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OT- recommend a decent fast plain B&W printer?

X-Y-Z

Aluminum
Joined
Sep 21, 2005
Location
NEW HAMPSHIRE
I just spent an hour and a half tring to print a damn page...have one of the fancy HP all in one color bullshit things here, for what it cost it should be the cats ass, more like cat S***. I hardly ever works, when it does it has to clean and align first, which takes up to 6 minutes.

All I want is a FAST black and white printer, I don't want to wait for warm up time or fuss with the paper cartridge all the time...I just want it to print when I hit PRINT!

Any one recommend a decent fast B&W printer thats easy on the wallet?
 
The newer laser printers have a short warm up time, when you turn them on, but it's better than an inkjet. Also if you let them sit for a few weeks they will still work. Brother makes a decent laser printer, the toner cartridges seem expensive, but are cheap compared to inkjet ink. I have a larger laser printer, but I am on the same toner I bought 2 years ago. Look at what features you need.

Monochrome Laser Printers | B&W Laser Printers from Brother

I also just bought a $ 250 Dell color laser, seems to be a decent printer, a toner set is $ 400 though, still cheaper than inkjet ink, and won't dry out.
 
i have a bottom of the line HP 1020 laser printer i bought a few years ago. warm up time is just a few seconds and it's been quietly spitting out pages ever since.

of course it's probably not made anymore but the point is that even the cheapest B/W laser will outperform just about any consumer grade inkjet.
 
I've had these HP 1200 or 1300 laser printers for about 10 years now and one has sat for up to 8 and then went right back to spitting out legible prints.

Warm up and data transfer, well, yes, but its not stupid...maybe 20-30 seconds?

USB into the laptop when i need it.
 
For printing shipping labels & documents I bought the cheapest thing at Walmart. HP 1000 deskjet. Just $29 and it comes with B+W & color cartridges that are $13 & $16 to replace. Works great, warms up in few seconds, when color eventually goes dry I'll just refill it with some black ink like I do with the black one.
 
I print a lot of ups shipping lables. I used inkjets but they took forever to print the barcodes.

I switched to an HP black and white laser printer and that cured my problems. They print very fast, and the toner lasts a long time compaired to injet cartridges. The print quality is also much better. If you use it for printing blueprints you will like the laser a lot better. The printer doesn't need much time to warmup but it mite take a few seconds before the computer actually sends the job to the printer. The printer I have hooks up to my network so I can use it with any computer.
 
+1 for laser, inkjet cartridges are too costly

ot for everyone, but I also have an old lexmark laser print that is WAY obsolete, kinda large, but cartridges are available on ebay for pennies on the dollar. Great for printing multiple flyers and posters!
 
Laser is definitely the right printing method, forget warm up and print times, its the time from hitting print for the page to come out that matters. Not how many it can do a minute most times! Hence even a cheep laser these days can take on a far better bubble jet and win. Other thing is if you want a easy life don't go bottom of the barrel on paper. Pick something decent paper wise can really pay of down the road. Cheaper papers can be dustier which does not help a laser one bit. Equaly keep it dry and flat, knock it up nicely too before sticking it in and 99% of feed - jam issues are resolved!

I currently have a second hand epson laser. Was a part payment on a repair. It only gets used for 3-10 sheets a month. Original cartridge done a unknown amount before i got it, still going strong unlike the drying out bubble jets which would have easily dried out in the last 4+ years even if not ran out. All i have had to do is clean the paper feed roller, most printers are friction feed, that roller gets to dusty and it slips. Normally a wipe with a clean tissue or ideally rag just damp with water will lift any paper dust - set off spray from over printing litho'ed letter heads and there good to go for a fair few years. Don't use a stronger solvent on it unless you have too!
 
I bought a brother HL2240 for some heavy printing (short term) for $69 from staples a few years back. Worked flawless- put 4 or 5 cases of paper thru it in a few months time, and then it sat until my wife's printer broke at work. She has been using it for almost 2 years now.
Laser is the way to go, especially if it will be intermittent use - it doesn't dry up like ink jets, plus if you do use it alot, the price per page is less.
 
Bought a Epson NP430 just last week at Staples for $49 to replace a HP 3in1 POS that never worked properly. It has Airprint -(prints from mobile devices). Setup was fast and flawless. Push the print button and there you are.
 
My personal favorite for a home-office or light commercial environment is the HP Laserjet 2055dn. It's capable of double-sided right out of the box, won't break the bank, and has reasonably priced toner cartridges that print a good number of pages before needing to be replaced.

In the past 3 years I've bought one for home and three for work. All four are still going strong after many thousands of pages.
 
I bought a brother HL2240 for some heavy printing (short term) for $69 from staples a few years back. Worked flawless- put 4 or 5 cases of paper thru it in a few months time, and then it sat until my wife's printer broke at work. She has been using it for almost 2 years now.
Laser is the way to go, especially if it will be intermittent use - it doesn't dry up like ink jets, plus if you do use it alot, the price per page is less.
I'll second that one. Been using one for a year and no problems. I bought a spare toner
cartridge at the time and it's still sitting here. Been a lot of pages through it in the year.
Warm-up time is minimal. USB cable is about 10 ft and fine. Good machine in my opinion.
...Lew...
 
Brother Laser Printers and MFC's

I prefer the Brother Laser Printers and MFC's. Looking to get a Brother 9970CDW. This printer is network capable, 30PPM B&W and Color, and does color scanning. I don't use the fax machine as I don't have a landline (and fax over VoIP is not reliable), but the ADF is great for scanning all the invoices, receipts, letter size prints, etc...
I have the Brother MFC-7820N (networked, B&W print/copy, B&W scan to PDF, 25 page ADF) and the Brother 5250DN (networked, duplex B&W Printing, 3 paper trays). Have had these printers for about 6 years. Still on the original printing consumables (toner drum, toner cartridge) at a low-medium print duty cycle.

Chazsani
 








 
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