<p>I need a new one. One that is fast, quiet, and cost not important.</p>
<p>My newish Brother printer has a terrible feature. It suddenly stops working when the toner gets low, without any warning. Today I’m in the middle of a print job with a deadline, printing only black, and it stops printing because it says I’ve run out of three colors. I wasn’t even using the colors! And how can they run out at the exact same time!? And why couldn’t it give me a warning? </p>
<p>The cost of 3 color cartridges is much more expensive than buying the same new printer (WITH the cartridges!) so I may just do that…or better yet get a new printer. Any advice?</p>
<p>depending on how much you only print text- I would recommend a laser printer.
I had one long ago- when they were very expensive- however by the time I needed a new cartridge of toner they didn’t even make them anymore ( it was an apple personal laserwriter)
Now they are much cheaper.
I like my canon Pixma- the drivers work well with mac as does epson.
I do think Canon has cheaper and superior ink to Epson however.</p>
<p>That seems to be their business model: Give the printers away for free and charge a fortune for the replacement ink cartridges. Then they booby trap the ink cartridges to make sure you buy the replacements often and from them. Makes it very tempting to just buy a new printer when the ink runs out. I think my last printer cost me $99 and it came with a $99 rebate, so it actually was free.</p>
<p>We have laser printers for b&w and ink jet for color. Laser cartridges are more expensive but last longer and produce crisper text. A cheap laser printer is maybe $100. You can now get printers you can access wirelessly, which is great.</p>
<p>Wirelessly? You still have to go and get the print job off of the printer, so it doesn’t work in our house.
“Honey, can you grab the Laserjet and bring it over here, I need to print this and that!” Says the couch potato with a (gasp!) laptop. LOL!</p>
<p>My family changed all three of our printers (2 HPs, 1 Epson) to the Canon Pixma MX 900. One by one, we realized that we liked the quality, the ink isn’t too pricey, and you can continue to print black even when the colors are flashing empty. I’ve learned that there’s still a reasonable amount of ink in the cartridge after the flashing starts, so continue to print until I actually see that ink isn’t hitting the page.</p>
<p>I have a home ethernet network with two printers on it:</p>
<p>1) HP Laserjet 1200 that just keeps chugging along - 5 or 6 years now, 70,000 black and white perfect pages. Nothing other than a new toner cartridge now and then.</p>
<p>2) I also have had a series of inkjets that seems to die annually. Current one is an Epson Workgroup 40. Prints great - but I have had it with inkjets and will replace it with a color laser printer when it dies.</p>
<p>for the ink- you can also sometimes put a drop or so of water or rubbing alcohol and shake it up- put it back in and make the printer think it can print another sheet. Especially if you don’t * actually* need the color it could be enough to let you finish the job.</p>
<p>however- I have not had good luck with buying generic ink- I have had a lot of problems with clogging- albeit it was with my epson all-in one.</p>
<p>For the Canon- I have only bought the ink that was made for it- however- the cartridges last a while.</p>
<p>We have a HP Laserjet 1200 at work. It is fantastic. </p>
<p>I use a Brother 2400 Laser printer at home. It was cheap - about $100, and the toner cartridges last 3000 or more pages. I tend to pull them out, shake them up and put them back in and get dozens more good sheets before buying new cartridges. </p>
<p>I do miss color printers, but not buying the ink for them. Those cartridges didn’t last long. I started using those ink refill kits, but they are messy…and I would generally get more on me than in the cartridge!</p>
<p>I use 3 HP laser printers (2 B&W, 1 color) for my consulting business. I have had each for 4 - 7 years and use them extensively. I’ve never had any kind of problem (other than an occasional jam with the duplex unit on one, but that takes less than a minute to clear). I swear by HP for reliability and ease of use.</p>
<p>I just installed a new HP officejet 6500 wireless printer/fax/copier a month ago and it has run flawlessly. Got it at Costco for about $125. I’ll never go back to Canon. My hubby has an old Brother printer that continues to give him fits.</p>
<p>Ink cartridges drive me crazy. If you use the printer, the ink runs out. If you don’t use it much, it dries up. We have three printers in the house, all just 2-3 yrs old. I’m replacing them with a laser printer I just got the other day from costco.com. It’s $99 this week, wireless. Almost got the color all-in-one laser, but too heavy (80 lbs), so-so color, so-so scanning ability. Better to get a nice scanner.</p>
<p>Starbright, if you have a laser printer (you mentioned toner), check out some of the reviews on Amazon for Brother laser printers. The factory setting is such that it DOES use color toner, even when just printing black. People complain about it, and some people give solutions on how to change the setting (set something to monochrome.) Also, they gave hints on how to get the printer to use ALL of the toner instead of just almost all - if your toner cartridge is a certain kind, use tape to cover a window on the cartridge to trick the printer.</p>
<p>Wow, I love you all! Where else can you post a question and four hours later get 14 very valuable responses?! Thank you so much! </p>
<p>It sounds like HP might be my best bet (and I discovered our school stocks toner for HP so that would be more convenient too). And maybe I should skip the color this time (it’s not like I really need it).</p>
<p>If you are a student, you are probably using black and white mostly, anyway. </p>
<p>If you have copies you need done in color, put your doc on a flash drive and print at the library. It would be much cheaper for you and less problematic. That is what my son does with those projects.</p>
<p>HP deskjets 9-- series (many) and HP deskjet 6122. Because they use 45 black and 78 color high capacity. Both can be refilled or can buy refilled fairly cheaply. Since the cost of refills are the same whether you use a low capacity or high capacity, use the high capacity printers for more prints. The 900 and 6122 can be had at Goodwill for <$10 and if you are lucky, the printer will have dual side print capability. The printers are cheap enough to keep a spare.</p>
<p>I have a color Okidata laser printer. I wanted something with ink that wouldn’t run when it got wet. (I make postcards.) It’s better at graphs than reproductions of watercolor paintings, somewhere in the middle for photos, I’ve had it for several years. Unlike the ink jet printer it doesn’t get clogged up all the time. And it didn’t break when the shelf it was on gave way and it ended up on the floor!</p>