Budget Laser Printers? 35
Johnzo asks: "I'm in the market for a new printer, and I've noticed that a lot of sub-$300 laser printers are popping up on the marketplace. I don't need colour, as most of what I print is text -- but I want that text to be crisp and sharp and damp-resistant -- so a cheap laser would seem to be ideal for my needs. So, my question: can one buy a good laser for less than three bills? Does anyone have any input on specific models to look for or to avoid?" Interesting thought. The printer market seems to be chainging from year to year, and now B&W laser printers are becomming affordable for your average computer user. What recommendations do you all have?
Cheap Laser Printer (Score:2)
A few experiences (Score:2)
Stay away from Okidata unless you only print text. Their greyscale and photographic quality is pretty bad; the pixels are not evenly distributed and the images get spotty.
Brother printers are pretty low quality as well... I remember a brother 960 (i think) a few years back that had a defective power regulator component in it (worked for a brother service center at the time). We saw tons of them come in with the same problem, and it took the company almost a year to fix it.
Hewlett Packard has always performed well in my experience, and I usually reccomend them to anyone who asks. Their drivers are funky tho, you will want to uninstall all the 16-bit status monitor apps and whatnot. Lexmark makes good printers, but the Optra E+ that I have has problems rendering text at the right sizes; stuff is just a leeeetle bit off and it's annoying. The problem goes away if you tell the driver to RIP everything on the host first and print as an image. The HP 5L we have works great.
Beware the WinPrinters! The Oki 4W printer works ONLY with Windoze 9x, no NT, no *nix, no DOS. The 4W means FOR WINDOWS. Plus, after about two thousand pages, they can't feed paper worth anything (went through THREE of them, replaced for this same problem).
Consider a used printer (Score:1)
Of course, such an old printer is slow as anything.
Used printer do seem relatively scarce in this area. I suspect most people use them until they die.
One minor tip, avoid Xerox low end printers. They're fragile and not very good quality.
A nice HP (Score:1)
HP Laserjet 6L (Score:2)
I've been using a HP LaserJet 6L for the past two years. It's been doing just fine, and I've printed about 2300 pages on it over that time. Haven't even had to replace the toner on it yet (knock on wood).
The main reason I got it was because it got pretty good reviews from everywhere. And because of the HP name. I'd gone through two HP Deskjets before, and was very impressed with both of them. Gave the last one (HP 660C, IIRC) to my sister and she's still using it. That thing is probably 5 or 6 years old by now.
This 6L is wonderful. It can print 5 or 6 PPM, plenty fast for me. It does work under Linux, though I'm not sure how well since I have it shared using Samba and print from the various Windows machines. Graphics are nice and crisp. Economode is great for printing out stuff off the net that I won't be turning in to anyone. High quality mode makes text look really professional, my friends even use it to print their resume`s on everynow and then.
I forget how much I paid originally, but I see em going for $300 on www.pricewatch.com right now. $8MB memory upgrades for about $40, toner for about $45.
Used HPs are the way to go. (Score:1)
They can be had on the internt for a fraction of the cast of a new, cheap laser (alright, a large fraction). Yes, they are slow, but with these new GDI printers, either you cannot print, you cannot print fast, or you cannot process while you print.
Even though many are ten years old or more, finding a good, technician checked one should only set you back about $100 for a p series, $150 for the full deal (Series II and III). Memory expansion is nice, and can also be gotten fairly cheap. Check large business surplus houses.
Also, look around at Goodwills and such, I found a HP LJ IIp with no toner cartridge for $.99, yes, less than a dollar.
And with an HP, you print to it from ANY OS. Now I can triple boot Win/Linux/BeOS and it prints the same... . The series II and III are great - the full printers are HUGE, but the p versions are nice. They are small, and if you search around, you can get a PostScript Cartridge for them Note: Only use the HP PostScript cartridge (other brands relied on software...).
try a refurb? (Score:2)
Xerox DocuPrint P12 (Score:2)
Disclaimer: I am only a satisfied user. I own stock in HP, not Xerox.
