[SeSawaya]

I've been looking for a printer now for a while. Small business use and very light use really. I could USE a fax option for my business but I always make people progress to just using PDFs and email. I should have fax though.

I was looking at the new Kodak printers since they use very cheap ink but the reviews rate it not so good.
Scanning and copying are important to me. I don't print photos so no big deal there.

Would love a laser but color is still to expensive.

What do you use or recommend?

[olePigeon]

Laser printers will be cheaper in the long run for B&W printing than inkjets. In terms of cost, over time, laser and inkjet are about the same when it comes to color only if you get an inkjet with different tanks for each color. That also assumes you use all the ink from the cartridge. Inkjet printers have a nasty habit now of forcing you to replace the ink cartridge even if it's not empty. Most laser printers will let you continue printing even if it's literally running out of ink.

Laser printers cost more for the ink (toner), but you get more prints out of it. That means less trips to the store. Also, from my experience, laser printers are a lot more durable than inkjet printers.

[olePigeon]

Forgot to mention, that light use sometimes means no use. Inkjets love to clog up when they're not being used, requiring you to clean/prime the print head wasting ink.

You can find a Konica Minolta Magicolor 2480 MF for around $450 some places. It's a FAX/Copier/Scanner color laser printer.

[tinkered]

If you really want to use it as a fax/copier I would recommend one with a document feeder. I had a HP Officejet 5610 (see link) until my sister's printer broke and I "lent" it to her. It was great except for the speed. Compared to my single purpose B&W laser, inkjets are glacial.

link: Buy an HP Officejet 5610 All-in-One Printer, Fax, Scanner, Copier (Q7311A#ABA) from HP

[olePigeon]

Tri-color cartridges = BAD.

[OreoCookie]

I definitely advise against HP, unless you take their top-of-the-line inkjet all-in-one. But even then, the software is still buggy, doesn't adhere to OS X guidelines and causes problems.

If it's for a business, you should get a laser all-in-one. Even if you need to print color, it's still better, if you get a cheap-but-good Canon inkjet printer in addition to your laser all-in-one.

Brother offers some good laser all-in-ones: have a look at the DCP-8060 which is affordable (though not the cheapest), has a good printer, scans directly to pdf (!) and has Postscript. The last two points are very important: if your pinter scans automatically to pdf, you don't have to twiddle with settings and concatenate the pages, this function has saved me hours (on a different all-in-one, though). The last one, Postscript, means that you will find `drivers' for the printer 10 years from now. It cannot fax, but with scan-to-pdf, I don't think you'll really need it these days.

If you want something smaller and cheaper, the MFC-7820N might be worth a look: it also has Postscript, but it cannot scan to pdf. The overall built quality will be worse than on the other model.

[ghporter]

Definitely go laser. My Brother HL-2040 has seen me through at least two years of school work, printing uncountable numbers of papers, plus labels and envelopes and all sorts of stuff. I got WAY past the number of pages you're supposed to from the "low capacity" toner cartridge that came with it, too.

If you do only a little faxing, you may be better off with a scanner, printer and modem. Otherwise, either the MFC-7820N or DCP-8060 would be a good choice.

[Cold Warrior]

If you're considering the Brother 7820N, consider my previous post on that model:
Brother 7820N ADF problem

[mkerr64]

Originally Posted by tinkered 

If you really want to use it as a fax/copier I would recommend one with a document feeder. I had a HP Officejet 5610 (see link) until my sister's printer broke and I "lent" it to her. It was great except for the speed. Compared to my single purpose B&W laser, inkjets are glacial.

link: Buy an HP Officejet 5610 All-in-One Printer, Fax, Scanner, Copier (Q7311A#ABA) from HP

great product

[SeSawaya]

Originally Posted by mkerr64 

great product

Wow, I can't believe how cheap it is compared to everything else AND it gets VERY high reviews. I have a simple HP color printer that has done me well the last few years (deskjet 5150) but I didnt think I'd go back to them really.

thanks folks for the comments, certainly some here I'd never seen before!!

[OreoCookie]

That pretty much looks like the all-in-one my father now has, it's a POS.
When he printed the first time, my brother thought, he had forgotten to remove something when unpacking, it sounds like it's dying. It's slow, it uses tri-color ink tanks and it's shoddily built. I'd stay away from that one.

[mduell]

Monochrome with fax: HP LaserJet 3050

Monochrome with fax, network printing, and a better sheet feeder: HP LaserJet M2727nf

Color with fax, network printing, and a better sheet feeder: HP Color LaserJet 2840

[hyteckit]

If you are going to print a lot in B&W, then go with a laser printer. I wouldn't recommend a laser printer if you print a lot in color and want it photo realistic. Inkjet printers for photos is still the best solution if you want a printer on the cheap.

I have a Dell 3100CN laser printer that prints in color. Not the best laser printer for color prints.

I also have a Brother MFC-420CN, which I happen to like. Brother printers aren't that popular for whatever reason. However, the Brother printer I have just works with Macs and PCs. When you plug the printer into the network, it is recognize by MacOS X using the Bonjour protocol. Very simple. The 'N' in 'CN' stands for network compatible, so it has an ethernet port.

Brother MFC-420CN All-In-One Printer

I think you can get the Brother MFC-420CN pretty cheap for under $50 when it's on sale. I paid $79 for mine. Oh, the ink for it is really cheap. It's under $4 at places like:

inkWOW.com | Inkjet and Toner Cartridges