Need a home printer

Fueled by Caffeine said:

1988RedT2 said:

Fueled by Caffeine said:

Technically its a del printer but it looks like my brother 

Your brother must be one weird lookin' dude, man!

You know.. I've never seen him.  I got a sister.........

 

wait a minute..

Is her name Epson?

My problem with home printers is I'm spoiled by the printer we have in the office - a Konica-Minolta BizHub c458.  It's got all the bells and whistles... but for $7000 it ought to...

But Iwill follow this thread as I have similar needs at home and my inkjet is now dead with solidified ink.  I print maybe once a month at most, but partly because the printer doesn't work half the time.

We have a sweet printer in the office.  Monster of a thing, but its one of those that automatically staples, folds, and the flatbed scanner on it is something like 18x24".  We use it to print all of our own programs for shows.  It will print and collate up to 22 pages, staple them in the middle, and then fold them over.  You hit one button and it will spit out hundreds of completed, stapled, folded programs.

Its great for faxing too.... when our internet is fast enough to make a VOIP call.

Am I the only one who needs a printer so infrequently, I just take a flash drive to Kinko's?

I think I've literally needed a printer 2x in the last 6-7 years, and that was because I just bought a house.

I don't even take a flash drive to Kinkos - I upload to google docs and log in to google docs straight from the copier.

I probably won't use mine much either.  I wasn't going to get one (just use the one at the office when I was at work) but it gets frustrating; carrying a thumb drive, remembering to upload to google docs (which I detest), or just bringing my laptop with me.

I also had a frustrating thing a few weeks ago where I was off for a few days and wanted to print a boarding pass.... so I had to go to work, log into my personal email, print it out, yadda yadda.  I would have just made a screencap on my phone for boarding, but my display likes to work intermittently.  Every once in a while it looks like an acid trip.  I can imagine standing at the gate whacking my phone on the desk trying to board a plane.

So when I started looking at how stoopid cheap AIO printers were I decided to bite.

Bought an Epson, by the way.  XP440 or XP480 "small in one" they call it.  On sale for $59 and it had the second-cheapest ink.  There was a similar Brother printer for the same price with cheaper ink, but scan/print resolution was WAY down compared to the Epson.  New ink is in the $12 range and that works for me.  If it saves me one trip to work just to print something, I'll be happy.

We'll see how I like it.  If it sucks, its going back.

My HP psc 750 has served me well for years.  

I have 3 HP Color Laserjet 4700 printers that have been being abused by the people at the office for around 9 years and they are still going strong.  You can find them cheap though getting toner the first time will be a shock but for home I bet you will only have to buy toner once.

I've got a HP Color Laserjet CP3505n that's bordering on 10 years old now.  It's been like a workhorse.  Only issues have been related to an electrical surge that killed a TV and receiver too.  Hell of a lot better investment to print out wedding invites than to go with a fancy shmancy mail order place.

After my experience with an HP all-in-one printer I'll never buy another HP product. 

Threw it (or rather the fifth refurbished one they sent me) in the dumpster while it was still under warranty. 

Paid 500 for the printer, I don't know how much more to pay my hourly employees to sit on hold with HP tech support. 

I hate HP. 

Newer HP stuff seems to suck donkey balls.

I bought a good HP AIO for mom and dad when their old Brother died.  I printed 5 pages and it said the ink was low.  I called tech support and they told me to buy more ink (they give you cartridges with "trial" amounts of ink in the package)  So I bought more ink for $50.  They printed about 15 pages over the next month and it said that the date had expired on two of the color cartridges even though they were still almost full.  It refused to print because it would cause printer damage.

So I deleted the HP software and tried running it on the generic Windows driver, but the firmware on the printer STILL wouldn't let it print.

I took it back and bought an Epson.  That was two years ago and I've bought ink once.

I refuse to support a company who's main goal is to scam me out of money with future ink purchases.

volvoclearinghouse said:

Some HP are garbage, some are not.  A friend of mine in IT recommended the HP Officejet Pro 6978 to me, so I bought one.  ~$100. Only had it a month so far, but it seems like a good unit.  Also, HP has this new program where they automatically send you replacement ink, at something like 50% savings.  Instant Ink I think it's called.  Bonus: if you're a light user (under 15 pages a month) the ink is free.  