Check out the Lexmark OPtera E310 (Score:3)
It's also a 600x600 dpi printer, with "up to" 8 pages per minute. This is the most excelent printer for Unix OS's I have found for less then $500. The list price is $399, but it can be found for as low as $300.
http://www.lexmark.com/printers/laser/Optra/E31
Get a previous-generation high-end printer (Score:4)
Things to look for:
- Brand name (easier to find support/toner/drivers for brand names.) Best choices are HP and Apple. Until recently there were only 3 printer engines in the world (most HP & Apple were Canon engines) so the engine should be the important issue. Unfortunately since the support electronics can vary so much it's best to concentrate on the label and all that goes with it.
- PostScript level 2 - accept nothing else. The various HPGL's are nice too but nothing beats PS. It's the standard. Accept no substitutes ("It's just like PostScript" - yeah - right.) Save the worry and get the real thing.
- Built-in network support. Sure you can hang the printer off of a parallel port on a box but it's way nicer and faster to just toss the printer onto your local network. Make sure the device supports TCP-IP and LPR, anything else (SPX/IPX & Netware, Netbios and Windows, AppleTalk & MacOS, etc.) are all nice gravy but can be duplicated with TCP-IP & LPR.
- 16 MB RAM Minimum. Most of the older generation printers will take standard cheapo SIMMS (a use for those old 8 & 16 MB's from your junked PC) and the additional memory can pay off in speed, resolution, and fewer errors. A SCSI port for adding a drive to the printer (think 'local fonts') is nice but generally not a big deal.
- A good return policy. Make sure you can return the printer for 30 days if a problem occurs. When you take it home run it through it's tricks to avoid any surprises. Try some PostScript test files, different grades of paper, etc. Look for smudges, leaks, and slipping rollers.
- Finally, particularly with older laser printers - make sure it's on it's own electrical circuit. Generally these printers go through a reheat cycle every few minutes which can be a significant electrical draw. Other devices on the same circuit will take the hit and after an extended period this abuse can cause marginal equipment to fail. I can't list the number of fileservers I've seen with crashed drives that were on the same circuit as a big ole laser printer. Coincidence - I don't think so.
There are a ton of places to buy an older generation laser printer. First check with your employer to see if there's any they want to clear out of the back room. Have some friends do the same with their employers. Call your local printer-repair shops and see if they've any hanging around. Do the same with any local office liquidators (though they won't offer any guarantee.) Run a check on the online auction sites too though be warned that many folks don't price their equipment reasonably ("...but I paid US$1500 for it 3 years ago! Whaddya you mean it's worth US$250! now?!") An hour or two of looking should buy you a better used printer then you could ever afford new.Go HP! (Score:1)
Seriously -- it works in Linux, it works in Windows, it works under stress and it beats the hell out of my old Epson FX-80 dot-matrix or whatever that slow-arse thing was.
HP is getting props for cluefulness here. Not too much of a boy's club (Carly Fiorina), good emplyess packages for people who actually have families/lives, and the most-recommended printers, bar none.
Three Things Will Survice Nuclear War (Score:2)
Cockroaches
Cher
HP LaserJet II, III, & 4's.
My staff had to resort to faking failures to pull them off of desks after we no longer supported them (II's & III's didn't interact with our mainframes well.) We ended up giving them to the staff we grabbed them from for home printers where they likely yet live on.
NEC SS870 (Score:2)
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Re:Used HPs are the way to go. (Score:1)
My college at the time had several high-end HP LJ III (x?). Their expected engine life-time (I guess MTBF) was ~250,000 pages. So, one day, my supervisor comes by and he wants to open two of them up and clean the dust out (no instructions for that, BTW
After that I always recommend an HP...
engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.
Re:A nice HP (Score:2)
the last couple of years the paper feed is quite
bad. It sucks in large number of pages (10 to 20)
at a time. I checked the web and everybody
was complaining about the feed problems on
Laserjet 5L and 6L. Apparently, these feed
rollers need to be changed once in a while.
