laser printer vs inkjet?

[draggoon01]

how are laser printers for occasional use?

i have an epson 800 inkjet. since i only use it about once every few weeks i have clogging problems and have to burn a lot of ink in the cleaning utility on every use and it never completely clears up. do laser jets develop any problems from infrequent use?

i was thinking of getting some cheap/hot deal printer and sticking with generics from megatoners.com or similar. would laser jets be a choice than this?

 

[Mule]

I had the same problem with my previous inkjet printers. I would use them only on occasion and when I did it seemed as though the ink dried up.

Laser printers are great. They don't have the same problems associated with inkjets. The reason for that is that lasers have a toner and fuses the ink to the paper instead of "spraying" as with inkjets.

I would certainly recommend getting a laser, even a low end laser like mine (Lexmark E210) is better than any inkjet i've ever owned. Being able to print 2000 pages per toner without any problems will save you lots of money in the long run. BTW I bought my printer for only 70 bucks or so after rebates.

 

[ojai00]

If you're printing a lot of black text, then I would suggest you get a laser printer. The tonor is rated by page count, and if you set the printer to go to sleep after a certain amount of time, it'll just turn off until you send a print job. Most inkjet cartridges will dry out after long periods of inactivity (in my experiences, others might be different). Hope this helps.

 

[dj4005]

I'm not sure if this problem is universal, but I've noticed that printouts from inkjet printers tend to smear when using a highlighter. That's NOT the case with prints from a laser printer.

And, as others have mentioned - the cost per page is significantly lower on a laser printer.

A good combo for me has proven to be a photo quality inkjet printer - for printing the good stuff and those times where you really NEED color, and a low end laserjet. I'm partial to the HPs because I know that I'll ALWAYS be able to find cartridges - even years down the line.

Your mileage may vary...

 

[Baronz]

Most likely if you get a good inkjet printer, (400$+) it will be as good as the laser printer except for the ink usage and text, but you'll also be able to color photos as well.

Although those inkjet printers they sell for around 50$ won't give you as good quality.

We a have a very nice HP printer at school ( a few actually) and they do text just as good as a laser printer and they do good photos as well.

It really depends on what you are going to do with it.

 

[bigshooter]

I have an HP 1100, and may end up getting the 1200 (or whatever the next step up is) if it breaks one more time. It keeps pulling multiple sheets of paper at a time, and they've fixed it twice now (best buy psp rocks sometimes). Other than that, it's been a great printer and I will never go back to inkjet. If I need one page of color i'll print at school, otherwise I like the crisp look and non smearing of laser. I've also never replaced the toner cartridge, although I think i have close to 1500 or 2000 pages printed. I paid about $350-$400 for this thing a couple years ago, and its probably the best investment i could hvae made. Comes with it's own printer cable so you dont hvae to buy that, never needs $40 ink cartridges (which will easily turna $200 printer into a $400) and never had any clogging since it doesn't use ink. Wean yourself off color unless you print a lot of photos. I'm hoping by the time i'm out of school and can start playing with digital cams and stuff again, they'll have desktop color lasers for a reasonable price. Inkjets are just a way to make more money for the manufacturers. Just read about how HP could lose money on all of their divisions except imaging and still make a profit. All because of ink sales.

 

[kgraeme]

My Epson Inkjet is dying and we just bought a Brother laser printer. Very nice. I might buy another inkjet for cheap color, but I won't have to worry about buying cartridges all the time.

 

[Lanyap]

Laser printers are great. Once you have one and use it you don't want to go back to inkjet unless you need color. I have a HP Laserjet 5L that I bought in 1996 and it still works great. You can refill the carts for less that a refurb cart. You can also let it sit for weeks or even months without using it and it will print just fine.

 

[Macro2]

There are advantages to both.
Cheap color is a obvious advantage of an inkjet. Laser colors are about $1000 and up
As for cost per page, if you get generic cartridges or refill, costs can be less per page for the inkjet vs a color laser.

Inkjet ink is water soluble so it will run if it gets wet.

As for resolution. I've yet to see any inkjet with the resolution of a 1200 x 1200 laser. Comparing DPI to DPI is like comparing apples to oranges. DPI on a laser is not directly comparible to DPI on a inkjet.
If you're on a budget and want color then an inkjet is the way to go.
If you only print black then laser is a goo choice. Unless you want to fork over the big bucks for a color laser.

Speed is also an important factor in inkjets. Get as fast a one as you can afford. Especially if you print color.
Canon's i850 is one of the best all around printers right now. i550 is it's slower sibling.

