Monday
Sep172012
Printers?
Monday, September 17, 2012 at 3:00AM What has your experience of printers been like over the years? To me it is a technology that has never been sorted properly and to this day I still find them to be difficult to set up, tiresome to use and remarkably unreliable. Hate them!
Reader Comments (12)
I've tended to use Canon printers and generally found them to be reliable as long as you use their own ink. Currently using an MP980 all-in-one wireless printer/scanner.
I don't do a lot of printing or scanning but it's served me well over the past three years or so.
Bloody stupid install process though; if you want to download the latest drivers and software you have to download half-a-dozen different packages and work out in which order you should install them. And you have to have the original driver disk to hand or the new software won't install. Erm, why? Isn't the fact I have your printer enough proof that I'm legit?
I have an old tank of a printer. It's more reliable than my cheapo new one.
For the last 20 years I've been using HP printers, and never had any serious problem. But in order to keep them running you better use original inks. 3rd party ink will invalidate you printer :(
I am an Epson fan(boy?) and don't really have any problem with them. Currently I use an Epson Photo 1410 (A3 photo printer), I tend not to use epson ink though, too expensive, at the moment I use a continues ink delivery system as linked below...
http://www.rihac.com.au/100ml-ciss-photo-1410-p-344.html
Noisy, mechanical, expensive, unreliable monstrosities - I hate inkjet printers.
I have a mid-range, mono, Samsung laser printer. I've had it for two years without a toner change required. For me, colour is not worth the hassle of inkjet ownership.
I have an "older" Canon MP600 and it's been very reliable over the years. So good that I'm not even bothered by the fact that it's hard wired and not WiFi.
As for drivers, Windows was a pain, but on the Mac I don't bother with the Canon drivers.
A what? Printer? Hmm...
Used HP printers for years, but on need & recommendation changed to a Canon MP560 MFD about three years ago. Wish I'd have done it sooner. Great device
I'm like Peter. Got an incredible deal on a Samsung ML-2955ND laser printer a couple of months ago when my Brother HL-2040 finally give up the ghost after many years of faithful service. Lasers last longer, cost less in consumables and are quieter than inkjets which are basically just money pits.
I do have a cheap Brother multi-function device that I use almost exclusively for its scanner functions. Ink is crazy expensive so I do all my printing to my laser since I have no need for colour printing. It was actually cheaper to buy the MFC than to buy a standalone scanner, so that's why I chose this route and it works well for my needs.
I've always used HP and find them very, very good in the quality/economy/price features. In terms of software, Almost any HP printer can be installed with a Windows generic driver. But the complete software pack is a mess I must admit... hundreds of MB to... well... print and scan, basically.
It's a technology that hasn't been much improved (now there's wifi printers), but it's very very necessary for the daily life. As much as you can PDF anything, we just need paper printing.
One thing that just puts me off is the amount of ink a cartridge holds and the price tag for that. It's just too expensive. A guy from a "non-original" cartridge store told me HP make a lot of money from original cartridges and the ink is cheap. Very cheap. It's just business I guess.
I used to have two printers beside my computer, a Samsung Laser printer, for bulk printing for at the time the consumables price per page was considerably less than inkjets, and probably still is. I also have a Canon multifunction unit which has an Auto Document Feeder, which has proven to be very useful.
Unfortunately the laser was retired over a year ago due to the printer's paper feed no longer fully functional, which left all the work for the Canon, which is plugged directly into the wireless router, so can be reached from any household computer.
For a while I was using Greentech recycled ink cartridges in the Canon, but the last batch left the printer performing poorly, the yellow cart actually had magenta ink in it which made a mess of coloured printing, and the blue ink kept failing completely. After fearing that the printer may have been permanently damaged by recycled cartridges, I cleaned the head cleaner with spirits and cotton tips, replaced the ink with genuine cartridges, and ran the printer's deep clean function. The printer returned to working as it should.
And I won't be using recycled ink cartridges any more. It's all very well saving money, but I lost time using dodgy carts, risked damaging the printer, and ended up discarding almost full recycled carts anyway.
recently bought an all in one as I do quite a bit of work from home now and needed the extra capabilities.
I ended up with the Epson SX535WD which is wifi, and has a copier, scanner and printer with duplex printing system. I really like it as it also is a front feeder via a tray which resolves a lot of the paper loading issues I usually have.
I have finished the original inks and am now reasonably cheap compatibles and haven't noted any issues.
I love being able to print anywhere from the house (and now can even do it form other locations) whether I am using my phone, tablet or the desktop PC.
I have had no issues setting it up, and it has worked like a dream (other than when my baby daughter switches it off - but that is now my first check when I can't see it in the Android Epson printing app). There were some issues getting it set up to run off my work network account, however it seemed to be more due to how that was set up and the security issues around it, since there was an update to our whole offsite networking environment a couple of weeks later, at which point it suddenly started recognizing the printer without any issues.