My brother has a Laserjet IIP. It still works
like new after 8 years.
My suggestion is buy a higher end used HP, that
has a different feed mechanism. Check the web
for printer repair FAQ for more information.
Re:Check out the Lexmark OPtera E310 (Score:1)
Hari.
Go HP. (Score:1)
I can't wait to get this baby hooked up to my dedicated print server!
Startling Testing Procedures (Score:2)
When I saw the tests that those printers go through, my jaw hit the floor. They repeatedly (thousands of times) shock the printers with special equipment that makes really cool inch-long sparks, they strap them to giant shakers and shake them as hard as they can, until something flies off, then redesign so that the part will stay on. They do tests that I wouldn't dream of.
They weren't the cheapest printers, and deservedly so. If I had to bet my life on the performance of a printer, I'd spend the extra few hundred bucks and buy an HP.
Experience with HP (Score:1)
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Try Your Local School Districts (Score:1)
I just lucked out and picked up a $100 HP 4si as it was being THROWN AWAY simply because it was too old. Threw on a JetDirect, another $50, or even less if you find a vendor that wants to dump the JetDirects that don't do NDS (think Local University Computer Store). Good Luck.
Re:Check out the Lexmark Optra E310 (Score:1)
Replacing my Laserjet Series II, which is a little slow, and temperamental, but works. If anyone wants it, let me know. $100 takes it.
Re:try a refurb? (Score:1)
Reasonable prices for toner, fuser and so on. I have seen LJ II's with 200000+ pages on the engine that were still going strong.
The LJ 4 was also a pretty sweet printer. As far as the newer models go, I like the ones with the horizontal paper trays. Generally those are a bit more pricey though.
-BW
I love my SS860... (Score:1)
Quick first page out, and I get pretty close to 8ppm on straight text. It's surprising that more manufacturers aren't licensing the Adobe PrintGear technology that these use, as it seems a pretty slick setup.
Re:HP Laserjet 6L (Score:1)
It was a little tricky for me to get it working w/Linux at first, as it was a somewhat new printer at the time that I bought it, and there were no 6L specific magic filters. So I just took the 4L one, changed the resolution to 600x600 and it worked perfectly.
I can't really add much more value to the above comment, save to second that the speed and the quality were more than enough for my needs.
Re:Try Your Local School Districts (Score:1)
In the same respect, the dumpsters of large companies can be gold mines as well, I won't attest as to the legality of this practice, but I've scored a whole bunch of random equipment, including a $2,000 _PLOTTER_ once. They throw all the stuff away because it's easier to do the taxes than if they sell it, I know from experience that if you're around Northern Virginia, there's tons of good places to go (EDS in herndon as I recall never let me down :)
Where to get memory or postscript chips ? (Score:2)
I was told by someone that you can buy a replacement postscript chip for around $25 from hp's web site. I searched but couldn't find it. Where would I get a new postscript chip ? I haven't even taken the thing apart yet to check if you really can replace the PS chip. Has anyone else done this ?
Cheap hits on referbs (Score:1)
Here 's my search results. [pricewatch.com]
TC
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"Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do learn from history are doomed to hear it repeated over and over and over..."
Brother HL-1070 (Score:1)
HP (Score:1)
My only complaint about the 1100 is that the paper tends to curl on large jobs if you use the "up" feed. You have to either remove the prints as they pile up or change the paper feed to print them flat to the desk. Then again, as long as it's warmed up sufficiently that isn't even a problem.
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Re:Cheap Laser Printer (Score:1)
I don't know if this was a MacOS (or LocalTalk) issue, or it it was the printer, but it's something to chew over. Don't forget that the II-NTX was the first PostScript 2 printer ever made. These things are OLD! (But should be just fine for text printing without too many fonts.)
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Thanks! (Score:1)
-- Johnzo.
Re:Get a previous-generation high-end printer (Score:2)
If not, why the addiction to postscript? See this listing of Ghostscript based printers [wisc.edu]