Inkjets work very well at what they were designed to do: Extract fifty bucks for ink from customers every couple of months for the short life of the $80 printer. The problem is that people think they were designed to print things, which is, in fact, only an afterthought in their design.
Laser printers, shockingly, work every time and run out of toner about once every two years for the average home user. I went through four or five color inkjets before finally learning...my color laser has been working fine for three years now, and has only needed the black toner cartridge replaced once (color toner cartridges are still at about 30% full and have probably another year of service in them). Sure, it cost $800 (it's a networked model, and they've come down since then), but I had already spent more than that on inkjets and ink cartridges over the years. I expect I'll get another several years out of it, and I never have to wonder if my printer will crap out when I really need it to work (which happened numerous times with inkjets).
I actually like inkjet printers. They are an excellent source of little stepper motors for my wacky projects. They were such a bad idea (as far as printers go) that everyone I know has 2 or 3 of them that they got free with some new computer in 1998 and can now no longer find ink for. Always yours for the asking.
Soon my army of printer-stepper robots will swarm over all the earth and world domination will be mine. Narf, Poit, etc...
My cheap-ass laser printer (a Brother) is the greatest --it cost like $300, it's two years old, and it's going great. My color inkjet has been sitting around for six months, waiting for me to admit that I will never fix its clogged cartridges again, because everything I print works just as well in greyscale.
I suppose I could use an inkjet to print color photos. But is there ever any actual reason to print a color photo at home, besides just being so old that you can't accept Flickr? I suppose if I were a print magazine designer who liked to show off proofs... but then I'd probably get serious and buy a color laser.
So true. We do most of our printing on an ancient LaserJet 5, which even does duplex. Okay, the thing is so heavy I can barely lift it without taking it apart, occasionally it gets a paper jam somewhere deep inside (it's been nicknamed 'Satan') and parallel ports are getting harder to find. But it still works. For your average text and light graphics printing, laser printers are awesome.
That said, there are certainly decent, affordable inkjet printers out there that do what they do well, namely printing photos and graphics. Most people just go for whatever printer is cheapest, but if you do just a little bit of research, you'll find models that have separate cartridges for each ink colour and permanent printing heads. This means that (a) you only replace ink that's actually used up, (b) the print head is built to last, (c) the cartridges are simple and therefore cheap. Our HP PhotoSmart 8250 is great, never jams up and a pack of 6 cartridges with a stack of photo paper costs less than €30. My parents' cheapo inkjets keep playing up and replacing the cartridges costs twice as much because the print head is on the cartridge. Plus, the print quality isn't as good. After about 3 refills, the price works out about the same.
So basically, it's just the old fallacy that cheapest = best value.
I recently went to BestBuy to get some ink for my Epson printer when I realized I would be spending $70 dollars for the black and color cartridges together. Instead I spend $100 dollars for a brother laser printer (black and white but that's all I really need) with wireless networking support. I absolutely love it and even if I need to buy a new one every year it will still be cheaper than buying ink for my inkjet.
Debugging printer issues is just way to hard. Some manufacturers just don't see the importance of an error message. Why have useful information about why something isn't working, when you can just have a red light!
Yeah, it's sort of convincing, isn't it? I have a Canon MP730 that was great, but doesn't talk to Linux or Mac. Faxing's no good since I got rid of the land line a long time ago. Still makes copies. Meh.
[+] [-] SwellJoe|18 years ago|reply
Laser printers, shockingly, work every time and run out of toner about once every two years for the average home user. I went through four or five color inkjets before finally learning...my color laser has been working fine for three years now, and has only needed the black toner cartridge replaced once (color toner cartridges are still at about 30% full and have probably another year of service in them). Sure, it cost $800 (it's a networked model, and they've come down since then), but I had already spent more than that on inkjets and ink cartridges over the years. I expect I'll get another several years out of it, and I never have to wonder if my printer will crap out when I really need it to work (which happened numerous times with inkjets).
Not that I'm bitter.
[+] [-] noonespecial|18 years ago|reply
Soon my army of printer-stepper robots will swarm over all the earth and world domination will be mine. Narf, Poit, etc...
[+] [-] mechanical_fish|18 years ago|reply
I suppose I could use an inkjet to print color photos. But is there ever any actual reason to print a color photo at home, besides just being so old that you can't accept Flickr? I suppose if I were a print magazine designer who liked to show off proofs... but then I'd probably get serious and buy a color laser.
[+] [-] pmjordan|18 years ago|reply
That said, there are certainly decent, affordable inkjet printers out there that do what they do well, namely printing photos and graphics. Most people just go for whatever printer is cheapest, but if you do just a little bit of research, you'll find models that have separate cartridges for each ink colour and permanent printing heads. This means that (a) you only replace ink that's actually used up, (b) the print head is built to last, (c) the cartridges are simple and therefore cheap. Our HP PhotoSmart 8250 is great, never jams up and a pack of 6 cartridges with a stack of photo paper costs less than €30. My parents' cheapo inkjets keep playing up and replacing the cartridges costs twice as much because the print head is on the cartridge. Plus, the print quality isn't as good. After about 3 refills, the price works out about the same.
So basically, it's just the old fallacy that cheapest = best value.
[+] [-] cstejerean|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samography|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rms|18 years ago|reply
Color laser for $300 flat. It does what it is supposed to do.
[+] [-] axod|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dhimes|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] suboptimal|18 years ago|reply
Anyway, plastic kills the planet.