What color laser printer is easily & cheaply refilled at home fromnon OEM toner?

[SMS]

Good advice!

I was thinking of setting something up where it was necessary to use a
password to print to the color printer. I could have put it on a
separate network with a network key that only I knew. But as my kids got
older they were able to grasp the reasons I wanted to minimize ink usage.

Makes the most sense of all!
Now to convince them of that!

For photos, the quality and longevity of commercially printed photos
versus inkjet should be sufficient.

Personally, we have greatly reduced our ink usage. Before we had
networked printers there were printers in the kids rooms. This was a bad
idea. Now they have to come downstairs to get their printouts.

Just bought a laser printer for the daughter-unit to take to college
next month, and of course it has refillable toner cartridges.

 

[SMS]

Why is finding a decent printer to print photos at home at a decent
price such a miserable process?

Around here it costs 9-15¢ to have a 4x6 photo printed on a Noritsu
commercial photo printer. If I send it to Walgreen's or CVS then usually
by the time I walk there, in ten minutes, the photo is ready. For large
prints Costco is the best deal.

By the time you buy photo paper and ink or toner it would be unlikely
for it to cost less to do it yourself, and of course the results would
not be nearly as good.

So I think the reason why it's so hard is that a decent photo printer
isn't cheap to manufacture or maintain and the wide availability of
photo printing service have eliminated the demand.

 

[PeterN]

Around here it costs 9-15¢ to have a 4x6 photo printed on a Noritsu
commercial photo printer. If I send it to Walgreen's or CVS then usually
by the time I walk there, in ten minutes, the photo is ready. For large
prints Costco is the best deal.

By the time you buy photo paper and ink or toner it would be unlikely
for it to cost less to do it yourself, and of course the results would
not be nearly as good.

I use Costco for all prints. I think there quality is usually very good
= excellent, provided I use the ICC profile for the machine I am using.
I also did a cost analysis and it is slightly less expensive to do my
own printing, provided I don't factor in the mistakes. Once I factor
those in, Costco is much less expensive.

 

[Gernot Hassenpflug]

Are you saying that the Canon inks that you buy are now chipped?

If so, that's a pain.

Yes, they are all chipped. The last unchipped ones I think were the
"3" series (OK, I know the names are different in the rest of the
world), used on the MP710/MP740 (similar to the MP700/730, so pretty
old). These were replaced by the chipped "6" series and later types.

 

[J.G.]

Yes, they are all chipped.

If that's the case, and since I have all too much (bad) experience with
the HP d-series chipped ink tanks, maybe an ink printer isn't in the
future for me, as I'm sick and tired of their silly games.

 

[Gernot Hassenpflug]

I'm slowly coming to the following hard-won realization,
much to my chagrin, regarding printing color photos at home:

0. B&W laser writers (such as my HP 3200m) are trivial & cheap to refill
1. Most color laser writers are also trivial & cheap to refill.
2. However, color laser writers stink at printing pictures at home!

Given that, we are FORCED to look at ink-based printers:
0. IMHO, all ink-based printers from HP are to be avoided at all costs!
1. Kodak/Canon/Dell ink-based printers 'may' be a viable alternative.
2. The key is to buy the printer based on the ease of "replacing" the ink!

Drat! Color lasers, which are the subject of this task, are slowly
dropping off the radar screen ... and the dreaded ink-based printers
are rising up, again.

Why is finding a decent printer to print photos at home at a decent
price such a miserable process?

Why is Epson not recommended in the US (I assume most posters here are
in the US)? Epson is great for photos, although as I concentrate on
linux Canon driver development I only use Epson as a backup. I buy 3rd
party inks for my Epson, haven't tried refilling it. I'm not aware of
any problems with the ink cartridges, but maybe there are, which is
why Epson is not being discussed here?

 

[J.G.]

The strategy is used by virtually ALL the inkjet makers, not just HP -
they sell the printers cheaply, sometimes at a loss, and then make their
money on the replacement cartridges.

If that's the case (which it very well may be) ... then it's confusing to
me why I can quite easily replace the 250 grams of black toner in my
HPC092a (aka 92A) toner cartridge for my HP 3200m AIO printer.

