Printer v Running Costs

Terrysdelight

Hi

Can anyone recommend a decent all in one - that won't be too expensive to run - have noticed some cartridges seem very expensive. Not too worried about printing pictures as I only ever print the odd one or two.

Some cartridges appear cheap but I don't know how to find out how long the cartridges last (how many sheets they print).

Any advice welcome.

Many thanks
Terri

nezzysaver

One think I would look out for is a printer which has "Non Branded" cartridges avaliable.

When a printer first comes out only the manufacturer will generally make the cartridges, these are much more expensive.

Other option would be to find a printer which allows you to refil the cartridges, so you can just top the ink up whenever required.

My advice would be to find a printer you would like and then check the options avaliable for cartridges.
Try to stay mainstream as these are going to have more avaliablilty

I recently bought a HP C4280 from PC world £39.99 if you buy online, its a good printer with scanner and uses HP 350/ 351 Inks, which I believe you can get for pretty good prices.

HP, Canon, Epson.

hubris

The first question to ask is 'do you care about colour printing?' If your answer is no, read on:

If you only intend to print in black ink, then the cheaper laser printers are an option for you. Laser printers are preferable to inkjets because the ink does not dry out from lack of use, and refilling them yourself generally provides better results than refilling inkjet cartridges because laser printers user toner, which is ink in powder form. You also get a better cost-per-page of printing with laser toner. You can do an internet search to find facts on inkjet versus laser toner. Laser printers (once they have warmed up) also generally print faster than inkjets.

I have a Samsung SCX4100, which has been replaced by the SCX4200 (75pounds at ebuyer: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/110141). This is a printer and scanner (and thus photocopier). I bought a toner replacement kit from ebay a few years ago for a few pounds, and this has lasted me. This is much cheaper than buying a new toner cartridge. I don't print photos. I no longer 'photocopy' - if it's something I need a copy of, I use the scanner to scan it to pdf. Then I can send the pdf to whoever needs, it, or print off as many copies as I need without needing to scan the original again.

I am quite big on pdfs. I used to physically print out webpages for later reading, but these days to save paper and ink, I use pdfcreator (Free, open source software), to 'print' these pages to pdf, which gives me more flexibility.