Least expensive printer

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sudy Nim
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Sudy Nim

Could anyone recommend an inexpensive Color, B&W printer (no photo
requirement) for occasional home use? I'm using a 7-year-old Dell desktop with
w98se, which has a USB port. Thank you.
 
Sudy Nim said:
Could anyone recommend an inexpensive Color, B&W printer (no photo
requirement) for occasional home use? I'm using a 7-year-old Dell desktop
with
w98se, which has a USB port. Thank you.
Click to expand...

An old HP Laserjet, better the 4P or 5 series than the L-series. HP 6L is
also good.
 
If you don't need color, get a low cost monochrome laser. If you do
need color, get an inkjet, but do some research on the cost of operation
first.
 
If I were you, I would try to find someone discarding an older Epson
printer that uses the ganged ink cartridges and has no microchip. These
cartridges are VERY easy to refill, and easier to make cleaning
cartridges when they clog (and if your use is only occasional, they
will). Also, these still have some of the cheapest cartridges to buy
(3rd party). Models I would recommend include Epson 600 series (600,
640, 660, 800 series 700 series (740, 760), (800, 850, 880) or 900
series (SC900, 980) These are all 4 color printer (they use a separate
black cartridge and a three color, (Cyan magenta and yellow color).

You can pick these models up for free, or a few bucks in used stored.

The reason I suggest Epson is the head is permanent, and although it may
clog, it is clearable with a bit of time and under $1 in cleaning stuff
yo find in your grocery store.

Other models use 6 colors which you do not need for your use, and just
adds headaches.

Other models are the earlier 'i' series Canon again look for 4 color and
no chip. They have individual ink cartridges for each color, as I
recall, but are very easy to refill, but head do fail on these.

I can't suggest older HP product in the color inkjet printers because
the heads are part of the cartridge and can only be refilled by skilled
people and the head still fails after several fill ups. New cartridges
are darn costly and you won't typically find 3rd party product, as you
will with Epson.

I don't suggest a new printer, because they all have some type of chip
to prevent refilling, (both inkjet and B&W laser) they are still going
to clog over time from lack of use, and you will be wasting a LOT of
ink. Also, the cheaper the printer to buy, the more they get you on the
inks.

For B&W you are really better off with a laser printer if you will be
only printing on occasion

If you have the space, consider an older HP model (II, IIP, 3 series or
4 series). Again, many people are dumping these, and the toner
cartridges are available refilled, or you can refill them yourself, and
the cartridges handle many refills before wearing out.

The newer low end laser printers come with starter cartridges, have
chips to make them difficult ot impossible to refill, and quite honestly
are built like junk. They don't last.

The ones I mentioned, cost a thousand or more dollars when they were
new, and even thought they are "obsolete" they are build very well.


Art
 
Thank you all for your replies and thank you Art for the very excellent
critique. I appreciate your taking the time to help me.
Sudy Nim.
 
In addition to Aurthur's suggestion, I would recommend looking for an
older Canon printer that uses the BCI-6 cartridges. IMO, these printers
are some of the most economical to operate because of the availability
of good quality, inexpensive, compatible cartridges that are
non-chipped. We have Canon iP4000, MP780, i960 and i9100 printers and
buying cartridges for $1.59 shipped to our door makes them extremely
inexpensive to operate. Most Canon printers allow the user to easily
change the print head if, and when, it is needed.
 
You are very welcome. I should mention one thing, some older
particularly inkjet printers may not have drivers from XP or Vista.
Most Epson models now still have some form of XP driver or one is in box
from MS. Many of these printers use parallel port connection rather than
USB. A few will have both.

However, since photographs weren't your perceived use, the drivers
supplied in box my MS will probably be all you need for text and
diagram/chart work.

The older HP laser printers were so common and last so long that I
imagine all of them are supported even in Vista (although I have not
checked).

Art
 
Arthur Entlich wrote:
....
The reason I suggest Epson is the head is permanent, and although it may
clog, it is clearable with a bit of time and under $1 in cleaning stuff
yo find in your grocery store. ....

I can't suggest older HP product in the color inkjet printers because
the heads are part of the cartridge and can only be refilled by skilled
people and the head still fails after several fill ups. New cartridges
are darn costly and you won't typically find 3rd party product, as you
will with Epson.
Click to expand...

Arthur, let me be not the first to thank you. You are a superb and
generous resource here, and when I get the gumption to attempt
un-clogging my Epson CX4600, I'm going to review-again your cleaning
procedures. I don't anticipate having much fun because of the
disemboweling of the all-in-one's layers to get to the print heads.

But I've been reviewing various posts on this NG for a while, as well as
gaining some experience with my own HPs, so I'd like to clarify your
words a little. Here goes:

1. Each brand of inkjet seems to have its strengths and weaknesses. I
don't sense that any one is "better" or "worse" than any other. I'm not
certain that this is true of Lexmark, however, but not too many people
have experience with this brand.

2. I need some reassurance that Epson's printers are reliable enough to
invest in one, since I've heard that Epson heads are difficult to
replace and that replacement heads cost a fortune.

3. I have already refilled a few HP cartridges, color and black,
successfully. I'm pretty new at this, so I've gone slowly. Even with
improper dye "universal" (Universal tm) ink, the black's actually been
OK for my use, but I won't buy anything like this again -- I just wanted
to see what would happen and it was staring me in the face in the store.
I've just done my refilling relying on my common sense and mechanical
knowledge and skill.