Q: Why make ink so difficult to refill ... but not toner?

 

[J.G.]

I think the issue the OP has, is a particular one with HP and color
laser printers and the manner in which HP chips its toner cartridges. I
believe he wants a color laser printer which will give him adequate
results for photographs, as he rightly feels that the cost of inks for
photo quality ink jet printers is excessive. The bottom line is, there
is no free, or low budget ride, when it comes to producing quality photo
prints at home, or anywhere else for that matter.

Wow. Nice synopsys!

In my naive days, I bought multiple HP ink printers from Costco, such as
the HP d135, which, due to the extreme expense of replacement ink tanks,
I naturally got very good at refilling. However, as noted, it should
NEVER be as difficult as HP purposefully makes it to simply refill an ink
tank - so - over the years, this frustration soured me on any and all HP
inkjets, swearing them off forever - and feeling good about that decision.

Still needing a printer, I immediately matured when I bought for about
$600 in those days, an HP laserjet 3200m, soon coming to the realization
that there 'was' a better way, which was B&W laser printing. Refilling
the C4092A is basically uneventfully trivial.

The kids/wife wanting a color printer notwithstanding, it 'appears' that
a color laser printer is not going to be acceptable for family photos;
hence I'm back to the only choice feasible - which is ink printers -
which I've previously sworn off forever (at least HP ink printers).

Finding out that almost all manufacturers make ink refilling difficult,
it appears that I'll have to choose my printer in reverse. That is, find
one that allows refilling - and then buy THAT printer.

This appears to be the only feasible method, although this entire process
of realization makes me want to kiss my trusty B&W printer in retrospect.

 

[Ashton Crusher]

I'm slowly coming to the following hard-won realization,
much to my chagrin, regarding printing color photos at home:

0. B&W laser writers (such as my HP 3200m) are trivial & cheap to refill
1. Most color laser writers are also trivial & cheap to refill.
2. However, color laser writers stink at printing pictures at home!

Given that, we are FORCED to look at ink-based printers:
0. IMHO, all ink-based printers from HP are to be avoided at all costs!
1. Kodak/Canon/Dell ink-based printers 'may' be a viable alternative.
2. The key is to buy the printer based on the ease of "replacing" the ink!

Drat! Color lasers, which are the subject of this task, are slowly
dropping off the radar screen ... and the dreaded ink-based printers
are rising up, again.

Why is finding a decent printer to print photos at home at a decent
price such a miserable process?

Last time I needed to buy a new AIO Inkie I was going to avoid HP. I
read all the reviews I could find, compared features and user
satisfaction, plus looked at reported problems. I Finally settled on
a Canon that sounded REALLY good from the reviews. After getting it I
was VERY disappointed in it's print quality for text and photos, it
just did not match the quality on simple run of the mill daily
printing that I was used to from my old defunct (my fault) HP. Some
users had mentioned it's lengthy startup time for the first page but
it didn't sound too bad so I still bought it. Start up time turned
out to be a HUGE pain in the butt. If it sat for more then a few
minutes it seemingly parked it's print heads and then when you went to
print again there was all sorts of start up racket and delay while it
brought the heads out of cold storage. Then I discovered that in what
it considered normal mixed color and b/w printing it used a mix of all
the color inks to produce the "black" which came out more like a dark
charcoal. So its prints looked lousy and used up all the color ink!!
I took it back and returned to an HP AIO. Good luck with your
search!!

 

[Ashton Crusher]

I print maybe one page every two or three days, on average.

I generally leave the printer on all the time.

However, I 'could' just as well turn it off, for all it has
been used.

But, when I had the HP d135 AIO printer, I remember admonishments
to keep it running all the time - otherwise it wasted ink (I was
told).

And, we all know, HP ink costs more than it's weight in gold.

So, what's the general consensus for leaving printers on
which are only used sporadically a few days of the week?

Does that play a role in our printer selection decision?

Most lasers will have a power save that turns off the fuser heat which
is similar to turning them off. You definitely don't want to have one
that keeps the fuser hot all the time if you only print once or twice
a day and never turn the printer off. Of course, when the fuser is
turned off that means a delay in printing when you do want to print.
If it's only once a day it's probably not much of an issue.

