Recommendation for a reliable Color Printer (with MFP features?) supporting Linux

[shimi]

On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 12:33 AM, Amos Shapira <amos.shapira at gmail.com>wrote:

> On 28 February 2010 06:32, Omer Zak <w1 at zak.co.il> wrote:
> >
> > On Sat, 2010-02-27 at 20:23 +0200, shimi wrote:
> > > * Expect it to live many years - not a throwaway product (again not
> > > inkjet?) - and don't mind to pay more for that
> > > * Assumed duty cycle is 200-400 pages per month
> >
> > > I guess my price range would be 1500 +/- 500 NIS incl. VAT or so
> >
> > Given this duty cycle, one may want to consider the ratio of cost of
> supplies (ink, even paper) to the cost of the printer itself.
> > While the cost of supplies would probably be less than the cost of the
> > printer itself, it would probably be significant percentage of the full
> > cost of printing.
>
> I'm 100% with you there. I don't know the prices in Israel but printer
> companies here are known to shove you with cheap-to-free printers only
> to slug you off with the ink refills.
>

That's the thing here - when I have been using Inkjet printers, I could buy
a printer at the price of the ink alone every 1-2 months... with the laser
(I think it's a laser) I currently have - I refilled the black once, and now
it ended, with the colors, after around 3 years from the original
purchase... like the Inkjet, it seems refilling all the toners would cost
more than a printer, so after 3 years I am in the look for a new unit which
would perhaps also be an upgrade (the MFP features), and fixing the long
problem of "why didn't I check it works in Linux before I bought it" :)


>
> >
> > Hence, it may make economic sense to buy an inexpensive printer (around
> > 300NIS) as a throwaway item, and replace it each few months - instead of
> > a more durable printer (around 1500NIS).
>
> Here I beg to differ. At least up to not long ago, laser printers (not
> to mention colour laser printers) where much more expensive but the
> cost of ink-per-page was much better, making it break-even quickly for
> those with high duty cycle. As far as I remember, color laser printers
> were so cheap last time we upgraded the printer that we were tempted
> to buy one but eventually stuck to InkJet and HP (I think the point
> was that we didn't expect to print so much to justify the difference).
>
>
Yes, see above.

As for specific recommendations, I have an HP C7280. It's an inkjet
> printer so is already ruled out by Shimi, but otherwise it answers
> most (all?) the requirements - it's a printer/fax/scanner, separate 6
> colour wells (with double-size for black) so you can buy/replace only
> the colours which ran out, attaches to both wired and wireless network
> (and USB), can send faxes independently of a computer, not giant.
> Fully supported by Linux. On the down side it did have a paper jam a
> couple of times over the couple of years that we have it, and I don't
> think we print 200-400 pages per month so can't tell if it'll hold
> that amount of work.
>
>
Look, I am willing to accept an Inkjet. My point wasn't that I'm against
that as a principal (like those who buy Intel "because it's Intel, and I
don't care I pay 1.5x the price for the same performance"), rather then my
own bad experience with them in the past ( > 3 years ago); The only one who
didn't suffer from plumbing problem was indeed the HP I had many years ago -
but HP's ink, was, at least back then, damn expensive. If that has changed,
I will certainly consider it. Another major issue I have with HP is their
software drivers (albeit in the Windows world, so I will personally not
suffer from it, rather then the users who like operating systems from
Redmond :)). I guess it's manageable...

Actually the separate 6 color cartridges is probably a waste of money.
Again, from my experience, most colors end at around the same time (unless
it's a company printer and your company logo doesn't use the 3 base colors
at the same level ;); And you probably pay more for all this additional
packaging, and there's a good chance that it might outweight the savings of
having the ability to replace one cartridge 5 pages before the other...

What I do have to wonder here is again the plumbing. I have a similar
printer at work (at least by the looks of it - the 7500 series) - and it
seems that now the ink cartridges are separate from the print heads (like it
was always with Canon, Epson and others, but not HP). So that puts the
advantage I previously discussed regarding HP (where you replaced the
printing head every time, so it never got plumbing problems) behind a big
question mark. How much time do you have the printer? How many times did you
replace the ink since then? What happens if you don't print for a few weeks?
Does it get dry? Do you have to "clean" the heads every once in a while
because you see opacity on your printouts? I'm kinda used by now to
print-every-time-at-the-same-quality of the Laser world :-)

Thanks,

-- Shimi
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