Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In the Universe of Printers, One Worth Talking About

pogue.blogs.nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 39 posts

Re: In the Universe of Printers, One Worth Talking About

#21

Post by AjithAntony »

LarryMade2 wrote: post #14

No display - don't buy it. Any network printer without some sort of display royally sucks. You cannot easily diagnose communication errors with a couple blinking lights. Much easier to troubleshoot a complex device if it can actually tell you something. Sometimes trying to coax it to communicate using button gymnastics doesn't work. Other than that, yeah, HP laserjets are pretty rad.

I disagree. Much like my very complex home routers, this printer has an awesome Web UI. Unlike my routers, you can hold the button down and it prints a complete status report, including the IP config.

Re: In the Universe of Printers, One Worth Talking About

#22

Post by revelation »

The idea that laser printers are a different world from the inkjet ripoffs is a myth from a time where they cost $1k+ and were thus targeted to professional users exclusively.

The toner in this $150 printer will come less than half full and a replacement is $78. The ratio alone tells you whats going on here.

Re: In the Universe of Printers, One Worth Talking About

#24

Post by fsckin »

mmanfrin wrote: post #13
pdog wrote: post #9

The Wirecutter[1] is a site that lists the best technology to buy. Like this article, it answers the question, "What is the best ____?". I wonder how the Hewlett-Packard Pro P1606dn competes with the Brother HL-2270DW[2]. [1]: http://thewirecutter.com/ [2]: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/brother-hl-2270dw-best-lase...

The HL-2270 was the first printer I had ever felt I needed to evangelize for. It was so good, so cheap, and had just the right features. Printed quick, toner lasted forever, toner was surprisingly cheap ($40 for 4k pages), auto duplex, wireless. Set up and forget about it until you need it.

I've bought the (cheaper? uglier?) cousin of the 2270, the HL-2170W. It's a fantastic printer with a 'good enough' web UI for configuration. Works for months without grief.

Have an upvote for brother love.

Edit: Curiosity got the best of me. The 2270 is the new version of the 2170. Adding automatic duplex, dual simultaneous networking, faster printing, and... that's about it. Not quite worth the upgrade, but when mine dies it's good to know there will be a replacement available.

Re: In the Universe of Printers, One Worth Talking About

#25

Post by jdietrich »

revelation wrote: post #22

The idea that laser printers are a different world from the inkjet ripoffs is a myth from a time where they cost $1k+ and were thus targeted to professional users exclusively. The toner in this $150 printer will come less than half full and a replacement is $78. The ratio alone tells you whats going on here.

Generic toner cartridges are cheap and work well. Printer manufacturers don't yet seem to be using the DRM tricks that they've used to prevent the refilling of inkjet cartridges.

Inkjets regularly waste ink to unblock the nozzles, so if you print only occasionally you may only get a handful of pages from an ink cartridge.

Cheap laser printers are a far better deal than inkjets.

Re: In the Universe of Printers, One Worth Talking About

#26

Post by bobf »

revelation wrote: post #22

The idea that laser printers are a different world from the inkjet ripoffs is a myth from a time where they cost $1k+ and were thus targeted to professional users exclusively. The toner in this $150 printer will come less than half full and a replacement is $78. The ratio alone tells you whats going on here.

Although you're right that the razor-razorblade model still applies to these laser printers, the cost per page is far lower than inkjets -- and they are much more reliable. Like Pogue, I had one of this printer's predecessors, the HP 1012, and loved it. Look into re-manufactured toner for a better value. I usually use toners like http://www.4inkjets.com/CE278A-HP-Laser-Toner-Black-Compatib... and with that the costs fall to under 1.5 cents per page ($31 for ~2100 pages).

Re: In the Universe of Printers, One Worth Talking About

#27

Post by ShabbyDoo »

A few years ago, I bought a LaserJet 4200 used via EBay for For those considering the printer mentioned in the article but need wireless connectivity, consider a cheapie dd-wrt router configured as a client. I use this set-up for my kids' computer in our kitchen, and it's been no problem.

Re: In the Universe of Printers, One Worth Talking About

#28

Post by rbritton »

jdietrich wrote: post #25
revelation wrote: post #22

The idea that laser printers are a different world from the inkjet ripoffs is a myth from a time where they cost $1k+ and were thus targeted to professional users exclusively. The toner in this $150 printer will come less than half full and a replacement is $78. The ratio alone tells you whats going on here.

Generic toner cartridges are cheap and work well. Printer manufacturers don't yet seem to be using the DRM tricks that they've used to prevent the refilling of inkjet cartridges. Inkjets regularly waste ink to unblock the nozzles, so if you print only occasionally you may only get a handful of pages from an ink cartridge. Cheap laser printers are a far better deal than inkjets.

You do have to be careful how cheap you go on 3rd party toner cartridges though. At a previous IT job they went a bit too cheap and at least 10-20% of the cartridges leaked toner, covering the inside of the printer with black that frequently ended up on the pages.

Re: In the Universe of Printers, One Worth Talking About

#29

Post by jonah »

jdietrich wrote: post #25
revelation wrote: post #22

The idea that laser printers are a different world from the inkjet ripoffs is a myth from a time where they cost $1k+ and were thus targeted to professional users exclusively. The toner in this $150 printer will come less than half full and a replacement is $78. The ratio alone tells you whats going on here.

Generic toner cartridges are cheap and work well. Printer manufacturers don't yet seem to be using the DRM tricks that they've used to prevent the refilling of inkjet cartridges. Inkjets regularly waste ink to unblock the nozzles, so if you print only occasionally you may only get a handful of pages from an ink cartridge. Cheap laser printers are a far better deal than inkjets.

You can also buy toner by the bottle and refill your cartridge a few times before needing to replace it.

Re: In the Universe of Printers, One Worth Talking About

#30

Post by leakybucket »

So I'm not sure why this is HN material, but as I have recently co-founded a company (www.sessionbox.com), and just purchased a new printer because of it, I'll pipe up.

When you start a company, there's a ton of paper involved:

- corporate paperwork, including founding documents, stock agreements, advisor forms, etc.

- business contracts: lawyers (corporate, IP, etc), recruiters, office space, etc.

- and most recently, your first big expense report once the seed money lands and you want to pay yourself back.

My old consumer cheapo printer died just when I was trying to get the offer letter out to our (soon-to-be) first employee. The printer just locked up, with all the led's blinking, and I kept power-cycling, to no avail.

While reviewing printers, I decided that the new one needed a "scan to email" feature. Be warned, however, that some cheap printers have a feature that they call "scan to email", but what they mean is: if you hook up our printer via usb to your pc, we'll open outlook for you and attach your scan to it. frak that, man.

What 'scan to email' should really mean is: I walk to the (wirelessly connected) printer/scanner; I put something in the doc feeder; I then use a little display to either a) punch in someone's email address or b) look up frequent email addresses. And then I hit a button, and it scans them, and the printer mails it to them. (As in, it speaks smtp.)

So I ended up with the HP 8600 Plus. The "plus" is important - the plain 8600 does not have scan to email. It's been fine so far, though my bar is probably low.

Post reply on HN