I don't recall HP saying their printers should be left on all the
time, only that they should be turned off properly, which means with
their power button, not just by turning off the power strip it's
plugged into. If the printer is turned off in mid print by cutting
power from the power strip it will leave the print heads un-parked
which could lead to ink drying in them and causing clogging. In my
experience, no matter what you do there will be periodic episodes when
the HP goes into "clean and polish" mode where it exercises the print
heads by squirting some ink thru them into a build in disposal
reservoir.

 

[Brian]

In my
experience, no matter what you do there will be periodic episodes when
the HP goes into "clean and polish" mode where it exercises the print
heads by squirting some ink thru them into a build in disposal
reservoir.

My Canon Pixma does the same - sometimes I have quite a wait before it
gets started on the actual printing!

 

[SMS]

On 8/21/2012 3:39 PM, Ashton Crusher wrote:

I took it back and returned to an HP AIO. Good luck with your
search!!

All the rantings about HP are not because of the print quality, they are
because of the business practices of what has essentially become an ink
company.

I find an HP AIO to be ideal. The print quality is excellent. I buy the
replacement color ink cartridges from monoprice.com for as low as $8.
The price of HP ink cartridges does not affect me.

The key is to look at consumables first, and then select a printer based
on the availability of after-market consumables. Even if it means
finding a used printer.

Freecycle is full of used printers. When computers lost their parallel
ports there were a bunch of free laser printers available (often of a
quality that is no longer available) because so many people wanted
printers with USB ports. Then a lot of people wanted printers with
wireless built in so they gave away their printers that lacked wireless.
Now a lot of people want printers that support Airprint, so they can
print directly from an Apple iPad or iPhone, so they are buying new
printers that support Airprint.

Of course there have always been easy workarounds to these issues, but
they are not well known. I.e. I have a wireless print server with two
USB and one parallel port that my printers connect to. There is an
Airprint print server from Lantronix so any network printer can print
from an iPad or iPhone. But new inkjet printers are so cheap that few
people will bother with any workaround that costs $100. What they don't
realize is that that new inkjet printer is designed to stop the use of
refilled ink cartridges and aftermarket ink cartridges.

 

[Chris Malcolm]

On 8/21/2012 3:39 PM, Ashton Crusher wrote:

All the rantings about HP are not because of the print quality, they are
because of the business practices of what has essentially become an ink
company.

I find an HP AIO to be ideal. The print quality is excellent. I buy the
replacement color ink cartridges from monoprice.com for as low as $8.
The price of HP ink cartridges does not affect me.

The key is to look at consumables first, and then select a printer based
on the availability of after-market consumables. Even if it means
finding a used printer.

I happily used one of the allegedly better quality EPSON-compatible
inks for a few years. Not the cheapest, but a good reputation on the
web. My own tests had shown me only slight differences in colour, not
worth paying all the extra for unless I wanted to do some exhibition
quality prints. Which I sometimes did. And so sometimes I ended up
doing a few of my family snaps with EPSON inks, and most with the same
good quality replacement ink.

My wife pinned those she liked best on the kitchen wall, carefully
choosing a position the sun never reached. Nevertheless after a year
all the replacement inks had browned off like old masters, whereas the
EPSON ink snaps were still bright and colorful. After two years the
compatible prints looked like fading sepia prints, whereas the EPSON
ink prints still looked newly minted.

So now I stick to the printer maker's inks. Have you tried any
lightfast fading tests on your 3rd party inks?

 

[Gernot Hassenpflug]

Last time I needed to buy a new AIO Inkie I was going to avoid HP. I
read all the reviews I could find, compared features and user
satisfaction, plus looked at reported problems. I Finally settled on
a Canon that sounded REALLY good from the reviews. After getting it I
was VERY disappointed in it's print quality for text and photos, it
just did not match the quality on simple run of the mill daily
printing that I was used to from my old defunct (my fault) HP. Some
users had mentioned it's lengthy startup time for the first page but
it didn't sound too bad so I still bought it. Start up time turned
out to be a HUGE pain in the butt. If it sat for more then a few
minutes it seemingly parked it's print heads and then when you went to
print again there was all sorts of start up racket and delay while it
brought the heads out of cold storage. Then I discovered that in what
it considered normal mixed color and b/w printing it used a mix of all
the color inks to produce the "black" which came out more like a dark
charcoal. So its prints looked lousy and used up all the color ink!!
I took it back and returned to an HP AIO. Good luck with your
search!!

