continuous feed ink systems for the win!!!

Parapraxis

@Kaiser-Machead's WALL-E fetish: Sorry. I responded to your message where you justify the use for Fax Machines now-a-days. I agree but it's also Sarbanes/Oxley also that make it difficult or expensive to replace fax machines.

apeguero

@migsims: There are still disadvantages to laser, though, and for sheer versatility of printing options they're quite poor. Color is only good for block printing, but unacceptable for photos, and laser doesn't work well on many paper types that are fine for inkjet.

Also the very high initial cost for a laser comparable to inkjets is prohibitive to small and home-offices. When a $200 WiFi, 38ppm inkjet fax all-in-one that prints lab-quality photographs, fits on a small desk, takes about $60 to fill up, and consumes a third of the power of a very loosely-comparable $800 color laser printer that can't print photos and costs $400 to fill up, you can see the case for inkjet.

Yes, if you're running a business that prints thousands of pages a month, you should probably buy a laser (although both Epson and HP have new inkjets that compete with or beat laser on cpp), but if you're printing less than that, or don't have the capital to subsidize high entry costs over long periods of time they become a tougher choice.

Today's office needs have shifted, and small businesses are often doing a lot of unusual things on their own. That includes needs that can't be covered by a laser printer, but with budgets that don't support separate machines for separate needs. That makes units like the one this article's about and the new Epson I have my eye on very appealing choices.

TurboFool

@Kaiser-Machead's WALL-E fetish: That and SOX.

apeguero

i just recently bought a MFC-5460cn to replace a crappy HP all-in-one and I just love it. i love the fact that each separate ink for each color and a whole set only costs about $50

@migsims:

most cases you dont have to have the fax print out, you can simply direct it to your computer and view on your screen. also for a home office now a days it is cheap enough to have a laser for B&W and a multifunction for color

master_of_fm

@bandit: One day we'll be able to just laser burn the print into the paper without actually making the paper combust, like burning data on a disc.

Then and only then can we be free from the shackles of toner prison.

Kaiser-Machead's WALL-E fetish

An inkjet good for small business? You guys are full of shit and out of touch. The amount of stuff that is printed on a daily basis plus the amount of faxes that come through will make this thing a money pit.

Even a small home office is a lot better off with a cheap laser printer than these inkjet p.o.s.

And fax machines are still standard fare in a ton of industries in the U.S.

But therein lies the problem inkjet + fax = waste of money.

migsims

These printers are all essentially "free" now; you pay for it with the ink. Sort of like a "free" cell phone with a calling plan. They get you in the end. How much is the ink?

bandit

@se7a7n7: Unfortunately, fax machines are one of those near-vestigial components of the office that refuse to just wither and die and join the ranks with dead FaxTrak 2000 machines and Compaq Presario face panels in that utility closet no one remembers. The problem is that old fogies and Luddites refuse to accept the power of .pdf's in emails and just don't understand that our newfangled magic renders their mind-fuckingly slow phone lines obsolete.

I'm sending a fax as we speak.

Kaiser-Machead's WALL-E fetish

@Kaiser-Machead's WALL-E fetish: I've got to say, $200 for a lifetime fanboy is a bargain. I'll have to consider that one...

TurboFool

haha this is great, I'm just getting a printer today! thanks!

Shub-Niggurath

I'm an HP fanboy, and I'll die an HP fanboy, unless Turbofool buys me aforementioned Espon Workforce 600, then I'll be a Turbofool fanboy, and die a Turbofool fanboy.

Kaiser-Machead's WALL-E fetish

good, a fax machine in case you need to send something to the the 90s.

se7a7n7

From the looks of that I'd say the $200 Epson WorkForce 600 is a much better buy. A lot more bang for the buck, and better proven quality.

TurboFool

Shill!
-EF

El Frijole

How about UGLY and cheap?

I have this one. It's schweet!

[images.macnn.com]

Elliuotatar

I've got the $99 brother B/w laser printer- with built in ethernet and wifi.

