What Printer Should I Get?

[hutch]

Right, i'm after a printer, which is capable of knocking out some reasonable decent dvd covers, i'm not after ultra high qulailty, but so that you're able to atleast make out the front cover

I'm gonna be printing off around 300-400 dvd covers, so the ink cartidges need to be pretty cheap, i was thinking maybe 30p for each cover, although i have no idea lol. I have a budget of around £70-100 for the printer (second hand, from ebay perhaps), plus ink.

Some advice would be much appreciated

[zak_swan]

i bought an Epsom C84 for £58 and i'm very happy with it.
it's quick got good quality and u can replace ink cartriges with ones that are'nt Epsoms.
i reckon the price of a DVD cover is roughly 20p, with the (damn what's the word for cartridges which are'nt the manufacturers?) fake? cartridges.
most printers advertise a page costing 2p, but this is for a draft text covering about 5% of the page!
also it has 4 different slots for the ink, so that if a colour runs out u only have to replace that individual colour, not the full cartridge.
i used to refill my old HP 916 cartridges and got really pissed off doing it, i'm never going back to that.
printer ink is more expensive per ml than an expensive bottle of champagne or something

[indolikaa]

i reckon the price of a DVD cover is roughly 20p, with the (damn what's the word for cartridges which are'nt the manufacturers?) fake? cartridges.

Non-OEM? Generic? Would either of those terms work?


Older Canon printers can produce excellent output, and generic versions of their inktanks are widely available and dirt cheap. I still use a Canon BJC-620 for a lot of my printing. Just picked another one up on eBay not too long ago.

[rallynavvie]

...so the ink cartidges need to be pretty cheap...

Whoa, you lost me. Since when is it cheaper to print full color stuff with inkjets in the long-term? Color laser is better quality and the consumables last longer than inkjets do. The larger up-front investment is more than offset by this. Besides most inkjets don't even have onboard memory or queueing. Yuck, it's like the stone ages of printing

[untouchableflowz]

What's a good, reasonably priced laser printer to buy that prints color???

[Faustus]

Whatever one has the quality you want with the lowest average cost per page. Sadly this means not an HP 99% of the time.

I actually have two printers. One I use for nice print outs, and a basic epson that uses ultra cheap ink I get off the internet for day to day printing and text.

[rallynavvie]

I'd spend out for a Xerox 7750 but the 7700 I have seems to go through supplies quicker than my old 780, but it's a heckuva lot faster. I got about 10k pages on one set of standard consumables with only one image unit replacement at about 11k.

Otherwise look into a Xerox Phaser 6100. It isn't very fast at 5ppm color but for $500 it duplexes, has 64MB memory, prints sizes up to legal (8.5x14"), and a whole fuckton of other features Xerox includes in most printers. Haven't heard how reliable they are or how fast they go through consumables but I heard it's on par with the old 780s so it should be a pretty good buy.

[hech54]

Weird....I only buy HP printers. I freaking HATE gravity feed printers....give me a tray anyday.

[zak_swan]

is it possible to buy "generic" consumables for laser printers?

[indolikaa]

is it possible to buy "generic" consumables for laser printers?

For monochrome printers, yes.

I don't know about color lasers. I'm not sure there's enough of a market impact yet for a color toner free-for-all...

[ViRaL1]

Minolta / Konica color lasers seem to be reasonably cheap these days, especially with rebates. Not sure about quality since I've never owned one. I haven't been able to just ify it myself since I barely print monochrome as it is.

[ViRaL1]

OMax has the Minolta Magicolor 2300W Color Laser for $399 after $100MIR.

http://www.officemax.com/max/solutions/product/prodBlock.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&expans...kOID=537111408