Yes, many of the Canon inkjets which, after all, are made for
photo-printing, improve the shades of grey by using other colors. This
is quite natural since the point of using them is to print quality
photos.

However, if one wants to use the printer for other things, which is
also natural, such as low-cost B/W printing, then one has to ensure
that the printer comes with at least one plain media mode (not the
highest or even medium quality one, in most cases) that prints only
using black ink. Then one uses that.

There is a whole range of Canon printers dealing with this problem by
shipping with two cartridges: black and color. One can then select
black-only cartridge and print all one's work only in black. Refilling
either cartridge is also trivial.

 

[Ashton Crusher]

Yes, many of the Canon inkjets which, after all, are made for
photo-printing, improve the shades of grey by using other colors. This
is quite natural since the point of using them is to print quality
photos.

However, if one wants to use the printer for other things, which is
also natural, such as low-cost B/W printing, then one has to ensure
that the printer comes with at least one plain media mode (not the
highest or even medium quality one, in most cases) that prints only
using black ink. Then one uses that.

There is a whole range of Canon printers dealing with this problem by
shipping with two cartridges: black and color. One can then select
black-only cartridge and print all one's work only in black. Refilling
either cartridge is also trivial.

The single Canon I tried did have both black and color carts. Yet it
insisted on using the color mix for black unless you did something to
force it to use the black - I forget the details now. You could work
around it but it was a pain to deal with and simply wasn't a problem
with the HP. The thing that surprised me most was that so many
reviewers raved about its print quality and it was clearly, at least
to my eye, inferior to HP for the 90% of the printing I do. When
doing 4x6 color on glossy photo paper it did fine but no better then
the HP.

 

[J.G.]

The key is to look at consumables first, and then select a printer based
on the availability of after-market consumables.

That's sage advice!

 

[J.G.]

You definitely don't want to have one that keeps the fuser hot all the
time if you only print once or twice a day and never turn the printer
off.

Hmmm... I will have to look to see if my B&W HP 3200m laser printer turns
itself off.

What feature am I looking for by name?

I googled for "hp 3200m turn off feature" but didn't find what I'm
looking for.

Does this auto-off feature have a name that I can see if the HP 3200m
laserjet has the capability?

 

[J.G.]

I don't recall HP saying their printers should be left on all the time,
only that they should be turned off properly, which means with their
power button, not just by turning off the power strip it's plugged into.

I just downloaded the manual for the HP laserjet 3200m
http://crl.ap.buffalo.edu/faculty/phones/3200manual.pdf

I did a search (control + F) of the PDF for "power" and "turn off" but
didn't see any mention of what the recommendation is.

I leave mine on all the time - but folks said that's wasteful for
printing a page or three a week.

Any suggestions?

 

[J.G.]

Most lasers will have a power save that turns off the fuser heat which
is similar to turning them off.

At first, I couldn't find that 'feature' by name in the HP 3200 laserjet
manual:
http://crl.ap.buffalo.edu/faculty/phones/3200manual.pdf

But, reading page by page by page, on page 228 of that manual, I find
this chart which talks about "idle mode" which may be the thing you are
talking about?
-----------------------------------------------------------
Power requirements = 100 to 127 volts +/-10% 50 to 60 hertz
Power consumption = Continuous copy mode: 135 watts
Idle mode = 7 watts
Minimum recommended circuit capacity = 4.2 amps (110 volts)
Idle power = 7 watts
-----------------------------------------------------------

The question is whether it goes into "idle mode" on its own or if I have
to put it into that mode. Unfortunately, a control F shows that "idle
mode" is used only once in the entire 300-page document! And its at that
chart. So there's not much to go by.

 

[Bob Eager]

Can't speak for yours specifically, but most every printer made in the
past few years is in a very low power mode when not in use. The heavy
power is the heating element that fuses the toner and that is not on
until it is going to print.

True of my LaserJet 4 machines, and they were made in 1993.