Cartridges for these can be had for as low as $2 or they can be successfully refilled.
HPs will eat you out of the house with cartridge prices. Stay away if you o any mount of printing.

 

[bob332]

Originally posted by: bigshooter
I have an HP 1100, and may end up getting the 1200 (or whatever the next step up is) if it breaks one more time. It keeps pulling multiple sheets of paper at a time, and they've fixed it twice now (best buy psp rocks sometimes). Other than that, it's been a great printer and I will never go back to inkjet. If I need one page of color i'll print at school, otherwise I like the crisp look and non smearing of laser. I've also never replaced the toner cartridge, although I think i have close to 1500 or 2000 pages printed. I paid about $350-$400 for this thing a couple years ago, and its probably the best investment i could hvae made. Comes with it's own printer cable so you dont hvae to buy that, never needs $40 ink cartridges (which will easily turna $200 printer into a $400) and never had any clogging since it doesn't use ink. Wean yourself off color unless you print a lot of photos. I'm hoping by the time i'm out of school and can start playing with digital cams and stuff again, they'll have desktop color lasers for a reasonable price. Inkjets are just a way to make more money for the manufacturers. Just read about how HP could lose money on all of their divisions except imaging and still make a profit. All because of ink sales.

bigshooter -

have you been to the hp website about this problem? they have a fix for it, they (HP) will send you out the item you install in the printer that fixes it. sounds like the best buy guys are jerking you around. i had the same problem you are having ( i have 2 1100s), went to the hp site, signed up, hp sent it to me FREE, i installed it and have not had the problem since.

draggoon01 -

i have 2 lasers and 1 inkjet. 95% of the time i print out on the laser because it is a lot cheaper to print laser, but i have a epson photo 780 inkjet that i print 1 page of text, different colors, 1x a week. this helps to eliminate the clogging and drying out problem. when i have to print in color, it is always ready.

i have never had any problems with a laser having problems after it has sat idle for a couple of weeks. i have personally used 4 different hp laser printers and love their printers (2x1100, 1x 6p, 1x 6mp)


Macro2 -

i just read that minolta is putting out a $800 color laser (the price paid for my 6p years ago), so prices are definately going down !!

 

[corkyg]

I have both. For general purpose printing - text and other things (primarily intended for B&W repro) the laser is what I use. I only use the inkjet for things that require color. Clogging is primarily a disease that happens to inkjets that use permanent print heads - Epson, Canon, etc. H-P's print heads are in the cartridge, and you get a new one with a new cartridge. Clogging due to drying out never seems to happen with the Deskjets I've had. My Canon and Epson inkjets always required head cleaning.

I use my inkjet about once or twice a week, primarily for CDR labels and photos. It is a HP 990cxi, and has never clogged on me.

But the laser is the work horse. It is also faster - lasers print page images while inkjets print lines.

 

[Macro2]

RE:"H-P's print heads are in the cartridge, and you get a new one with a new cartridge"

True and after you replace a few cartridges in an HP you might as well have bought a new printer.

Mac

 

[Boogak]

I had a Epson Stylus 600 inkjet for a few years and bought a Lexmark laser printer a year ago. No comparision, the laser printer prints way faster and has less problems with clogging and having to clean or align the nozzles (which I had to frequently do with the Stylus). Unless you really, really need color, I'd get the laser printer.

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: Macro2
RE:"H-P's print heads are in the cartridge, and you get a new one with a new cartridge" True and after you replace a few cartridges in an HP you might as well have bought a new printer. Mac

That's not true - it takes quite a few cartridges to equal $300 - besides, H-P carts are refillable 2-3 times without noticeable degredation. Also, my premise is for someone who may only use a color printer about once a week. I replace carts about once a year! If you are going to make it a work horse, then the perma print head is probably better - but those puppies cost about $125 every 3 years or so.

