Printer recommendations?
 

I hate buying printers because they always seem to die on me very fast, but it's really annoying not having one at this point. I don't need anything fancy, but I would like scanning capabilities and also some kind of network compatibility (I don't know how that works.)

Suggestions?

Look closely at the price per page of ink cartridges for the printer you plan to buy. That's the real cost of the printer, not the printer itself or the paper. Some are much more expensive than others per page. Consumer Reports used to report the actual pages per cartridge on may models...

I have a Brother laser printer that has worked perfectly for about six years. No colour, no scanning - but it works great on the network.

I recently bought a Cannon scanner/laser/colour/do everything printer that died about a week after its warranty ran out.

I'll stick with my ancient Brother. Its an HL-2030, I just checked. The thing is a fucking tank.

The Brother cost about $100 five years ago. The Canon? A LOT more. A stupid amount more. I don't give a shit about price - I'm sick of buying crap that just never works properly.

I've got laser printer Brother DCP-7065DN. You can get it very cheap when it goes on sale (~100$).

Prints and scans awesome, doesn't take too much space.

Toner for 45$ can get you 3000 copies

http://www.bluedogink.com/images/me-DCP-7065DN.jpg

I was just about to recommend this one. I love mine!

I've got some shocking news for you. They all suck.

I think the people whop make them have realized they can make more money by selling disposable printers and getting your money every year -- as opposed to making a good product that you buy once and it lasts for years.

Lost track of all of the times I've walked to my dumpster carrying another worthless piece of shit printer. Every brand sucks donkey dick.

Don't get Brother...the ink is so expensive.

it's a laser. Considering my last Brother laser printer cost me $120 and lasted four years, I'd call that a pretty decent cost. I got my current one on sale and the high yield printer cartridges are $45, so hopefully it lasts just as long as the old one.

We've beat the hell out of Brother B/W laser multi-function machines for the past 7 years printing literally hundreds to over a thousand pages per day, everyday, 5 days a week. We have several printers in the office so when one needs replaced we can usually find it on sale for about $100 off within two weeks. When the laser starts going bad, that's when we actually replace them.

We're on our third one at this point (an 8480) and except for having to replace the fuser on one a couple of years ago (we always keep old ones for parts so replacing it cost nothing), all we've ever done is replace the toner and the drum from time to time and all has been great.

As for the cost of toner, we use refurbished cartridges from 4inkjets/LDProducts as they cost about a third the cost (or less) of the Brother brand. On a rare occasion we get one that doesn't work or that leaks, but they have always made good and replaced them. They also have replacement drums when they are needed, again at a huge savings over the Brother brand (though they definitely don't last quite as long).

As far as ongoing maintenance, there are several messages that pop up telling you to replace this part or that part, and occasionally you have to reset the counts on the drum and toner units, but you can Google the workarounds and reset info. (This may void your warranty to take this in to consideration before choosing your plan of action.)

One last thought, no matter the brand of printer, they all seem to have cheaper build quality with each passing year.

I only print black and white so I have a HP Lazerjet 2100tn. Have had it for like 9yrs and never had any issues.

Any Xerox solid ink.
Depends on your end use I guess. For interoffice crap and printing your emails it doesn't require much of a printer. For a broad range of print quality from interoffice stuff to photos/brochures from one machine a Xerox is hard to beat on a per page cost.

For 5-600 you can get a ColorQube 8570.
http://www.office.xerox.com/printers...8570/enus.html

They sell refurbs too.