No fax, and works like a champ. (No photo printing, I'll just submit to the professional one hour proto printing joints. I'd rather be gouged a little bit on a routine basis than deal with clogged inkjets and soaking wet pages.)

styrofoam

I've had a brother printer for almost a year now. It only does black in white, but it is a great printer and it only cost me $50. I have been very happy with the quality as well. The only thing that concerns me is the amount of power that it uses. When I start a print job all of the lights in my room dim and when the print job is over they become brighter again.

Aoi

Big Brother is watching.

aR-Tard

@TurboFool: You may want to try a modern color laser with photo paper designed for laser printers. I recently replaced a very old HP OfficeJet R80 with a Brother MFC-9840CDW and what it puts out on HP Laser photo paper beats ink any day of the week. Where I work we've gone through a couple dozen HP models over the years and some Epsons as well. I used to swear by HP, but these days they make nothing but garbage. I never had any experience at with Brother hardware, but all the reviews I read of the model I purchased were very positive. So based on the reviews, a little blind faith, and a refusal give to HP or Epson any of my money.. I got the Brother.

My wife is an elementary school teacher and in 2007 we averaged a little more than $50 per month on ink. So I thought that in our circumstance the laser would make more sense just from the consumables. I couldn't be happier with the thing either. It's fast and it works so much better than any HP I've ever used (probably due to better drivers). Scanning over the network actually works like it should too I might add.

RogueSpear

Can anyone compare this to the HP C7280 inkjet printer, which has a similar price? The features and specs are similar: print/copy/scan/fax, wireless(B&G, no N)/wired lan/USB, 2.4" LCD, and slots for memory cards/sticks. The HP doesn't seem to support 11"x17" paper, but it does have separate, 6-color-cartridge printing (each color is a separate cartridge).

aj_robins

@TurboFool: I have the Epson CX9400 and it sucks. The document feeder is somehow engineered wrong, it constantly jams. Output is marginal. I recommend spending more for the Canon.

ecypher

I haven't owned a personal printer in like 6 years since cartridges got into the $40+ range. A broken business model is what it seems like to me. I agree on the fax being severely outdated. Since figuring out how to print to pdf with perfect clarity, I can't imagine faxing anything other than 1 page documents that require my signature.

Do they make a printer that goes by blutooth? If forced to get one, I would go that route so I can print internet stuff of via my ps3.

SeattleTed

Meh. Brother has always been known for 'sketchy' reliability.

I've had my Canon MP970 for over 6 months and love it.
Insanely fast scanner, Extremely efficient with ink, Easy to connect to the network, and prints photos better then any other multifunction I've seen yet. I've even reset the firmware for Euro settings so I could print directly to CDs/DVDs (Epson seems to have that feature all to themselves in the states)

It's only missing a fax, which I never used in my old HP and Epson multifunctions. And it's not bad looking either, if that's important to you. You can sometimes catch Newegg offering a 100 MIR on it, so I ended up paying less then $200. Highly recommended for anyone looking for a new multifunction/photo printer.

TKWarrior

Wow... I'm so glad printer ink costs $1000 a thimblefull, because otherwise these printers would be expensive.

Serolf Divad

If it has a duplexing ADF, I'm all over it.

ackthbbft

avoid this thing. brother makes it so their printers will not print anything unless all cartridges have the minimum ink. so no black printing if any of the color cartridges are empty.
also, they're constantly cleaning themselves and draining ink. it seems to be standard practice to just waste ink

Nuvari

After evaluating the cost of ink vs. toner (for an Epson CX5400, which required Epson ink to actually work, despite what anyone says), I bought a Brother HL-4070CDW color laser for home use. I love it. It has wireless support, does duplex printing, is very fast, and the quality is great. My Epson kept clogging all the time, even with Epson ink, and I expect half of every cartridge was wasted cleaning the heads. I'll never go back to inkjet.

CSX321

@Kaiser-Machead's WALL-E fetish: HP fanboy for laser printers, Canon fanboy for all-in-ones, Buy N Large fanboy for waste-disposal automatons.

frigg

@Nuvari: Are you sure you don't mean "Epson" instead of "Brother"? "...no black printing if any of the color cartridges are empty...constantly cleaning themselves and draining ink...." That perfectly describes my old Epson CX5400.