 

[draggoon01]

Originally posted by: bob332
draggoon01 -

i have 2 lasers and 1 inkjet. 95% of the time i print out on the laser because it is a lot cheaper to print laser, but i have a epson photo 780 inkjet that i print 1 page of text, different colors, 1x a week. this helps to eliminate the clogging and drying out problem. when i have to print in color, it is always ready.

i have never had any problems with a laser having problems after it has sat idle for a couple of weeks. i have personally used 4 different hp laser printers and love their printers (2x1100, 1x 6p, 1x 6mp)

doesn't that feel wasteful, especially with color ink?




thanks for responses everyone. i'm sold on laserprinter since i never really use color, and would rather just printout photos at a place like walmart than go through the troubles associated with being able to print at home.


so from what everyone says, i conclude there's no problem with printing out once a month using laser.

someone mentioned the smearing problem with inkjets when you highlight. but i've also had someone tell me that lasers have cracking problem when you fold along the printed area (for example folding paper into an envelope along the text) and that the printed area can flake off. real problem?

also laser printers can't spool, so you need more printer ram for larger print jobs. i believe 2megs is standard. can anyone comment on what would require more than 2meg ram? you can always just print out 1 page at a time if necessary, right? would anything not fit in printer ram for 1 page of printing?

lastly i've narrowed down laser printer options to the brother and samsung models. samsung is cheaper. anyone have any comments between these? i'm leaning towards samsung simply because of price, but would go with brother (or any other brand), if it was known to be more reliable or better quality.

 

[kgraeme]

Well as I said, we just got the Brother printer. We ended up getting the 1870N because we wanted network capability and the LCD panel. The 1470N is much cheaper if you still need network. Otherwise the 1440 or 1450 are nice and cheap. I really needed postscript emulation for what we do.

One of the really cool features of the Brother network printers is that you can set them up to print from an email address. Send an email to a particular email address and the printer will automatically print whatever is there. Pretty nifty. It's also happy as a standard LPR printer so is fully compatable in mixed environments with Mac and Linux. Oh, and it's got duplex! At least the 1850/1870N do. Great for saving on paper.

 

[Viper GTS]

Originally posted by: draggoon01

Originally posted by: bob332
draggoon01 -

i have 2 lasers and 1 inkjet. 95% of the time i print out on the laser because it is a lot cheaper to print laser, but i have a epson photo 780 inkjet that i print 1 page of text, different colors, 1x a week. this helps to eliminate the clogging and drying out problem. when i have to print in color, it is always ready.

i have never had any problems with a laser having problems after it has sat idle for a couple of weeks. i have personally used 4 different hp laser printers and love their printers (2x1100, 1x 6p, 1x 6mp)

doesn't that feel wasteful, especially with color ink?



thanks for responses everyone. i'm sold on laserprinter since i never really use color, and would rather just printout photos at a place like walmart than go through the troubles associated with being able to print at home.


so from what everyone says, i conclude there's no problem with printing out once a month using laser.

someone mentioned the smearing problem with inkjets when you highlight. but i've also had someone tell me that lasers have cracking problem when you fold along the printed area (for example folding paper into an envelope along the text) and that the printed area can flake off. real problem?

also laser printers can't spool, so you need more printer ram for larger print jobs. i believe 2megs is standard. can anyone comment on what would require more than 2meg ram? you can always just print out 1 page at a time if necessary, right? would anything not fit in printer ram for 1 page of printing?

lastly i've narrowed down laser printer options to the brother and samsung models. samsung is cheaper. anyone have any comments between these? i'm leaning towards samsung simply because of price, but would go with brother (or any other brand), if it was known to be more reliable or better quality.

Spooling is a function of the OS, not the printer. Laser printers do have to have sufficient memory to render an entire page, however, unlike an inkjet which can receive one line at a time. 2 MB should be sufficient for any printing you intend to do, & if you ever go over 2 MB you can simply reduce the resolution to fit within your memory space. Remember, it requires quadruple the memory to print a given document at 1200 dpi vs 600 dpi. Monochrome laser printing does not require large amounts of memory.

Viper GTS

 

[bob332]

Originally posted by: draggoon01

Originally posted by: bob332
draggoon01 -

i have 2 lasers and 1 inkjet. 95% of the time i print out on the laser because it is a lot cheaper to print laser, but i have a epson photo 780 inkjet that i print 1 page of text, different colors, 1x a week. this helps to eliminate the clogging and drying out problem. when i have to print in color, it is always ready.

i have never had any problems with a laser having problems after it has sat idle for a couple of weeks. i have personally used 4 different hp laser printers and love their printers (2x1100, 1x 6p, 1x 6mp)

doesn't that feel wasteful, especially with color ink?

1 page of text doesn't really require that much ink, and i do it at a low dpi setting. it is not like i am printing out an 8x10@1440+dpi. that is the nature of the beast with inkjets...

 

[Viper22]

Personally i use Laser printers and nothing else. I have an HP 5L and a 6L both of which are still on their first toner cartridge and I have had them for over 5 years. If i need color i can print it at work which is rare. I just prefer the sharpness of the text that comes out and also the speed.

