Intermittent use printer

[Coridon Henshaw]

I'm looking for a printer that will be used intermittently (a few times a
month at most) for 4-5 years. I'd rather that it die of obsolecence
rather than of old age. The printer will mostly be used for text jobs up
to 25 pages with the occasional greyscale chart. Photo/color output isn't
required.

Currently I'm looking at mid-range inkjets and low-end lasers,
specifically the Canon I550, Canon I850, the Samsung ML-1250 and the OKI
B4200.

How well will the Canon printers cope with this kind of usage pattern?
Some inkjet printers have been know to dry out their ink wells to ensure
that the victim continues to buy cartridges at a high rate even if the
printer is seldom used. What about durability--are these things likely to
last much beyond their warranty period?

Has anyone out there had any experience with the OKI B4200? LED printers
have somewhat of a poor reputation for output quality; how does the output
of an LED-based printer stack up against that of an inkjet?

Naturally, the OKI will maul the stinkjets in terms of cost per page and
speed (19PPM w/ PCL6 will beat a GDI Stupid Brick any day).

 

[Impmon]

How well will the Canon printers cope with this kind of usage pattern?
Some inkjet printers have been know to dry out their ink wells to ensure
that the victim continues to buy cartridges at a high rate even if the
printer is seldom used. What about durability--are these things likely to
last much beyond their warranty period?

A better choice would be used laser printer. Unlike ink, toner usually
will be fine for several months. I have HP Laserjet 4 and I'm still
using toner cart that was new 3 years ago. It gets maybe 50 pages per
month at the most and have gone several weeks without printing once.
Plus some early Canon based printer (including the Laserjet) are built
like a tank and could easily outlast a few PCs.

 

[Ron Cohen]

The Canon i850 would be well suited to the task. It is about as fast as a
laser. You seem to be very cost conscious, which is great. Refilling Canon
cartridges is a breeze and it will cut your per page cost to almost nothing.
The added advantage is the excellent color capability of the printer. You
may find that it does come in handy to spice up presentations. If you still
want to go with a laser, you can get really good ones on eBay for a fraction
of their original cost. If you go with a laser, I'd stick to either HP or
Lexmark. In addition to my Canon inkjets, I also have a Lexmark E312 which
has postscript emulation. This is an excellent little laser. You can find
them on eBay quite cheap.

 

[Coridon Henshaw]

The Canon i850 would be well suited to the task. It is about as fast
as a laser.

How frequently do the color ink tanks need to be refilled when printing %99
B&W? Hopefully less frequently than every other time the black tank needs
to be refilled?

I'm trying to estimate cost per page for B&W usage; how frequently the
color tanks need to be refilled makes a very big difference to the total
cost of ownership estimate.

As a generally worthless factoid, if I assume the use of 3rd party ink and
that the color tanks need to be replaced five times less frequently than
the black, the payback point where a 2 cent/page (CDN) laser has a lower
TCO than the i850 is on the order of 15,000 pages.

 

[Taliesyn]

How frequently do the color ink tanks need to be refilled when printing %99
B&W? Hopefully less frequently than every other time the black tank needs
to be refilled?

I'm trying to estimate cost per page for B&W usage; how frequently the
color tanks need to be refilled makes a very big difference to the total
cost of ownership estimate.

As a generally worthless factoid, if I assume the use of 3rd party ink and
that the color tanks need to be replaced five times less frequently than
the black, the payback point where a 2 cent/page (CDN) laser has a lower
TCO than the i850 is on the order of 15,000 pages.

I think the simple fact that I refill all 4 tanks on the i850 for about
$5 CDN speaks for itself. We're talking $1.25 per cartridge fill. You do
the per-page-math if it even still matters at this point.

-Taliesyn