Oh, and I forgot how much I hate the way Epson handles drivers. They're invasive memory hogs. I don't want or need three extra processes running and a useless system tray icon! The drivers for the Brother laser are practically invisible, just like they should be.

CSX321

Brother is the Coby of the AIO world. That thing sucks more ink in cleaning purging cycles than an all night bukkake.

AngrySicilian

@HJTravels: the only thing I have ever seen that brother makes well is their fax machines. Those things are fucking tanks.

migsims

Brother only makes crap. The ink runs out even if you don't use it. The printer's software seldom works. They have had tons of problems. I'd keep clear of this one.

HJTravels

@El Frijole: Don't sign your comments. It's obvious who wrote it.

Jason Chen

@Jason Chen: heh: disemvoweled.

Paradise

@RogueSpear: Sorry, but no laser touches a good photo inkjet. Anyone who has photo quality standards is aware of this. A color laser may print PASSABLE photographs on laser photo paper, but it will not TOUCH an inkjet photo printer on genuine photo quality. Find me a single professional photographer who prints photos with a laser. They don't exist.

@ecypher: Sounds like you got a bad unit. I've had no trouble with them and gotten no bad feedback on the feeder. Even so, the new workForce 600 I mentioned is a big step up from the CX9400Fax.

@CSX321: For the clogging, some users get this more than other users. If the printer's left on all the time or rarely used it clogs more often. Mine's maybe every month or so, and takes 45 seconds to clean. As for no printing black when a color's empty, that represents most multi-cartridge printers. They can't print when one color's empty because minute amounts of the colors (less than on HPs, though) are still used when black is printed to keep the heads clean. If they're allowed to go empty it risks permanent damage to the print heads, so the printers are engineered to avoid this. And I'm sorry, but I'll take Epson drivers over HP or most others any day. They're infinitely more useful, and take up a LOT less disk and resource space. Try to download a driver for an HP printer that gives you access to the printer's full functionality and weighs in at less than 200MB. They're rare. The Epson drivers weight in at around 20MB total for both the printer and scanner drivers, and they don't try to overtake every task on your system. Oh, and the Epson drivers have only ONE process (currently taking up an absurd 164KB of my resources, oh no!), and the system tray icon's optional. I find it extremely useful and leave it on, but it can definitely be turned off.

TurboFool

I used to like Brother's multifunction printer/fax/canner combos. Having separate inks is a great idea, and the built in wifi is nice too.

However, their drivers are crap... especially on OSX. Thier bundled scanning software left much to be desired, and scanning quality was not great (nothing like the 19200DPI they claim - the 19200DPI is interpolated: the real optical DPI is much much lower).

My next printer will be a colour laser, and I am quite happy sticking with my standalone scanner.

nimblesquirrel

hp p1005 FTW!!

we don't need no stinking color

and it runs under vista

godwhacker

@CSX321: @Nuvari:

Brothers have definitely done that (not allowing printing even black if colour is empty, very often cleaning while consuming ink). I can't speak for newer models but all I know is I'll never buy a Brother again.

orangeclover

Am I the only fool on here who buys printers solely based on the cost of replacement ink cartridges? Currently I pay $6 for a B/W and $16 for a color on my Canon PIXMA ip2000.

baristabrawl

@baristabrawl: That's one of the smartest things you can do, although there's more to the story than that. Cost of cartridges doesn't tell you anything about the volume of ink in those cartridges.

As well, it depends on what you're doing. Printing occasional schoolwork and basic use? Then your logic works perfectly. Professional results, or needs for higher-level functions? Not so much.

Personally, I do think cost of ink should be a priority on everyone's mind when picking a printer. But I wouldn't let it be my only determining factor. If the build quality of the machine, or the print quality are crap, or if the features I need are lacking or two difficult to use, then I have to adjust my priorities. Some printers have that balance, some don't.

TurboFool