I purchased a Xerox Phaser 6100 Color Laser Printer for $30 on Craigslist. Only problem is there are no drivers for OS X... Course it had %70 toner still and I don't look forward to having to replace the toner but at least are all separate colors and can be replaced separately!
Never buy Epson printers
41–50 of 170 posts
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#42Not too long ago I bought a cheap printer (don't remember the brand), took it home, and returned it after seeing the horrible quality of the print. Then I brought home another cheap printer of a different brand, had the same experience, and returned that.
The reason I was buying cheap printers is that they were the only ones locally available, other than one very expensive model, the epson XP800. Apparently the market has been shrunk to only people that don't care about quality. They give the printer away and make a killing on the ink.
In the end I bought the expensive Epson and have been very happy with it. I'm not happy about the state of the market though.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#43I bought a Brother (HL-2170W) laser printer about 8 years ago, and it's still using its original cartridge. I do very little printing, but I do need it from time to time. During my last move, I accidentally tipped a book shelf on top of it. Cracked a few plastic bits, and bent some metal things inside it. I unbent the metal, and glued the plastic, and the thing still prints like it's new out of the box. I've talked m…
Second Brother lasers. My HL-3170CDW color laser is still going strong after four years. Works flawlessly with Linux, OS X, and Windows; toner lasts forever; and print quality is fantastic.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#44I have one major use-case for (very cheap) inkjet printers: on the beach. I run a non-trivial number of beach volleyball tournaments[1], and the beach is not a terribly hospitable place for electronics.
So I carry with me a cheap printer that's light to carry. If it takes a fast-moving ball that breaks off a part, or it gets overloaded with sand, dust, destroyed by rain, whatever, it's no skin off my back, since it was just $30.
So far the same crappy printer has been serving me for about 4 years in this capacity.
Toting around a laser printer would be a huge pain in the ass.
Otherwise, I'm completely onboard with the overarching sentiment: there's not a lot of reason to own an inkjet printer.
[1] My flagship product (http://bracketpal.com) is a tournament management system, and beach volleyball is the niche I focus primarily on.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#45Multi-function inkjet printers are a Scam. No, I'm serious. 1. The printing functionality is flawed. A cartridge will not last for more than 100 pages. (I tried Epson, HP and Canon). 2. The cartridge will dry and not function after a few weeks only. 3. The original cartridge cost almost as much as a new printer with the cartridge. 4. The printer will not function (Scanner or Fax) without the full cartridges (black an…
The purpose behind the engineering of the printers is to drive the sales of as many ink cartridges as possible while being as cheap as possible to produce.
From this perspective, offering many additional features which turn off when the ink rent hasn't been paid makes much more sense.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#46I don't currently have a printer. I think I'd want an economic laser printer. Probably going to print less than 50 pages per month. Needs to work fine under Linux. Any suggestions?
Anything Ricoh. Unlike Brother, they don't rip you off with eyewateringly expensive toners, and their Linux drivers work better.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#47Can't this be hacked in the drivers? I remember loving Gutenprint (née Gimp-Print) back when I printed
Usually it's implemented on the firmware level.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#48My HP LaserJet 1020 has been chugging away for 10+ years on $11 refilled cartridges that yield around 2k monochrome pages. It just might last ten more!
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#49I haven't owned a printer in probably 10 years and I'm not particularly young (32).
I get their usefulness in some aspects of business operations but I'm a bit at a loss as to why an individual would purchase one.
What are the use cases now? The only two I can think of are printing photos, which I get but it seems better handled either through a photo printer or an outside service or for printing 'offical' documents to fill out manually, but I've completed many such transactions by digitally filling out and signing a pdf.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#50Multi-function inkjet printers are a Scam. No, I'm serious. 1. The printing functionality is flawed. A cartridge will not last for more than 100 pages. (I tried Epson, HP and Canon). 2. The cartridge will dry and not function after a few weeks only. 3. The original cartridge cost almost as much as a new printer with the cartridge. 4. The printer will not function (Scanner or Fax) without the full cartridges (black an…
You tried cheap consumer printers only, I suppose. Did you try Epson Workforce Pro series? Or Canon Maxify?