Viper22

 

[kgraeme]

Originally posted by: Viper GTS

Spooling is a function of the OS, not the printer. Laser printers do have to have sufficient memory to render an entire page, however, unlike an inkjet which can receive one line at a time. 2 MB should be sufficient for any printing you intend to do, & if you ever go over 2 MB you can simply reduce the resolution to fit within your memory space. Remember, it requires quadruple the memory to print a given document at 1200 dpi vs 600 dpi. Monochrome laser printing does not require large amounts of memory.

Viper GTS

That 2MB being sufficient is making an assumption as to what it will printed. We use ours for printing QuarkXPress files with large photos and Illustrator art. Fortunately, the model we picked came with 32 MB.

 

[bob332]

Originally posted by: kgraeme

Originally posted by: Viper GTS

Spooling is a function of the OS, not the printer. Laser printers do have to have sufficient memory to render an entire page, however, unlike an inkjet which can receive one line at a time. 2 MB should be sufficient for any printing you intend to do, & if you ever go over 2 MB you can simply reduce the resolution to fit within your memory space. Remember, it requires quadruple the memory to print a given document at 1200 dpi vs 600 dpi. Monochrome laser printing does not require large amounts of memory.

Viper GTS

That 2MB being sufficient is making an assumption as to what it will printed. We use ours for printing QuarkXPress files with large photos and Illustrator art. Fortunately, the model we picked came with 32 MB.

you can usually pick up printer memory on ebay, i got an extra 16MB for one of my 1100's for $25, far less than hp wanted.

 

[Macro2]

Corky,

RE:"it takes quite a few cartridges to equal $300"

You are paying $300 for an Inkjet...whew.

The last HP I had was a 970c. 1 black and one color cartridge from HP came to about $80. I refilled but like you said it never worked more than a few times. Resetting the ink level is difficult. Not only that but when you stick in new cartiridge the ink level screen pops up and says you are low when you still have 40% of the ink left.
I shelved the HPs and bought Canons. I refill. The same amount of ink costs me less than $1 to refill or $8 to buy 4 generic cartridges.
While you get 2-3 refills on a HP cartirdge I've gotten over 70 refills on a single Canon BCI-3 cartridge.
I do a lot of printing. HPs simply are too expensive to run. HP plans it this way.

 

[bigshooter]

Originally posted by: bob332

Originally posted by: bigshooter I have an HP 1100, and may end up getting the 1200 (or whatever the next step up is) if it breaks one more time. It keeps pulling multiple sheets of paper at a time, and they've fixed it twice now (best buy psp rocks sometimes). Other than that, it's been a great printer and I will never go back to inkjet. If I need one page of color i'll print at school, otherwise I like the crisp look and non smearing of laser. I've also never replaced the toner cartridge, although I think i have close to 1500 or 2000 pages printed. I paid about $350-$400 for this thing a couple years ago, and its probably the best investment i could hvae made. Comes with it's own printer cable so you dont hvae to buy that, never needs $40 ink cartridges (which will easily turna $200 printer into a $400) and never had any clogging since it doesn't use ink. Wean yourself off color unless you print a lot of photos. I'm hoping by the time i'm out of school and can start playing with digital cams and stuff again, they'll have desktop color lasers for a reasonable price. Inkjets are just a way to make more money for the manufacturers. Just read about how HP could lose money on all of their divisions except imaging and still make a profit. All because of ink sales.

bigshooter - have you been to the hp website about this problem? they have a fix for it, they (HP) will send you out the item you install in the printer that fixes it. sounds like the best buy guys are jerking you around. i had the same problem you are having ( i have 2 1100s), went to the hp site, signed up, hp sent it to me FREE, i installed it and have not had the problem since. draggoon01 - i have 2 lasers and 1 inkjet. 95% of the time i print out on the laser because it is a lot cheaper to print laser, but i have a epson photo 780 inkjet that i print 1 page of text, different colors, 1x a week. this helps to eliminate the clogging and drying out problem. when i have to print in color, it is always ready. i have never had any problems with a laser having problems after it has sat idle for a couple of weeks. i have personally used 4 different hp laser printers and love their printers (2x1100, 1x 6p, 1x 6mp) Macro2 - i just read that minolta is putting out a $800 color laser (the price paid for my 6p years ago), so prices are definately going down !!

I actually knew about the HP deal where they send you the seperator kit. I would just rather have best buy not get it right 3 times. Then they have to give you a new printer, at least under my service plan. I heard they changed it now because they are cheap bastards, but thats another thread.