[tpicco]

I imagine this may have been posted before... but I didn't find it easily.

I never had to purchase a printer before (used the one at my lost job) so I naively got a color ink jet printer. Now my brother says I'm an idiot... (he says that a lot but lets stay focussed here)

What are the pros & cons from inkjet to laser?

[The Ginger Rat]

Inkjets have very expensive consumable costs, generally not so nice font interpretations IMO, are slower to print a page, and the color printouts fade unbelievably fast. They are generally not intended for networking either. The only advantages they have is that the unit itself is cheap. If you don't need/want color, don't bother with an inkjet.

If you do crave color, color lasers for the SOHO are becoming quite nicely priced. I saw several in Fry's that were less than $1500 and Xerox has come out with some that start at under $999, which look quite nice.

[-Q-]

If all you produce is text documents, a b&w laser is the way to go. The cost for consumables is far more reasonable on a per page basis. But if you're doing anything with color, an inkjet is the way to go right now. I think the color lasers, while dropping dramatically in price, are still too expensive for the home user (US$1000 for the printer plus ~US$100 per color toner cartridge). But the way prices are dropping, I'd say cheap color lasers are on their way to the home.

But for now, it really is a choice btw laser and inkjet and the right answer is 'it depends on what you do'. Personally, I have both. One for all the text I print for reports and the other is for proofs, etc for clients. The color matching isn't great, but I'm only doing it to give them an idea of what it looks like, not how it will look in the final output.

[OreoCookie]

Please post your user profile: what you want to do with your printer. Color or mostly black and white, duplex or no duplex, etc.

[tpicco]

Originally posted by OreoCookie:
Please post your user profile: what you want to do with your printer. Color or mostly black and white, duplex or no duplex, etc.

Hmmm... As a graphic designer, I probably need color to show clients roughly how the finished piece will look...

But I also do a lot of B+W text stuff...

And I'm ignorant as to what you mean by duplex... are you referring to paper sizes, with two trays?

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by tpicco:
Hmmm... As a graphic designer, I probably need color to show clients roughly how the finished piece will look...

But I also do a lot of B+W text stuff...

And I'm ignorant as to what you mean by duplex... are you referring to paper sizes, with two trays?

Duplex means printing on both sides of the paper. It's pretty handy if you work with long texts a lot.

What you could do is buy a Canon Inkjet Printer, e. g. the i560 or it's big brother i860 (basically just a slightly faster version). They have the cheapest ink prices on the market. BW printing is about as cheap as for the small lasers with small capacity cartridges. If you want a printer solely for pictures, you could also get a photo printer. They are not optimized for text output though.

The Canon i560 is currently priced at around 130 €, maybe a bit more than $100.

Inkjet printers still do a far better job at pictures and slides than even expensive lasers.

In addition to that, you could get a laser printer for text, e. g. the Kyocera Mita 1010. I wouldn't go for HP, their consumables are too expensive. I wouldn't go for the cheapest printer, because you will pay in terms of consumables and quality. I dunno about American prices, but I'd say spend no less than approximately 300 €, so about $250.

A laser printer should be able to talk at least some version of PCL (6 is the latest), better is Postscript (if a printer is capable of handling Postscript, it can also handle PCL). The reason is that you can continue to use it on any platform. You don't have to pray that your printer will be supported in four or five years, it just works.

What's your budget?

[tpicco]

Thanks for all the information so far...

Originally posted by OreoCookie:
Duplex means printing on both sides of the paper. It's pretty handy if you work with long texts a lot...
What's your budget?

Didn't know there were duplex printers... sometimes when designing two-sided brochures or CD inserts, printing on both sides would be pretty good, saving me time when creating dummies... but how well do the two sides align?

As for budget, maybe up to $500 US

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by tpicco:
Thanks for all the information so far...



Didn't know there were duplex printers... sometimes when designing two-sided brochures or CD inserts, printing on both sides would be pretty good, saving me time when creating dummies... but how well do the two sides align?

