5 ms·

You should let you vet know that the printers ship with "starter cartridges" that are lower capacity than the replacements. Buying new ink cartridges might cost

You should let you vet know that the printers ship with "starter cartridges" that are lower capacity than the replacements. Buying new ink cartridges might cost $10 more than the new printer, but it'll give him twice as many pages.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Sometimes the cartridge is the first thing to fail, especially if you go days between printing anything. The delicate print heads get tarry ink deposits. Pages per dollar means something if you're printing in bulk. Otherwise, its trouble-free-printing-per-dollar. Which may be improved by buying a new printer periodically as a sort of prophylactic maintenance.
- darryl42 10y ago
  Which is why I bought a black and white laser printer 10+ years ago. Never need to worry about the ink drying out. I am still on the starter toner. Not sure if I will be able to buy toner when it runs out, but it still works even with Windows 10 over USB. Network mode only works for printing, no network scanner drivers anymore.
semi-extrinsic 10y ago
I've figured it makes most sense to have a cheap'n'stupid B/W laserprinter at home, and just order whatever photo prints I need from a print shop. Occasional color photo printing at home is more expensive per photo than getting it from a shop i I'm not printing photos every week.
- jschwartzi 10y ago
  Ditto. I have a ten year old Dell 1110 that continues to work despite moves, drops, and abuse. This includes a period when it was stored in a hay barn.
  - phil21 10y ago
    Same, I have an older HP Laserjet I forget the model of that's been rock solid for 15 years. You can also still buy parts for these printers as well reasonably cheap. I was able to find a plastic gear that got stripped due to an object falling into the paper tray - cost me about $8 and 20 minutes of repair time and it's good as new. The average person doesn't print much, but when they do they really need it right now (e.g. boarding passes, legal document to sign, concert tickets, whatever) and having a rock-solid printer that you know just works every time even if you haven't printed in 6 months is great.
    - coredog64 10y ago
      I had to give up on my LaserJet IIIP a while ago. I spent nearly as much on trying to recondition all the dried out rubber parts as I did on a cheap laser printer.
      - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
        Early 90's printers tend to do that. We have a LaserJet IV gathering dust in a corner at work. Turned it on the other day, to a three minute warmup and much smell of dust burning, but it still printed well.
    - Thlom 10y ago
      I have a Canon Pixma something or other printer. After an upgrade of OS X, Canon stopped suppling drivers for newer versions. It wasn't even straight forward to use the driver for the previous version. I think I had to extract the driver from their lousy installer to get it to work. Very fun when I just wanted to print flight tickets ASAP. It's a PRINTER. All it does 95% of the time is printing B/W documents. How hard can it be to get this right?
      - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
        Printers are really just a hardware distribution mechanism for printer drivers, which are an unusually bulky form of malware. Any printing functionality is entirely incidental, especially on inkjets. If you need something printed urgently, you can guarantee that one of the following will happen: drivers need updating (=> 400MB download, if you can even find the file on the site), drivers don't work, out of ink, clogged nozzles that need cleaning (followed by out of ink), paper jam, file prints landscape instead of portrait, or vice versa, and there's no obvious way to fix this.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  The only thing I seem to print these days is a yearly tax form or two. I don't even waste the space with a printer - I just go to 7/11 for my printing needs and pay a couple cents per page.
  - pmorici 10y ago
    If all you print is sensitive tax documents is 7/11 really the place you want to do that?
    - kalleboo 10y ago
      I'm not sure how sensitive tax documents are to me https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12423891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12423891 A valid concern though, it's been shown those MFDs keep junk around in their buffers forever
      - pmorici 10y ago
        In the US very sensitive. Mostly because they contain all the personal information you would need to commit identity fraud. They also us information from prior year returns to positively identify you on subsequent years. ie: your AGI from last years form is used to verify your identity for the next year.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago

Sometimes the cartridge is the first thing to fail, especially if you go days between printing anything. The delicate print heads get tarry ink deposits. Pages per dollar means something if you're printing in bulk. Otherwise, its trouble-free-printing-per-dollar. Which may be improved by buying a new printer periodically as a sort of prophylactic maintenance.

darryl42 10y ago
Which is why I bought a black and white laser printer 10+ years ago. Never need to worry about the ink drying out. I am still on the starter toner. Not sure if I will be able to buy toner when it runs out, but it still works even with Windows 10 over USB. Network mode only works for printing, no network scanner drivers anymore.

semi-extrinsic 10y ago

I've figured it makes most sense to have a cheap'n'stupid B/W laserprinter at home, and just order whatever photo prints I need from a print shop. Occasional color photo printing at home is more expensive per photo than getting it from a shop i I'm not printing photos every week.

jschwartzi 10y ago
Ditto. I have a ten year old Dell 1110 that continues to work despite moves, drops, and abuse. This includes a period when it was stored in a hay barn.
- phil21 10y ago
  Same, I have an older HP Laserjet I forget the model of that's been rock solid for 15 years. You can also still buy parts for these printers as well reasonably cheap. I was able to find a plastic gear that got stripped due to an object falling into the paper tray - cost me about $8 and 20 minutes of repair time and it's good as new. The average person doesn't print much, but when they do they really need it right now (e.g. boarding passes, legal document to sign, concert tickets, whatever) and having a rock-solid printer that you know just works every time even if you haven't printed in 6 months is great.
  - coredog64 10y ago
    I had to give up on my LaserJet IIIP a while ago. I spent nearly as much on trying to recondition all the dried out rubber parts as I did on a cheap laser printer.
    - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
      Early 90's printers tend to do that. We have a LaserJet IV gathering dust in a corner at work. Turned it on the other day, to a three minute warmup and much smell of dust burning, but it still printed well.
  - Thlom 10y ago
    I have a Canon Pixma something or other printer. After an upgrade of OS X, Canon stopped suppling drivers for newer versions. It wasn't even straight forward to use the driver for the previous version. I think I had to extract the driver from their lousy installer to get it to work. Very fun when I just wanted to print flight tickets ASAP. It's a PRINTER. All it does 95% of the time is printing B/W documents. How hard can it be to get this right?
    - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
      Printers are really just a hardware distribution mechanism for printer drivers, which are an unusually bulky form of malware. Any printing functionality is entirely incidental, especially on inkjets. If you need something printed urgently, you can guarantee that one of the following will happen: drivers need updating (=> 400MB download, if you can even find the file on the site), drivers don't work, out of ink, clogged nozzles that need cleaning (followed by out of ink), paper jam, file prints landscape instead of portrait, or vice versa, and there's no obvious way to fix this.
kalleboo 10y ago
The only thing I seem to print these days is a yearly tax form or two. I don't even waste the space with a printer - I just go to 7/11 for my printing needs and pay a couple cents per page.
- pmorici 10y ago
  If all you print is sensitive tax documents is 7/11 really the place you want to do that?
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    I'm not sure how sensitive tax documents are to me https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12423891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12423891 A valid concern though, it's been shown those MFDs keep junk around in their buffers forever
    - pmorici 10y ago
      In the US very sensitive. Mostly because they contain all the personal information you would need to commit identity fraud. They also us information from prior year returns to positively identify you on subsequent years. ie: your AGI from last years form is used to verify your identity for the next year.