Inkjet or laser printer?

[pluton]

I need printer for printing lot of black&white documents, mostly text.

If I use refill ink for inkjet printer, could it be cheaper than laser printers?

Also printer must be fast, espetially when printing first page. I need also printer which
produce low noisy level. Will be better laser or inkjet about that?

thx

 

[Cerridwen]

I need printer for printing lot of black&white documents, mostly text.

If I use refill ink for inkjet printer, could it be cheaper than
laser printers?

No it couldn't. There is absolutely no way an inkjet could *EVER* be cheaper
to run than a laser. Depending on the page coverage, you can easily get
10,000 pages out of a toner cartridge - not sure about an inkjet, but I
cannot see it ever being more than 1000, especially with about 90% coverage.
Even if you refill you're still paying about £3 per refill for about what,
300 pages of output? That's a penny a page. However, although you'll pay
more for cartridge (typically around £50) at 10,000ppc (depending on
coverage) that's half the cost of the inkjet and, depending on how often
you use the printer, it could last you a year or more. Some lasers allow
refilling, which could bring the ppp (price per page) cost down even
further.

Also printer must be fast, espetially when printing first page. I
need also printer which produce low noisy level. Will be better laser
or inkjet about that?

Laser - lasers are, for the most part, silent (at least the modern ones
are - we used to have an old Sharp at work that sounded like an Intercity
125, but we're going back 10 years and the printer was about 10 years old
then!)

 

[free]

hello,
see my message somme days ago.
I have 3 laser printer old HP, from 1986 and work fine.
Find one in a broker... low cost... or by a new.
And rapidly, (and for a lot of paper) the choice is: the laser...

 

[Ron Cohen]

A laser is typically faster than an inkjet for text printing and there won't
be any problems from smudging due to moisture. As to cost, laser printers
are economical if you aren't printing large solids or entire pages of single
spaced text. Page yield is usually based on 5% coverage which isn't a lot.
As to inkjets, there are fast inkjets on the market such as the Canon i860.
It will have the added advantage of color output if that would be needed. I
refill my Canon inkjets and the cost is much lower per page than for my
laser. You can get a 16oz bottle of black refill ink for around $20 or so.
That much ink will print far more documents than a standard laser toner
cartridge. However, if you don't refill, there is no way that an inkjet
would be as economical as a laser.

 

[Wolf Kirchmeir]

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 04:21:26 GMT, Ron Cohen wrote:

=>A laser is typically faster than an inkjet for text printing and there won't
=>be any problems from smudging due to moisture. As to cost, laser printers
=>are economical if you aren't printing large solids or entire pages of single
=>spaced text. Page yield is usually based on 5% coverage which isn't a lot.
=>As to inkjets, there are fast inkjets on the market such as the Canon i860.
=>It will have the added advantage of color output if that would be needed. I
=>refill my Canon inkjets and the cost is much lower per page than for my
=>laser. You can get a 16oz bottle of black refill ink for around $20 or so.
=>That much ink will print far more documents than a standard laser toner
=>cartridge. However, if you don't refill, there is no way that an inkjet
=>would be as economical as a laser.
=>--
=>Ron Cohen

Then cost per page of a laser is much less if it's the
toner-refill/replacement type, typically 2cent/page or
less. If you have to replace the whole toner + drum
cartridge, most lasers are still cheaper than most inkjets,
but some of course are more expensive (esp. if you can
safely refill the inkjet cartridges.) Lasers are also in
general more durable - if you are printing upwards of 500
pages/month, you will wear out the inkjet pretty quickly,
unless you get a high-throughput model, which of course
will cost you more (typically 3x as much.) The absolute
worst printers are the "free" ones bundled with computers.
(You don't have to accept those freebies, BTW. When my
sone bought his computer, he refused the "free" printer,
and got a credit that went a long way towards paying for
the upgrades he wanted.)

Back story:

I bought an Epson 740 about 3 years ago for $150Can. During
its stay here, I spent over $600 for ink cartridges, even
though I bought mostly 3rd party ones. I figured my
cost/page was 5cents and up. Photoquality printing cost me
about $1 for two 4x6 prints/page, plus the cost of the
paper (another $1) - roughly 3x what the local photo store
charges for reprints from film... Well, the Epson is gone.
I kept the HP660C that it was supposed to replace, which,
_even with OEM cartidges_, is cheaper to operate than the
Epson, bec. of higher capacity cartridges. But I'm finding
those cartridges harder and harder to find. :-(

So, Epson is off the list for me. Over the next
12-18months, I plan to get a $500 b/w laser plus a Canon or
HP photoquality printer for colour work. I've also
discovered that dealing with a local, independent
business-supply store is cheaper in the long run - they
offer service contracts which include toner cartridges and
maintenance - a really good deal if you print or copy 500+
pages per month. Such a store also wants to keep its
customers, so they generally recommend good machines, which
may cost more to buy, but whose total ownership costs are
lower than the cheapos offered by Staples, Walmart, etc.

