Recommend me a printer.

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Perc

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So... I've been thinking about buying a new home/consumer printer for a while now. I don't print much, maybe once a week on average, but I still need one. My current printer is an ancient b/w Laserjet hooked up to a Jetdirect, all tucked away in my closet so I don't have to look at it. It would probably work for another 10 years or so but I want something more modern.

Here's what I want:

  • Scanner with sheet feeder.
  • Color or B/W laser. Color is a novelty in the "couldn't hurt" department, but they're not that expensive these days, so might as well.
  • Networked with Wi-Fi.
  • Laser, because I dispise inkjets that dry up from not being used often enough, not to mention the price of ink.
  • I'm all OS X and iOS so all the features it has need to work properly with these. I'm not up to speed on the situation here since I haven't bought a printer for myself since the 90's. I just know that Airprint exists and works. Using it from my iOS devices is more of a novelty but it couldn't hurt to have it.
  • Partial to HP, because I've never had a HP laser go wrong on me ever. Well, short of the one at the office that's one of the oldest and gets used the most. Open to other brands.
  • I don't want to have to install 500 MB of badly written bloatware on every device I want to use it on.
  • If the scanner can deliver PDF files straight to dropbox, e-mail, network drives etc that would be awesome. Not sure how this works nowadays.

Is this even possible without spending a fuckton of money?
 
You shouldn't have to pay a fuckton, sheet feeding scanners are pretty common these days and colour lasers are coming down in price as you say. Regarding laser vs. inkjet, I'm with you on laser, I'm persevering with inkjet for printing photos but for everything else I only use my little mono HP Laserjet now. I'm also with you on the reliability of HP, ours at work have generally been very good.

From looking at HP's site, the Laserjet Pro 100 seems to be the only one to fit your requirements. It apparently supports AirPrint and lists OS X v10.5.8, v10.6 as supported operating systems. Colour speed is only 4PPM though.

c02889931.png

The UK site shows one model but I searched on the Finnish site and it shows two, I can't read it so don't know what the differences are but here they are:

http://www8.hp.com/fi/fi/products/p...eg_r1002_fifi_c-001_title_r0001#!tab=features
http://www8.hp.com/fi/fi/products/p...eg_r1002_fifi_c-001_title_r0002#!tab=features

I can't comment on this particular printer but I can't see why it would be below HP's normal standard.
 
Matt2000 said:
You shouldn't have to pay a fuckton, sheet feeding scanners are pretty common these days and colour lasers are coming down in price as you say. Regarding laser vs. inkjet, I'm with you on laser, I'm persevering with inkjet for printing photos but for everything else I only use my little mono HP Laserjet now. I'm also with you on the reliability of HP, ours at work have generally been very good.

From looking at HP's site, the Laserjet Pro 100 seems to be the only one to fit your requirements. It apparently supports AirPrint and lists OS X v10.5.8, v10.6 as supported operating systems. Colour speed is only 4PPM though.

View attachment 11439

The UK site shows one model but I searched on the Finnish site and it shows two, I can't read it so don't know what the differences are but here they are:

http://www8.hp.com/fi/fi/products/p...eg_r1002_fifi_c-001_title_r0001#!tab=features
http://www8.hp.com/fi/fi/products/p...eg_r1002_fifi_c-001_title_r0002#!tab=features

I can't comment on this particular printer but I can't see why it would be below HP's normal standard.
Click to expand...

latter supports airprint and ergo has wifi and lan, first doesn't have any networking.
 
Galantti said:
latter supports airprint and ergo has wifi and lan, first doesn't have any networking.
Click to expand...

Ah that makes sense, and explains the NW suffix on the model name. They only sell that model in the UK. :)

Cheers.
 
Matt2000 said:
Ah that makes sense, and explains the NW suffix on the model name. They only sell that model in the UK. :)

Cheers.
Click to expand...

well i just ctrl+f and wifi on both sites, and looked more on the site that didn't have results.
 
There's a Pro 200, 300 and 400? I don't know why it didn't give me those when I looked on HPs site, they're available if I search directly. They look like great bits of kit and only a small price increase for the 200 at least.

Just don't buy an Epson.

Edit: If you wanted to go mad, there's a pro 500 too!
 
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Brother generally offer better value and warranties than HP whether you go ink or laser and the consumable cost per copy is also usually lower. I'd say that's the brand to go for if they are available there.

Epson have gone off the boil of late and HP rape their customers anally at every opportunity plus their machines always contain someone else's engine, often Canon for laser. Avoid Lexmark and Dell like the plague.
 
MWF said:
Avoid Lexmark and Dell like the plague.
Click to expand...
Really? I know several large (hundreds of printers) corporate users who switched from HP to Dell and never looked back.
 
Well dell printer's are just rebadget lexmarks
 
Adunaphel said:
Their low-end stuff is crap. And the inkjets are even worse.
Click to expand...
Define low-end. The 23-series b/w laser printers are good workhorses.
 
Galantti said:
Well dell printer's are just rebadget lexmarks
Click to expand...

Their inkjets are, but their recent lasers are rebadged Samsungs, sometimes with added features. Their inkjets are to be avoided at all costs.

As for HP - do your research on the specific model you are interested in very carefully. Unfortunately, there are a LOT of crap HP models these days; some are rebadged Chinese-market printers from Chinese manufacturers that HP is rebadging. Some are just horribly bad designs or known to be badly built. There are also still some good ones, so you have to do your homework before plunking down your money.
 
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At work we have standardized on two models of HPs: Pro 400, and LJ 603s. The 400s so far have been fairly reliable (of the 200+ deployed we've only had maybe 10 or less develop problems).

The 603s are crap and should be avoided like the plague. I'm guessing however you aren't looking for something in that price range.
 
My LaserJet 4 is still going strong, by the way.
 
I remember HP has a new type of inkjet printer that uses their pagewide technology. Instead of the traditional method where the cartridge goes back and forth when printing, this one uses the cartridge doesn't move and it uses a ink bar. When the paper passes under the ink bar, it gets printed. It capable of printing of up to 70ppm and it's currently the world's fastest desktop printer.
I think it's call the OfficeJet Pro X series.
 
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