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Looking for printer ideas

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by tleonhar, Aug 22, 2007.

  1. tleonhar

    tleonhar Senior Member

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    My trusty old HP printer is getting a bit long in the tooth these days, so I'm looking at replacing it withen the next few months, er, before I have to buy more ink cartridges for it. So I'm looking for a replacement and would like to hear some opinions on what's out there.

    My requirements are this: It needs to be one of the all-in-one units that at least give me scanner and printer combined, memory card reader would be nice but not a necessity as would duplex printing capability. My biggest gripe with nearly all of the printers out there is the cost of feeding these, as a result, I've been looking at the new Kodak printers. With these, you pay a little more for the printer, but a set of ink cartridges will set you back about $25 (both black and color) vs $60 - 70 on most others. Has anyone had any experience with the Kodak printers? Also any other recomendations?
     
    #1 tleonhar, Aug 22, 2007
  2. hyo silver

    hyo silver Awaaaaay

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    I much prefer a monochrome laser for long-term, low-cost printing. They cost a bit more initially, but that's more than made up by the lower cost of toner instead of ink cartridges. I've had good success with Brother lasers, and their current 7820N model combines a fax, a flatbed scanner, a copier, and a printer. It also works with both macs and PCs, even at the same time. Of course, if you want to print colour photographs...
     
    #2 hyo silver, Aug 22, 2007
  3. tleonhar

    tleonhar Senior Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hyo silver @ Aug 22 2007, 03:43 PM) [snapback]500576[/snapback]</div>
    Very true, I have an old LAN connected laser printer that's my main workhorse whenever mono printing will do, but it's that color printing that's in need of replacement.
     
    #3 tleonhar, Aug 22, 2007
  4. Stringmike

    Stringmike New Member

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    I have three printers in my office - the Brother 7820N all-in-one already mentioned. This is a bargain and does everything well - not duplex, though.

    I have an older monochrome HP LaserJet 4050. Quick monochrome laser with duplex.

    I have just added an OKI C6100 color printer. Quick color network printer with optional duplexer. Also one of the few color printers that doesn't print hidden encrypted codes identifying the machine on each page.

    Mike
     
    #4 Stringmike, Aug 22, 2007
  5. hyo silver

    hyo silver Awaaaaay

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    Looking at the 2007 Consumer Reports buying guide, the Canon Pixma series is the highest rated among all-in-one inkjets. Both the MP800 and the MP450 have an LCD viewer, a card reader, and PictBridge. The MP800 also has film scanning. Printing an 8 by 10 glossy 'page' takes two minutes and costs $1.25 for the 800 and $1.05 for the 450.
     
    #5 hyo silver, Aug 23, 2007
  6. tleonhar

    tleonhar Senior Member

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    Well, it finally happened, my old HP gave up the ghost for good so I had to replace it.

    I was down to 2 models, an HP 5250 and the Kodak 5300. The HP had the advantage that it will print on inkjet printable CD's and DVD's but a huge disadvantage when it comes to the cost of feeding that puppy, roughly $60 for a pair of ink cartridges.

    The kodak on the other hand cannot print on optical media, but I have a cheapy little Epson that does that just fine, in addition a pair of ink cartridges for the Kodak go for $20. In addition the Kodak printer can do scaleable copies (the're both all-in-ones), has on board OCR (which works great!), and has duplexing (2 sided printing) manually and for about $80 I can get an automatic duplexor for it.

    You guessed it, I got the Kodak, and I love it! Photos are lab quality and dry as soon as they leave the printer and it is FAST, it does like 32 PPM in black and even photos print in less than 30sec for a 4 X 6 (used to be over a min with my old HP), I tried the OCR function with a newspaper clipping and had zero errors, never saw OCR that good. After about 25 to 30 photos and about half a ream of paper, the ink levels have barely came off full. It comes with drivers & software for Windows XP and Vista as well as several versions of Mac OS.
     
    #6 tleonhar, Nov 7, 2007
  7. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    This post is too late for you, since you've bought your new printer, but...

    When it came time to replace my old printer I looked at getting another ink-jet, as I occasionally print photos, but I was always having trouble with the cartridges. The nozzles plug up and the printing comes out bad, or the thing dries up because I have not printed in color for a couple of weeks...

    So I got a black-only laser printer. It is much faster, makes better-quality printing, and I still have not used up the first toner cartridge. And when I want to print pictures, I download them to the Walgreens web site and pick them up at the corner drug store. I can have them in an hour, 24/7. I use a separate scanner, and while an all-in-one may be more convenient, I don't find it a necessity.
     
    #7 daniel, Nov 8, 2007
  8. amped

    amped Senior Member

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    I was in the same fix when my 10 year old workhorse HP LJ5000 died. I replace it with another HP, this time an el cheapo LJ1018 that cost $25 AR from Amazon! It's faster than the old HP, but is limited to letter size, 600 dpi and one side, but has reasonable output.

    For scans I have a dedicated machine and for prints I email them to Costco and they're ready in 2-4 hours for dirt cheap, much less than home printing cost. I tried Walgreens, but their colors were so inaccurate that my passport pics were rejected! Might have been my local store only, but Costco quality is better and will print hi-res with several options on their site, including not modifying the original at all allowing PS prints matching your (calibrated) screen faithfully.
     
    #8 amped, Nov 8, 2007
  9. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    glad you like your printer, i gave on ink jets about 4 years ago...(right about the time the first affordable mono lasers came out) went to color laser this spring with Samsung CLP 300. was supposed to be smallest color laser at the time... it is the same size as my mono laser printer. speed is ok... 4 ppm color, 17 ppm mono. and its a printer only...but it was CHEAP...

    had a $75 gift card from Circuit City because we got our Comcast internet pack from them (also free after rebates) so real cost of Printer after all that was under $100.

    as far as use goes, i have a 7 month old son so we print a lot of pics... have yet to replace a cartridge. and unlike my old color ink jet, it does not take 7 minutes per picture.
     
    #9 DaveinOlyWA, Nov 8, 2007
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