Hardware & Technical Printers.

[Deleted member 110222]

Hi guys.

I've been trying my hand at writing for some time now, and I think the time has come where I want to share with friends and family, as well as having physical copies of ideas I can annotate away from a screen.

I've never purchased a printer before, as I've simply not needed one.

All I want to do is print text documents. No frills, no pictures. Just pure text.

Am I correct in thinking there are different type of printers? Which is cheaper? My requirements are fairly simple. Okay, truthfully, as well as the text documents, I might like to have the option to print out some of my cartoons.

What I'm asking is... What should I know?

 

[Roybe]

If you need color, then look at some of the personal laser printers similar to the Samsung C410W (probably years out of date...but still printing strong!). The toner cartridges are no more expensive than ink (price/print) with the added bonus that most are much more colorfast than inkjets!

 

[Asp Explorer]

Grab a cheap HP mono laser for about $100. They'll last forever.

Avoid HP inkjets like the plague. Actually, avoid all inkjets like the plague.

If you need colour output - it's cheaper and better to get a shop to do it for you.

 

[Roybe]

Grab a cheap HP mono laser for about $100. They'll last forever.

Avoid HP inkjets like the plague. Actually, avoid all inkjets like the plague.

If you need colour output - it's cheaper and better to get a shop to do it for you.

Not if it's 3 AM and you can't find your pants! (but you are probably right if you have your pants in hand)

 

[Deleted member 110222]

Grab a cheap HP mono laser for about $100. They'll last forever.

Avoid HP inkjets like the plague. Actually, avoid all inkjets like the plague.

If you need colour output - it's cheaper and better to get a shop to do it for you.

Noted. So for my artwork you reckon I'll be better off going to a professional printing establishment? (If so that's fine, I don't care where I get my homemade posters)

And in extension, are you recommending a black-only (forgive me if that's an improper term) laser printer?

 

[Asp Explorer]

Noted. So for my artwork you reckon I'll be better off going to a professional printing establishment? (If so that's fine, I don't care where I get my homemade posters)

And in extension, are you recommending a black-only (forgive me if that's an improper term) laser printer?

For artwork - definitely go professional. Home inkjets produce a muddy mess on normal paper, photo media is either too shiny or too matte, and the premium inkjet colour paper curls too easily, isn't lightproof, and yellows in no time. Not to mention the smearing that can happen if you touch it with sweaty fingers.

For text - laser is the only way to go in the home environment.

Some shops have wax printers - and for solid colour (I imagine cartoons would fall into this) that's bright, smooth, smear resistant and "solid" - they are hard to beat except by really expensive process methods.

Colour lasers are also available - but at the cheaper end they are still expensive to run and their output for photos etc is miserable, but again for solid colour they could be very suitable.

 

[Deleted member 110222]

For artwork - definitely go professional. Home inkjets produce a muddy mess on normal paper, photo media is either too shiny or too matte, and the premium inkjet colour paper curls too easily, isn't lightproof, and yellows in no time. Not to mention the smearing that can happen if you touch it with sweaty fingers.

For text - laser is the only way to go in the home environment.

Some shops have wax printers - and for solid colour (I imagine cartoons would fall into this) that's bright, smooth, smear resistant and "solid" - they are hard to beat except by really expensive process methods.

Colour lasers are also available - but at the cheaper end they are still expensive to run and their output for photos etc is miserable, but again for solid colour they could be very suitable.

Thanks dude, much appreciated. Hopefully I can order a mono printer in a month or two.

 

[Hell Razor5543]

Be aware that, as most printer manufacturers have cottoned onto the fact that the real profit is to be made from the ink/toner/wax, the printer will appear to be cheap while the ink is a lot more (comparatively speaking) expensive. It is not unheard of for the manufacturers to actually make a loss on the printer!

If somebody asks me what is the most suitable 'insert device type here' for their needs, I suggest they create three realistic lists. They are as follows;

List 1, Must Have. Any device being considered must hit all the points on this list to move on.
List 2, Really nice. Any device must hit 75% of the points on this list to move on.
List 3, Nice to have, Any device must hit 50% of the points to move on.

I suggested this approach to a member of a different forum. He was looking to buy a Chromebook for his daughter (she was going to university). They created the lists, and then went shopping. At one location there were numerous Chromebooks, but only three made it through the list vetting process. The daughter is happy with the one they bought (and it was not the most expensive one available). The shop assistant commented on how helpful it was for them to have come in so well prepared.

 

[d8veh]

Plus one for the cheapo HP mono laser printers. Not only are the printers cheap, but you can get cheap pattern cartridges on Ebay, so the running cost is minimal too. Most important of all, laser printers are much more reliable than inkjet type because there are no nozzles to block or clean. Inkjet printers are great if you use them every day, but when you only print occasionally, the nozzles/jets are always blocked, so you have to spend ages cleaning them before you can print.

 

[Patrick_68000]

For printing administrative texts or other texts, I use an inkjet printer and buy cheap recyclable ink cartridges

Sufficient to write to administrations and print texts found on the internet

 

[Cmdr BrinBrown]

I tend to just buy the cheapest printer in Walmart, I like all in ones, Print, scan & fax?...I don't fax
Use it till ink is finished, recycle it, get new one.

Mind my really best tip, is, if you can, print stuff at work !

Also I try not to print to paper, I carry stuff in pdf format on my cell to read/edit.
BB

 

[Shadowdancer]

I switched from a SOHO colour laser printer to a cheapish Epson WF-3530DTWF inkjet and rarely looked back. It prints, scans, and copies well enough, and for what I'm doing the ink cartridges last around a year except that one time I tried it for photos (which turned out surprisingly decent for a 3-ink office squirt). It's been chugging along for four years now with way fewer problems than the laser.

 

[Zak Gordon]

Modern printers vs old printers are very expensive to run, and have been designed to be that way. I have a Cannon Pixma MX870, for office/home type work and it really sucks up the ink (even if only forcing black and white). I've even considered doing the refils myself (which is non-trivial) to save money, but eventually just stopped printing as much (and even here your ink will evaporate with little use, so take the cartridges out of the printer and keep them sealed somewhere better). So i try to do my business digitally for the most part, it just makes the most economical sense.

Even the new laser printers (which are best for just text work) use a crazy amount of ink, but as i said this is by design as most of the profits for printer companies come from their ink sales, and that is what it is all about.

At some point i considered resurrecting an old dot-matrix printer (they used ribbons) and trying to modify it to work on my system, but getting hold of new ribbons easily can be a problem. Overall i would get much more production per print out of an old printer like that.