I print a ton of labels for eBay packages (on regular paper) every day, so I need a reliable printer that’s fairly reasonable in price. I don’t need to print anything high-quality, I rarely even print in color. Just basic. A scanner would be nice but not necessary. But here’s the important part:
I will kill a black ink cartridge in a week. On my last printer, I just bought the ink refill bottles and had no problems. It saved me a ton of money and took 10 seconds to refill. Stores stopped carrying them so I buy them online. I bought this new HP, and I get these annoying pop-ups CONSTANTLY, ink levels, ink is low, BUY INK FROM US! It keeps making noises and stalling my computer, even when I’m not printing anything. I refill it completely and they still see it as low. Now it won’t print at all for some unrelated reason, so it’s going back. I guess this is common on a lot of newer printers so they can bleed you dry on cartridges. I’m well aware of how that business works. You can’t turn it off either. So, I need a recommendation on a printer that WON’T do this, no pop ups, no problems re-filling cartridges, just like my old printer that was about 3 years old if that. Needs to be something I can buy locally this week. Thanks!
If you install the full deal from the HP install discs, then you get the popups and all that shit. You can choose to just do the driver. Both the girlfriend and I have Canon Multi-function printers and they work great. HPs are also a good bet. You get what you pay for with these things.
UPDATE: I returned my HP printer and got another one that wasn’t broken. I had to get the same model. They swapped out the ink cartridges, no biggie. Well now the new one won’t print at all! Apparently HP knows if you refill the ink and it SHUTS DOWN your printer. I can’t print anything until I get a new cartridge. A google search revealed this is actually happening. It wouldn’t be a big deal if I didn’t go through one every 2 weeks- $30 a month, vs maybe $5 for refills. I’m too cheap for that. Just warning anyone who prints a lot and doesn’t want to pay full price for ink- stay the hell away from HP products. What a big fuck you to customers. I never thought I’d be shopping for used printers, but…I will be unless I can find a way to trick it. And I’m not computer savvy at all.
I bought a Brother wireless laser. I used to be running that thing non stop. Very fast and very reliable. I have the bigger toner cartridges which seem to last forever. My other recommendation if you can spend a few more dollars is to hit up ebay for a HP LaserJet 4250N, I have 4 of these and they are amazingly reliable. These workhorses each do well over 1000 pages per day and never flinch, I believe that they are now 6 or seven years old and I have only paid for maintenance on them twice as a preventative thing.
The laserjets are very reliable, that’s all we use at work (aside from the big Xerox copiers). I’ve only had a couple that have had bad network ports, but if a networked printer isn’t important than you won’t have to worry about it. Even their smaller printers put out a good amount of paper in a short time. The 2055dn (same price as the one that’s not networked) is a good all around printer. You can also get the cartridges refilled at Cartridge World or someplace similar.
I have that one at home and love it. My kid is always printing crap out on her “computer cool school” and I got tired of paying for inkjet cartridges all the time.
I still have my inkjet for the rare times I want something in color but if you’re going to be printing a lot laser is the only way to go.