I work in a real estate office where we use alot of ink for printing contracts that are black and white. I am curious how many pages we are getting from one ink cartridge but as many ppl use the printer there is no way to "keep track". It is the HP office jet 7110 which I have read many bad reviews on but havent had any problems with. Im curious the price per page for the pages that use only black to see if it is worth getting a laser printer from frys that was 170 with a 100 mail in rebate (the reason Its semi urgent ... sell ends by saturday I think)which comes to a very cheap laser printer. if you have this information I would also like to know how many pages you can get (on average) from the color cartridges to consider getting a color laser so I could just have one printer for the office. thanks alot for any help .



Blake

If you print more than 100 pages per day, get the laser printer. It's that simple.

Laser toner spits out far more pages per dollar spent and has many advantages over liquid ink. Toner is pigment particles mixed with a plastic substrate, so not only is it water-proof, but it's fade-proof, too. Laser printers are also better at precision, clarity, and consistency of ink spread. Laser printers are also much faster than liquid ink printers on average, and the color versions have individual color toner cartridges (so you only replace the colors you need).

Other important office-related features include - networkability (often built-in unlike liquid ink printers), memory upgrades (so that the printer can store all print duties instead of tying up the workstations), multiple paper trays (for things like legal vs letter size), and more often than not less maintainance.

I know I sound like a sales rep, but with color laser printers coming down in price like a rock, and with liquid ink prices going up like a rocket, any decent-sized office should really have a laser printer to call their own.

I'd say Saph is right on in his assessment! :cool:

I'm beginning to hate inkjet printers...especially HPs with their dated cartridges!

I've an HP Laserjet 5 that I purchased lease back nearly 2 years ago and it is a champ...

The HP 4500 color laser I recently purchased, used also, has a page rating of approximately 6000 pages on the color toner carts...

Color toner cards for this model are $120.00 OEM X 3 primary colors

The quick calculation I put to that comes to about .06 per page color printing...

Black OEM toner is $90.00 and produces 9000 (letter pages at 5% coverage) = .01 per page...

I think that's how I would look at it...take all the advantages of laser that Saph layed out, and then devide the cost for toner by the projected page count.

Another reply giving the same advice- get a LASER for mono work. Even if you do colour work - if you do a lot of images each day that don't need to be photo quality, you will save oodles by using a laser.

Thanks for the info. Thats pretty much what I figured .... my next question is if im just getting a black and white laser printer should I pony up extra dough for a printer that has cheaper ink or not. The printer in question is http://shop4.outpost.com/product/3608935 which is 70 dollars after rebate ... pretty hard to beat lol. The downside is the ink that I looked up seemed a little expensive. I found some on amazon that came out to like 3 cents a page. altough im not sure if there is better places to buy just came up on google. thanks again for any suggestions.



blake

You're really getting into this big time...:D

There are a myriad of possibilities and potential problems depending on which printer you select and the availability and cost of either OEM toner cartridges or remanufactured/re-filled carts...

"Remans" opens up a host of options and pricing tiers...or, you can refill yourself with some...

My main question to you would be the "acceptability" of downtime at your firm? Can you afford to not have a printer up and running at all times?

Printers are designed all the way from home use to major office. I think you will find that the cheaper models are more the "limited" home use variety. If you want a trouble free workhorse laser then I'd say your initial investment of a few additional bucks would be well worth it.

A penny a page extra won't have much meaning if the folks in your office are clamoring at your door and calling you in the middle of the night to complain...:(

Most of these guys have a "planned obsolesence" or actual life expectancy of the various parts...not only are you dealing with toner questions, but drums and fusers that also give out...

My suggestion on another thread was possibly looking at a lease back company. These folks lease computers and printers to major companies and then resell them at the end of their leases...The HPs that I have purchased, and I'm sure most others, will produce an actual page count to date and tell you the remaining expectancy on things like the fuser and drum and also the remaining life expectancy of the machine itself...

Oops, also mentioned by Saph was the ability to network the printer. Mine both have the option of LAN cards and memory upgrades...

I don't know anything about the brand or model posted in that link, but I've had plenty experience with HP laser jets, and have never had a complaint. My first HP Laser Jet Series II was used, $2 from a Goodwill store and got over 3000 pages out of the existing used toner cartridge. Fried it trying to fix a Service 50 error...which is usually either power supply or fuser. Never did figure out what went wrong...

Then it was a laser jet III, probably ran another 2500-3000 pages through it without a problem except for the occasional paper jam, once a month or so. Same for a laser jet 6L, and now I'm back to a seriesII that has worked perfect for the past 1 1/2 years, and finally has developed a pick up roller problem. understandable since it's over 10 years old and never been touched. $35 and an hour or so to fix it and it should be in good shape for a long time. Still haven't had to replace a toner cartridge...

If possible, go to a local store and see a demo printout - some laser printers simply don't fuse the toner correctly, and it can flake off, especially if the paper is folded.

I'm using a Panasonic KX-P7100, which is fine for what I need. It has automatic duplexing, which was the main reason I purchased this model. I can't give any advice on price, because....well, we get ripped off here in the UK when buying IT equipment - the Samsung you pointed to is at least £69.00 over here (and we consider that to be cheap!)

Go for quality if you want the thing to last. If you are using the printouts to give to customers, all the more reason to spend slightly more and give a good impression.

Thanks for all the advice. Still not sure which route im going to take but now I have some things I need to consider :) .... hope to see yall all around the message board :) .


blake