|
Post by wierdostomps on Jan 27, 2009 22:47:13 GMT
Yesterday I spent an hour and a half printing the papers for our school governing body. I wanted to print double-sided in a vain attempt to save the planet, but ended up wasting more paper than I saved. I am fed up of inkjet printers - slow and expensive to run. Also very difficult to share with the dark side. I think I'm going to buy a colour laser - I want a Duplex, Network (preferably WiFi) colour laser printer which is capable of the occasional decent photograph. Oh, and I'm a home office user, so don't want to spend more than say £600. Any recommendations out there?
Tim
|
|
Jinja
Full Member
Posts: 83
|
Post by Jinja on Jan 28, 2009 9:24:00 GMT
I run 3 businesses and go through printers like a whirl wind...!!!
I've tried all of them and the only manufacturer that I trust now is Brother. Very reliable and *touch wood* neve had a problem with any of my Brother printers, where as the HP and Epsom ones break down if you actually use them as a printer on a regular basis.
At the moment my longest serving printer is a Brother DCP 8065DN - it does every thing you want except it's mono and not colour.
Go for Brother, they are worth the extra coin. What ever you do DO NOT get an HP, gone through 6 HP printers.....
You have been warned...lol
|
|
|
Post by HeatherKay on Jan 28, 2009 10:42:39 GMT
Go for Brother, they are worth the extra coin. What ever you do DO NOT get an HP, gone through 6 HP printers..... You have been warned...lol I had to rush to cover the sensitive ears of my HP2100M that's been faithfully serving me since 1998! It's outlived most of my Macs, and still works like a charm. That said, I'd probably agree with your assessment - newer HP stuff sucks.
|
|
|
Post by wierdostomps on Jan 29, 2009 17:37:56 GMT
Ah that's interesting - and useful. Whilst the hardware of my old HP Deskjet 1220 is still going strong, the software has been getting steadily worse and worse. I've actually given up on the HP printer driver as I simply can't get it to work across our network. I use Gutenprint instead, which works better although the colour fidelity isn't great. However I was looking at HP laser printers - I'll go and do some research on Brother. Thanks
Tim
|
|
DaveB
Full Member
dwb
Posts: 93
|
Post by DaveB on Jan 31, 2009 23:05:19 GMT
I know a little bit from when i worked at Staples. With regards to toner prices, its always hard to work out the best deal(due to all the different toner capacity's company's use), but often found that brother toners were less expensive than most other brands. Samsung toners were usually very expensive. One thing I was impressed with was Brother's Customer Service. From working 2 years at staples i personally only ever saw 1 brother machine come back because of a fault. In this situation, we'd usually - send it back to manufacturer - they repair it - send it back, this can take weeks. But when I rang up Brother (this is the normal customer line, not the retailer line) they asked me go through some button combinations on the printer, see if they could diagnose/fix the problem over the phone. After that they said they couldn't fix it over the phone, so they would send out an engineer within 48hours! And they did, the guy had a working printer 2 days later! This machine was within its first year, so not sure what would happen after the warranty Also Hp have made some inkjet all in ones that cost less to run than lasers, and are really fast. These are however big machines, aimed at business, so possibly would not suit you... Overall I'd recommend getting a HP or Brother
|
|
|
Post by wierdostomps on Feb 19, 2009 16:00:27 GMT
Just to report that I am now the happy - and proud - owner of a Brother HL 4070CDW. Not only is it a duplex, colour laser with network card, but it's also WiFi. It was a bit of a pig to setup - the WiFi setup utility supplied doesn't work with 10.5.5 or later and the link provided just dumps you onto a generic support website which doesn't make it obvious what to download. In order to get it to set up the WiFi, I had to find the utility, download it, then tell it to setup and install drivers, even though the support site specifically says that the drivers in OSX work fine. However, that done, it is now working beautifully. Print quality is excellent - photos are not significantly worse than "normal" inkjet images on plain paper - text is crisp and clear. Speed (to a former inkjet user) is impressive and all our various computers - including my wife's school darkside laptop - are printing like a dream.
I paid £342 from Printerbase.co.uk which seemed a reasonable price and although the price of toner is frightening, when I compare it with what I was paying for inkjet cartridges it doesn't look so bad.
So all in all I am a happy bunny. Many thanks for the advice.
Tim
|
|
pg2114
Senior Member
Beware of the flippers!
Posts: 151
|
Post by pg2114 on Feb 19, 2009 19:15:08 GMT
I'm not sure if you've considered it, Tim, but I re-fill my laser toners. I bought a kit from eBay to refill my Samsung mono toner and it works very well. I paid under £7.00 delivered, with enough powder to refill it twice. Peter. Edit: Yippeee… 100 posts
|
|
keith
Senior Member
Posts: 269
|
Post by keith on Feb 19, 2009 21:19:49 GMT
I bought a kit from eBay to refill my Samsung mono toner and it works very well. I paid under £7.00 delivered, with enough powder to refill it twice. Say goodbye to any warranty you have on the printer if they ever find out.
|
|
|
Post by wierdostomps on Feb 19, 2009 22:40:59 GMT
Hmmm - my experience of refilling inkjets is not good. Are laser refills any better? I'm probably only going to use one set every year or so, so I think I'll probably stick with the genuine article. Thanks
Tim
|
|