Gone Laser And Never Looking Back

[Mayhem]

I finally did it and went to a laser printer. I should have done it a long time ago. Got a sweet deal on a Canon multifunction. Paid $99 at Office Max. The toner carts cost 36 bucks a piece and do up to 2000 pages. That's up to 4 reams of 500 sheets. No color but the toner won't dry out like ink and much more cost effective per page. Oh did I mention its bad ass as well. If anyone is still with ink jet, can it. Unless you really need color that is.

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16828102611

[JensenPark]

Can anyone out there speak to this for colour? Would love to move my wife off of deskjet colour for her biz...

[Jabo]

About the only thing I know about this is that the consumables for colour lasers are almost always prohibitive. I've recently got rid of my colour laserjet in a cash and swap deal. I've now got a dinky mono laser and i've still got my photosmart inkjet. I found that a full set of cartridges for the laserjet came to almost as much as the printer originally cost me. Yes, it's cheaper than ink \(per page) and if you're printing a reasonable amount of colour then I'd say it makes sense, but you need to do your homework and ensure you're getting the best value for money possible - I just found that I wasn't due to rarely printing in colour.

Jabo

[Madfish]

Actually there are a number of ink based printers with lower cost / page, especially if you take energy consumption into the calculation. The main strength of a laser printer is it's printing speed and nothing else really.

I'd advise to analyze the requirements for a printer on a per acquisition basis. Factors are:

- size of print

- printing quality

- ink / toner cost

- power consumption standy / use

- multi-purpose? (scan, fax, copier)

- if multi-purpose then size of scan, does it have ADF (automatic document feeder - automatically scanning multiple pages) etc.

It really depends on how you use it. Generalization can lead to very negative results. If anyone needs a printer I'd ask the following quesions:

How often and how much do you print?

What do you print (photo, charts/presantation, text)?

What sizes do you want to print?

Do you want to use it primarily as a printer or an all-in-one device?

If so, do you want to scan multiple documents for office or home-office digitalization?

Based on these answers it'd then be possible to give a valid recommendation.

[JensenPark]

would be about 50 to 100 colour pages a month.

text and pics (for wine fact sheets...as my wife sells booze. A good fit, eh?)

Suggestions?

Or just stick with inkjet...?

[BadAim]

At that level, you might just want to "suck it up" and count it as a business expense. The lazers really shine on the B&W. (much like Painless), but not so much on the color, from what I hear. If you can write off the expense, it might not be worth bothering with. On the other hand, past a certain point, professsional printing services are a viable option.....don't forget that. Time is the biggest factor in that game.

[Flyboy583]

I have a mono laser and love it (Samsung ML-2510)... Colour would be great, but bloody expensive!

[PropNut]

JP, you might look into wax printers. Full glossy color on plain paper. Many companies will give you a free printer if you buy a minimum amount of wax per month, but this might be prohibitive if you cannot keep up with that much printing.

These printers are expensive up front but in the long run they are much cheaper than running a color laser printer and of course way cheaper than a standard color inkjet for volume printing.

My wife has replaced the color laser in her office with a Xerox wax paper, the cost of printing per month has been massively reduced, but this is in comparison to the previous color laser that she used. She is a college professor and the printer is used to print lab manuals for her students as well as other handout type printing.

I cannot know if this would be a good fit/finish for your wife's business but it might be worth looking into.

David