HTH

 

[Warren Block]

A laser is typically faster than an inkjet for text printing and there won't
be any problems from smudging due to moisture. As to cost, laser printers
are economical if you aren't printing large solids or entire pages of single
spaced text.

Even if you are, they are still far less costly to run than inkjets.

Page yield is usually based on 5% coverage which isn't a lot.

But it really isn't too far from what you get with a normal page of
text.

As to inkjets, there are fast inkjets on the market such as the Canon i860.
It will have the added advantage of color output if that would be needed. I
refill my Canon inkjets and the cost is much lower per page than for my
laser.

It's one of those cheap-to-buy but expensive-to-run ones, isn't it?

You can get a 16oz bottle of black refill ink for around $20 or so.
That much ink will print far more documents than a standard laser toner
cartridge.

A customer gets between 7,000 and 10,000 pages from HP C4127X toner
cartridges at $105 each. That comes to 1.5 cents per page at most. Do
you really get more than 1300 pages out of the $20 ink bottle?

 

[Ron Cohen]

I've had numerous lasers and inkjets. For high volume text or b/w printing,
I agree that a laser is a better choice. Both from a speed and durability
standpoint. But, don't be fooled into thinking that you can print the rated
7000 - 10000 pages from a toner cartridge if there is more than minimal
coverage on the page. The yield figures are based upon 5% coverage. What is
5% coverage? IIRC, it is based on text and is about 300 upper case 10 point
H's. 5% of a standard size sheet would be a block about 2" x 2.8". That's
not much. I've owned several print shops and in addition to using the
lasers for DTP, we did a lot of custom training manuals which could only be
done from a laser as they didn't lend themselves to offset printing. I'd
have been thrilled to have gotten that kind of page yield from a toner
cartridge. At 5% text coverage, a 16oz bottle of ink will yield more than
the 1300 pages you questioned and the cost per page would be a small
fraction of a penny. For you to make a global statement that lasers are
less costly to run than inkjets isn't what I experienced. For the type of
printing I now do, which is digital photo printing (not something a b/w
laser can do) and forms generation and signs for my store, if I was using
OEM ink cartridges every time one ran out, the cost would be prohibitive.
However, with refilling, the cost of printing an entire sheet - full
coverage photo, not just text - is less than 2¢ per page. And no, my lasers
weren't the cheap to buy, expensive to run ones. I've had HP 3's, 4's and a
5000 and Lexmark Optra S models.
--
Ron Cohen

Even if you are, they are still far less costly to run than inkjets.


But it really isn't too far from what you get with a normal page of
text.


It's one of those cheap-to-buy but expensive-to-run ones, isn't it?


A customer gets between 7,000 and 10,000 pages from HP C4127X toner
cartridges at $105 each. That comes to 1.5 cents per page at most. Do
you really get more than 1300 pages out of the $20 ink bottle?

 

[Warren Block]

I've had numerous lasers and inkjets. For high volume text or b/w printing,
I agree that a laser is a better choice. Both from a speed and durability
standpoint. But, don't be fooled into thinking that you can print the rated
7000 - 10000 pages from a toner cartridge if there is more than minimal
coverage on the page.

My 7-10,000 page figures are actual numbers from two (relatively)
high-usage LJ4050s. Each goes through a cartridge in two to three
weeks. The users track the page count. Coverage is at least 5%,
probably higher because a lot of these pages have a 10% gray background
over half the page.

Most people don't print nearly that much, so they don't have a very
clear idea of the actual costs.

At 5% text coverage, a 16oz bottle of ink will yield more than
the 1300 pages you questioned and the cost per page would be a small
fraction of a penny.

It's just working backwards from my actual toner cost numbers:
$105/7,000=.015. (At 10,000 pages, it's closer to .01 per page.)

So the $20 ink bottle would have to last more than 1333 pages just to
equal the 1.5 cents per page cost of the toner ($20/.015=1333).

For you to make a global statement that lasers are less costly to run
than inkjets isn't what I experienced.

But it is what I've experienced with lasers, which is why I was asking
about how many pages that ink would produce.

And the comparison is a little unfair: using brand-new HP toner
cartridges in the laser, versus using refills in the inkjet.

 

[Dewaine Chan]

There is a saying about " The fool and its money". If people think Inkjets are
more cost effective than Laser on high volume printing, let it be. Beside p cost,
performance should be a major consideration in the decision. I personally think.

D.