As for budget, maybe up to $500 US

So you could even take do the combi solution. A laser printer is a lot faster if you print long letters or do like black and white handouts. It's definitely the better thing for office stuff. A color laser is out of the question, they are too expensive, and as I said, for proofs not the best solution in terms of quality. If you'd have to print out many, many of them in color, a color laser would be better, but it would still be beyond your budget.

Realistically, I get about 3-6 pages in bw on my Canon S630, about 2 in color (presentation), roughly a minute for a full page photo, but that strongly depends on the document. A bw laser printer would be a lot faster, the letters do not smear out when they get in contact with water (e. g. sweat), and is more convenient.

You can also do manual duplex (print odd and even pages separately), but that isn't as convenient as a printer that is truly capable of duplex.

If you want info on any of the two: do a search in these forums, and you'll know why you should pick a Canon. If it's just to give the client an idea about the design, you don't need a photo printer for that (which also needs photo paper, $$$). Get either the i560 or the i865: both have four separate ink tanks with the cheapest (original) ink on the market. The cartridges don't bear any resemblance to a ventil for a rocket booster, and they are transparent. You know how much ink is left.

As for laser printers, you should maybe check out the following brands:

Kyocera Mita (very robust, cheapest consumables on the market): FS1010 for 280 €
If you want duplex, it's new bigger (and faster) brother FS1020D is your printer, but it's 100 € more expensive.

Other than that, you may want to check out the Oki B4200. I'm sure a search in newer threads will give you an idea what the people here prefer. You don't need a network interface, because your Mac can share the printer via CUPS also to Windows clients. PCL is a must, Postscript would be nice. (The Kyoceras understand both, I'm not sure about the Oki.)

[tooki]

Note that in the U.S., it's the Canon i860, not i865 (also, i960, not i965).

I have an i850 and love it.

In its draft mode (which is as good as Epson's "normal" mode), text prints out, in real-world performance, at about 15 pages per minute. In normal mode, which looks awesome, it's about 10 pages per minute, a little bit slower for color.

The i860 adds a second black cartridge: it has one black for printing photos, and another black for printing plain paper. Photo printouts are excellent.

The i950/i960 are six-color printers that do even better photos, and print them faster. But these printers are dedicated photo printers that can't do plain text as quickly as the i8xx-series.

And yes, Canon's ink is dirt cheap -- original Canon ink is cheaper than imitation HP ink. And the Canons just sip at the ink now and then, the cartridges last a long time.


Anyhow, be aware that a $150 inkjet, on good coated paper, will produce significantly better color photo output than a top-of-the-line color laser. Lasers, on the other hand, tend to produce sharper text, graphics and line art, and toner tends to be cheaper than inkjet ink, and said toner is waterproof.

tooki

[angelmb]

I have a HP LaserJet 2100tn and a HP 5150 inkjet color printer.

The laser is the choice if you can print vastly quantities of docs. It even prints photos very accurate 1200*1200.

Well, then I bought the HP 5150, a 'cheap' inkjet color printer. I am totally surprised by the speed and quality of this printer, both color and black and white mode. It´s amazing. Finally I bought the best HP photo paper and, well, I printed a pic from Apple Press Photos, the one with the PB 12 and PB 17 face to face. This was my face:



So, not helping, proud user of two HP printers.

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by angelmb:
I have a HP LaserJet 2100tn and a HP 5150 inkjet color printer.

The laser is the choice if you can print vastly quantities of docs. It even prints photos very accurate 1200*1200.

Well, then I bought the HP 5150, a 'cheap' inkjet color printer. I am totally surprised by the speed and quality of this printer, both color and black and white mode. It´s amazing. Finally I bought the best HP photo paper and, well, I printed a pic from Apple Press Photos, the one with the PB 12 and PB 17 face to face. This was my face:



So, not helping, proud user of two HP printers.

The HP is too expensive for his budget.

[ervier]

I use a HP Laserjet and a Epson color printer. I combine them in one print if necessary. Aligning is a matter of trying, but I never needed high precision. So plain text with one or two images really works out nice. The text is laser sharp, the colors rich.

Of course you then need a program that can print the picture and text separately. In Word you could print the text with a white image in place, and then the picture with the text colored white. But maybe you only work with Quark and Illustrator?