I don't fax either, and don't have a home phone line.  The 1960's were a great decade, I guess.  

I have this same printer, when I'm home it won't auto connect to my surface. Much frustration that every time the tablet leaves the network (which is all the time since I only WFH one day a week)I have to re-locate it. The surface shows it but the printer won't see it. I want to go office space on it but will probably just buy something else.

Gordon - do they sell canoes too? I could really use one.

Well... the pandemic and WFH forced my printer replacement. I still don't print very often, but since I don't have access to the fancy-dancy printers at work anymore, I needed to go searching again (bearing in mind, this happened back in mid-March right after the WFH order was given). Needs: scan-to-PDF ability; two-tray with 11x17 capacity.  I ended up with a HP OfficePro 7740 via Staples.   It gets used around once per week, so still not exactly a high production situation, but I've gone through quite a bit of paper and it still does the job.  It was a major PITA to get the work laptop to connect to it, and the most annoying thing is I can't print when logged into our network, but those aren't the printer's fault.  Unless I need to print a lot of something, I'll copy the file to a flash drive and print it from my personal laptop.

Strange how this canoe popped back up because I determined after a few years that the Epson 440 I bought sucks pretty hardcore.

The ink dries out super fast, the ink cartridges went up in price, and every time I go to use it, I have to clean the print head (a function of the printer) which takes about 5 minutes.

Anyone want a free printer that sucks and needs ink?

Seeing this topic come up, I just had to comment: I hate Hate HATE HP printers. I bought way too many in the past thinking that for the price it would be okay. Regretted every one. I use Canon now. No complaints.

I wish I could trade my Lexmark color laser for my old brother black n white laser all in one.

In reply to AAZCD (Forum Supporter) :

Yep. Canon at home. Brother at the office. Screw HP.

Having worked on a contract where we supplied lots of laser printers to remote sites on a temporary basis, the HP printers we dealt with were spotty. The color inket printers were ok, the ink liked to dry out, but they would mostly keep working otherwise. I think it's because they had a front-load paper tray. Typical cheap inkjets have the top-load tray and dust just goes right into the dang rollers and then the paper never feeds right. Meanwhile, the b&w laser printers had the circuit boards go out all the time. It was a soldering issue like the Xbox 360 ring of death, you could bake the circuit board in the oven for a while and put it back in the printer. We bought refurbed ones though. Then we got some Dell laser printers that were alright although a few of those went bad too, but not nearly at the same rate.

At home I have a Brother b&w laser printer and a Samsung (I think they sold their printer division to Dell now) color laser printer. I haven't had to buy any toner cartridges yet because I don't print that much, but they both seem reliable. They're also kinda big though. I have the Brother stored in the box because I don't have room for two and I don't really need it since I got the other one cheap. I think one was a refurb and the other was on sale from Staples.

Now if only one of them had a built-in scanner so I didn't have to set up a separate scanner...

I don't know... So far the HP OJP 7740 has been ok. It's printed through a tray of 11x17 paper without a hitch.  The scan to PDF function was one of the main reasons I chose it - I can load a small stack of submittal reviews and scan them to a PDF onto the thumb drive (can't connect to it directly, but that is due to our IT security protocols, not the printer).  Granted, I do most of my reviews electronically in Bluebeam Revu now (including electronic signing - which is awesome), so I don't use the scan function as much as when I first bought the printer a few months ago.

I think inkjet printers tend to suffer from lack of use, so I try to print something every week or so just to run some ink through the print heads.

I only buy Canons now. Haven't been disappointed.

I've found with my home inkjet printers is don't turn the power off. Keep them turned on even if the computer is  turned off. The printer setting with power off speeds up the ink drying up. Keeping the printer powered and turned on keeps the print head heated so it doesn't dry up. Turning off lets the print heads cool and seal shut. Reheating doesn't open the cartridge back up. I have HP printers at home and do very little printing at home, two or three times a month is all and the cartridges lasts until they are empty. Don't have cartridge problems unless I turn off the power and let it sit.

My only complaint is the MS program called OneNote. Who ever thought of that worthless pain needs to be relegated a spot in hell. Printing from any MS program defaults to OneNote that doesn't actually print or send it to the printer. Took several times resetting defaults before I got it to stick and then have to make sure the printer comes up and not OneNote whenever I print.