laser printers, except to say I believe they are more geared up for longer print runs.

If your colour printing needs are small, it may be cost-effective to get it done at a shop offering the service. AFAIK, You can get a reasonably cheap monochrome printer for your routine stuff like letter writing.

(Bob got in before me.)

At one point both my wife and I were on courses that needed colour printing. We were buying colour printers in the sales, using them until the ink ran out and then chucking them as it was cheaper to buy another printer than the cartridges.