Printer quest - which model is best for personal use?

I use www.cartex.co.uk.
Same as inkbypost but £10 cheaper!

I do a LOT of printing ( two 16 craft magazines per month), So I have spent a lot of time resourcing bulk toner , and recycled cartridges which have saved me a lot of money especially in the middle of the credit crunch. The company I use is Inkbypost.co.uk they have a friendly service and are good value for money.

I had a Kyocera (?spelling). This developed a fault on its third anniversary and that part was not covered by the warranty. I then had a HP vertical feed printer but the pages kept misaligning and I gave up on it. A friend recommended a Brother flat bed. I bought one and have had no trouble. Its quite fast. Cartridges are not cheap, about £70 each, but I get about 6,000 sheets per cartridge. I also have a Brother multifunction machine.. printer, scanner, copier, fax, again no trouble although the page settings are different between the two machines and I have never solved this, although this does not matter as I do not normally use the multi function for printing tax returns or accounts. As and when either of these machines dies, I will certainly seriously consider buying another Brother produce, although I will listen to my IT supporter. Both machines are rather large for a desk, and are actually besides my desk. The Brother printer must now be least four years old.

I suggest that other people considering changing their machines should seriously look at Brother products.

David

But ebuyer.com are always cheaper and provide an excellent service.

Whilst the cost of toner, pages, per minute, duplex or not etc etc are of relevance when picking such a printer they do not compare to the zero cost or “lightening” speed of producing everything Nigel talks about in his first paragraph in PDF and emailing them out. He also makes the point that he doesn’t need colour, which is one of the reasons the rest of the world see us in varying shades of grey.

PS For the dozen or so pages we do print a week I second (& third) Greg’s recommendation of Xerox solid ink printers, stunning quality, fast, cheap and no environmentally damaging cartridges, toners or inks.

Dennis

I completely agree with you that Cloud computing is the way to go - we've done it with IT-Click - http://www.it-click.net where they provide, feed and water our server and software for a fixed monthly cost; and a very good one!

However, I'm not sure how Cloud helps printing?! If we need to print something, there's no point in it printing out in one of their datacentres - let alone the security requirements to get in there and pick the print up! Our printers are in our office, and we print to them from the IT-Click servers just as if they were in the old server room. But we still have to bear the costs of feeding and watering the printer... or have I missed the point?

H

http://www.office.xerox.com/printers/color-printers/phaser-8560/engb.html

Solid Wax Ink, no expensive cartridges, so low running costs, and top notch quality.

They also do an all in one version (scanner, fax etc), but they start at about £1,300...

Are you serious about this? Don't you know the price of printer ink makes oil look like a cheap deal? When is the profession going to get serious and start thinking about using the cloud computing environment? Costs are a FRACTION of what it costs to run printers, use zero square footage of office space, never fade and don't get lost. Ever factor those costs in? No? didn't think so.

Sheesh - I sometimes wonder what century some people are living in.

We have just bought an HP Officejet Pro K5400, initially to trial it, but it has now taken over from our Mono Lasers. For less than £150 at Dabs it prints in full colour, has no start up time, is quiet and is much faster than a cheap laser. It uses large pigmented ink cartridges which give an output comparable to a laser printer, crisp, black, waterproof and touch dry and it doesn't curl the paper when it goes through. It has become our printer of choice in the office. Good quality HP Officejt Pro K5400 Compatible Cartridges are available online and are less than a tenner for 2,350 pages at 5% yield.

We have several different Laser/inkjet printers and have used the guys at Stinkyink.Com for our consumables for some time. Prices are competitve and Customer Service is fantastic.

You can buy a cheap add-on to network USB and parallel printers, e.g. here:
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/products/ra652x1y0z1p0s0n0m0

Have used the Edimax devices satisfactorily under Windows and Apple systems.

PS Novatech also does a reasonable range of laser printers:
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/products/a715x1y0z1p0s0n0m0

Have found it a good firm, and you can pick up in person if you are near Bristol or Portsmouth.