The Brother MFC-9200C inkjet machine is what is driving me crazy. On the
other hand, I have a Brother DCP-1000 which is giving me good service. It is
fussing with the ink; drying ink, cleaning, replacing etc. that is driving
me up the wall.
I know nothing about the MFC-9200C other than it takes ink and a
printhead, a printhead that might need to be replaced. Not like I can
look at a manual online and see if I reconize the printhead and could
match it to another product, no manual online. So I know squat about
this product.
There are good reasons to consider a laser. There are good reasons to
consider a color laser. If you are willing to spend over $500 for
something that doesn't require drytime, that will print hundrads to
thousands of pages without opening the cover, something designed to
print thousands to tens of thousands of pages without replacing a
single part.... more power to you. If uptime is your priority... if
you lose money every time you open up the printer cover and replace or
clean something, then by all means spend $500-$1000.
On the otherhand... if you have the space you might consider a
monochrome laser and a color inkjet... even a monochrome all in one
unit. Inkjets on glossy paper tend to look very good, and the cost of
color inkjets tend to be about 25% to 40% more than the ink they come
with. I.e. a $100 inkjet might come with $60 or $70 worth of ink
making the net cost to replace the whole thing $30 to $40. When the
sales hit, sometimes the printer is equal to the cost of the ink they
come with, making the net cost to replace 0%. I dislike the disposable
world of inkjets, but it's a fact that they make their money on the ink
so it's in their best interest to provide you with cheap printers. If
you can get away for a week without color printing and depend on your
work horse monochrome AIO laser... this is an option.
There are inkjets that offer reasonably fast drytimes. Canon is pretty
dang good as far as drytime goes. Epson dye inkjets are not too
shabby... their pigment inkjets I have less experence with but I
imagine they require more drytime. I have no direct experence with
the hp vivera ink but i'm told the drytime is higher than average, but
to those willing to wait you get long printlife.
I'm not going to reccomend a single product... I know not your
application. An actuall thoughtful reccomendation would first be based
on
1. How much you print.
2. How much you print in color
3. How colorful are you color prints
4. What favor do you rank highest in your prints
a. Quality of colors (pie charts or photographs)
b. Speed of printing
c. Dry time (frame as fast as you print or can you wait a 1/4 hour
or more)
d. longevity of prints (Birthday cards or archival beyond your
lifetime)
5. Do you print desire printing on special media (glossy papers, CDs,
or plain paper)
6. Do you print on non letter/a4 sized media (envelopes)
These are just off the top of my head.
