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

[Amos Shapira]

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.

>
> 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).

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.

--Amos