What printer do you own/use primarily?

Out of curiosity, what type of printer do you use primarily? I haven't touched an inkjet in years, been using black/white laser since it's so much cheaper. Although I've considered adding a color inkjet. Until now if I ever needed a color printout I would just send it to Kinkos. I find this limited my use and even need for color. Heck it's even cheaper to send my prints to Walgreens (drug store) than own my own 4x5 photo printer.

But curious what type of printer you use?

 

Crappy HP F4400 AiO color inkjet.

I do realize that it's generally more cost-effective to get a laser in the long run, but I'm primarily space limited and a color laser is massive. It's even more massive if you want AiO capability.

Plus with the low volume of printing I do, it'd take forever for laser to pay for the higher upfront cost.

 

My issue is it seemed inkjet cartridges would gum up or expire. I don't print a whole lot either, but any time I did it seemed like I would have to buy new cartridges because they would print like crap.

I bought a laserjet for $80 and lasted me two years on the toner that came with it, plus had an inkjet at that time that I probably changed the cartridge at least three or four times. Then about three years ago I bought an all-in-one laser for about $180 and have changed the toner just once. The first one was even the "starter" toner that lasted half as long.

Seems that cost-wise after two changes of inkjet you'd pay for a toner cartridge, if you can live with black and white.

 

I'm getting about 80% of the rated capacity of my cartridges (I've kept track twice now!). On a $18, 150 rated-page black cartridge, that's about 7 cents a page, which is comparable to what I'd pay elsewhere, so I'm not too perturbed. I've never really had cartridges expire, either, but I never buy them until I need them.

 

We're still on a 1993 HP LaserJet 4L and a huge HP AIO color laser. The 4L has used 3 toners is nearly 20 years..

 

look at the Samsung CLP, and CLX series units, bit taller than an inkjet but pretty compact. black toner is roughly $47CDN for 2400 pgs of text

not expensive either, base clp-320 can be had for $100 on occasion

 

Canon MP250 color jet. As with most printers the ink costs as much as the printer cost, thats how they make there money.

Cheers
3Fees

 

EDIT : If you want to print a lot of photo`s you will get better quality from a on-line or high-street printing service and they can be quite cheap and some have introductory discount , I printer 50 4x6" with bonus-print and i only payed the postage.

I have an Epson Stylus SX525WD , it has wifi , auto duplex both side printing , scanner and lcd display, it was only £60 new, a compatible set of cartridges is around £8-10 on ebay.

 

Yeah, I get 2500 sheets per toner, and can run like eight or so toners before drum needs to be replaced. In any case official toner is like $40. It costs less than two cents a sheet.

And yeah those HP LaserJets last forever. A friend of mine bought one of those 1990 era LaserJets for like $10 from his company that went out of business and still uses it today.