Okay, I hardly ever use my printer (Lexmark inkjet), which means that when I do need to print something, I invariably have to go out and buy new print cartridges. Even worse, because I have a color printer I have to either buy a color and a black cartridge, or spend a good half hour screwing with the damned thing to get it to print using just the black cartridge (which is all I need 99% of the time). Ideally, I'd like a sub-$100 printer that I wouldn't have to worry about the ink drying up if I didn't print anything for a couple of months or two, and the refills didn't cost as much (or more) than the damn printer. Color would be nice, but not really necessary. Is there anything like that out there, or am I just SOL?
saw an ad for a kodak printer that was supposed to be inexpensive and the cartridges don't cost a whole lot either
Lasers are cool. I got one for the opposite reason: wife was burning through ink and paper for her classes. Wanted duplexing (two sided printing), speed (lasers are typically twice as fast as inkjets), and economy (toner is a lot less especially if you buy refilled cartridges). An added advantage is sharper printing than an inkjet. I wound up with lexmarks e250dn because it was cheap (amazon $150 at the time. Price fluctuates over $100 from week to week so catch it when it's low. It's $180 right now) and does duplex (two sides) and network (able to share just connecting it to the router) and came with a starter cartridge good for 1500 pages. Refills that are good for 3500 pages cost about $90. If you're printing a lot, the same thing can be had from dell for more but the refill cartridges are a lot less. $239 for the duplexing network printer or $159 for the single side non-networked. The complexity of the printer might make it more prone to failure, but the duty cycles are typically in the thousands of pages (50,000 for the lexmark) per month vs hundreds for an inkjet. Hard to say. I guess the dry toner would be well suited for long standby periods. The printer itself wakes up every 2 hours or so for a second to stir the toner and move the rollers (avoiding flat spots I guess). The xerographic process they use to place the toner (colorant mixed with microscopic plastic beads) requires they not pause in the middle of printing like inkjets can. This means they have memory and their own processor to keep the feed running continuously, but it also offloads the processing that your computer normally performs for an inkjet. It died last week though (fuser error). Call to lexmark and 20 minutes trouble shooting they agreed to send a replacement. It arrived 2 days later with a return label to send back the defective printer. They called 1 day later to confirm I got it and asked if there were any other problems. Pretty good service. Brother and Samsung lasers are popular. Duplexing and networking are what sold me on the lexmark for the price.
Gutenberg! Now that guy could print! These kids today, with their "computers" and "electricity"........