I've decided to concentrate on HP inkjets simply because I came into
four of them: three from a thrift shop for $5 each, and one as a gift.
An advantage, as pointed out by Bob Headrick, a generous former HP
employee, is that HP uses not only the usual pre-print costly
ink-dumping to clear the nozzles, but also has some sort of proprietary
print head wiping. The result is that the printer and its cartridges can
sit unused for quite a long time, a number of months, in fact, and then
perform flawlessly. It's been said by a few people here that Lexmark
printers, which use essentially the same technology as HP, must be used
once per week before the cartridges clog.

I can buy refilled HP cartridges easily because they're so common. And
people here have refilled HP cartridges quite a number of times without
having to replace them. I assume that this experience varies, however.

I'm going to scrap an older HP printer (an 850c) because it's got one or
two damaged parts, and I have the other reliable, newer machines
already. However, I actually liked this model. I believe that its ink is
identical to that used in my other machines. I especially like the fact
that it's a little slower, and I appreciate slowness in machinery, since
it's less likely to rip itself apart.

Richard
 
message [snip]
I've decided to concentrate on HP inkjets simply because I came into four
of them: three from a thrift shop for $5 each, and one as a gift. An
advantage, as pointed out by Bob Headrick, a generous former HP employee,
is that HP uses not only the usual pre-print costly ink-dumping to clear
the nozzles, but also has some sort of proprietary print head wiping. The
result is that the printer and its cartridges can sit unused for quite a
long time, a number of months, in fact, and then perform flawlessly.
Click to expand...

I believe you misunderstood what I wrote in the past. One of the advantages
of the HP printers with integrated printheads is that they do much less
pre-print servicing. Unlike printers with separate ink supplies and
printheads that may need to go through a rather extensive startup sequence,
the HP minimizes the ink (and time) used for this operation. See
http://h10060.www1.hp.com/pageyield/articles/us/en/EfficiencyArticle.html
for a comparison of ink efficiency in different printer models. Some
printers may put 3X more ink into the service station then they actually put
on paper.

[HP recently introduced printers with permanent printheads recirculate the
ink used for servicing, giving efficiency that approaches that of the
integrated printhead HP systems. [Unfortunately I do not have the link
readily at hand - if anyone really wants to see the reference I can probably
dig it up.]

Regards,
Bob Headrick, MS MVP Printing/Imaging
 
I will agree that people have differing experiences with refilling, and
even reliability based upon the ink used and the environmental conditions.

I'm not sure that HP's cleaning system is necessarily superior to
others, although I will agree that should the head clog beyond repair,
one can simply replace the cartridge and start over, which cannot be
accomplished easily with the Epson models.

The lifespan one gets from an HP inkjet cartridge seems variable, from
one or two to a dozen or so, but it is variable. The heads aren't
designed for refilling, although people do so. Some models had
airfilled bladders, or require popping out a ballbearing/check valves,
and other processes. HP has been very rigorous in pursuing 3rd party
cartridge production, and due to this head design which is part of the
cartridge, many 3rd party companies won't try to copy it. Refills are
out there but tend to be more costly, and, of course, since HP is the
only source for empty units, as older printers get even older, there
will be less and less used cartridges out there to be refilled.

Certain vintages of Canon printer have easy to refill cartridge which do
not contain the head. However, the heads do eventually fail on these
models and that can get costly. The vintage of Epson printers I referred
to in my reply to the OP are all without chips, and the cartridges can
be refilled many times since the head is permanently in the machine.
The cartridge is just an ink container. The refill process is very
simple, and low cost, and many of these printers are still being
provided with cheap new cartridges from China which I personally haven't
had problems with. They are all dye ink printers, making the cleaning
process should they clog, relatively easy.

My concern is just that the HP used cartridge supply will dry up (not
the ink in them ;-)) after time. Since the head in part of those
cartridges, no cartridge means no printer.

Art
 
Art, I'd appreciate your addressing two of my concerns:
1. What does a user do when a built-in permanent Epson print head is
damaged or wears out? How difficult is it to replace this part and
what's the cost like?
2. My printer uses the pigmented Dura-Brite inks. Will pigmented inks
work nicely with a printer in this group if the printer is used often
enough?
3. I like the idea of image permanence, but is this ink so troublesome
that it's better to use dye-based inks no matter what?

Thanks, Art.

Richard
 
In general, especially with the low end models, it is unfortunately not
worth exchanging the head, unless you have a cheap source. Even with
that, each head is uniquely set up at the factory for geometry and
voltages, and although you can do this with the proper software it is a
bit of a pain.

Epson heads are rated for billions of drops per nozzle, so they last for
many years under most circumstances.

I do not like the Durabrite ink formulations. They are more clog prone
due to the fast drying nature. They were designed for office
applications for fast mainly black and white printing on their C
printers, which were not designed or sold as art printers when they were
originally released. They were sold as mainly document printers, which
provided sharp black text on bond paper that dried rapidly and the
printers themselves were at the time some of the fastest inkjet available.

The newer Ultra Durabrite inks are less clog prone.

Although you will pay more for the printer, the Ultrachrome pigment inks
are the answer for what you are looking for. They are slower drying,
but they are quite fade resistant, and very rarely cause clogs. They
are only found in the higher end printers (R2200, R2400, R1800, and
above. The R800 is the least costly of the bunch. It and the 1800 use
the gloss inks and gloss optimizer).

The newer mid-priced printer use Claria inks which, seem to be a hybrid
ink using pigment and dye or more fade resistant dye. They also claim
to have a higher resistance to surface damage.

The C and CX printers are sold very inexpensively and are IMHO designed
as toss away models.

Dye inks and the Claia inks do not clog the was the Durabrite tend to,.
If you don't want to pay the premium for the printer, I suggest the
Claria ink line of printer, if you require pigment look at the R1800
(some to be 1900) and the R2400. Both are wider carriage models.


Art
 
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