Buying another new printer

ihavethatpma

So about two months ago, I bought a brand new Lexmark X4650 printer from Office Max for $70.  I thought, "How can I go wrong with this?  That's a great price!" but boy was I wrong, this printer has given me nothing but problems.  It ran out of ink in NO TIME, and the cartridges it comes with are non-refillable.  They do make a similar cartridge that is refillable, which I purchased for an additional $25, but the printer will only let you use this refilled cartridge for so long.  Every time I'd go to print, I would have to exit out of two separate error pop ups telling me that I need to order official Lexmark ink, and I'd also have to mess with the page alignment each time as well.  Well today as I was trying to print some shipping labels out, it tells me that I need to order official ink, I cancel that page out, and then it spits out a page full of black ink blobs and won't let me print at all anymore.

This thing is possessed, it wants to eat my money, and I think that it stares at me when I'm sleeping.

Here's where you can help me....  What kind of printers do you guys use who are printing things constantly?  I need to buy another one as soon as possible, but I don't want to buy another lemon like the one spitting ink blobs in front of me.  Sometimes I'll receive packages with special labels that don't look like they were created with a standard computer printer, so what are they produced with?  Any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

nesdude

I have always had shitty luck with printers.  I don't remember which ones I have had but I know a couple were Lexmark brand...  We have 2 of these, I don't know if they are the best printer out there but they came free with our PCs and have worked just fine so far.  That's more than I can say for any other printer I have owned...

http://www.shopping.hp.com/product/Q8388A%23ABA

dangevin

They've gotten even worse, I didn't think it was possible.



This sounds like the kind of printer they'd give you for "free" when you buy a new computer. They give the hardware free and get you on the comeback with expensive ink and lots of refill lockout tech.



I can't believe they charged you $70 though, what a rip.



I use an HP laserjet. It prints like a dream, fast and quiet, networks with no discs or background monitor programs, and the toner refill is cleaner than ink and it lasts longer. Also now they make generic cartridges online that are $17 shipped, and last for about 1000 pages.

ihavethatpma

Dan, do you happen to know the model number? And Matt, I'll have to look up reviews on the one you suggested. I actually want to do some research this time around.

nesdude

Yeah I cant say if its a "good" printer or not, just that its working for me just fine so far. I wouldn't even own this one if it hadn't been free, I gave up buying printers a long time ago.

dangevin

I use a 1020 and it's pretty compact. Get one used. I paid $15 for mine at the local second-hand shop, but they're cheap on eBay too. Sturdy unit. Way more sturdy than most inkjets which feel like empty Rubbermaid.

VGS_captmorgandrinker

Does it need to be color? I have a pretty nifty Konica-Minolta laser printer that I got for 50 bucks at Staples a few years ago.

ihavethatpma

Color doesn't really matter because a majority of the things I print out are shipping labels and my girlfriend's English papers.



I've been browsing Craigslist, and I found a guy selling a HP 1210 printer for $10 in Portland. I had planned on going down there to do a few things on Wednesday anyways, so hopefully I'll be able to get it then.



Hopefully I can get it to work with Vista though, but I think that there are updated drivers for that kind of thing.

paulyshobby

i supervise a service department that repair copiers and printers and get more calls for lexmark than any other printer.

i2a2n2

buy from staples and get the 2 year extended warrenty for $20.00 its no questions asked bring in the old one and get a new one free. sooooo when you run out of ink... well no questions asked...



I just picked up an Epson NX515 from them but might retrun it for a laser printer.

mb7241

The HP PSC 1210 that you saw for $10 is $10 for a reason..those things are expensive on ink ($20 for black, $40 (!) for color, and the cartridges only last 200 pages or so). For cheap ink, I'd either suggest one of the Kodak all-in-ones ($10 for black ink, I think it lasts about 200 pages or so), or one of the larger HPs, specifically the Officejet 6500...while the entry price is a bit high (the printer will cost at or over $100 new...NewEgg has them for $99.99 with free shipping), one 920XL cartridge, at about $30, lasts 1200 pages.

Edit:  Another interesting point about that HP Officejet 6500...its print speeds are pretty decent (32 pages a minute in black/31 in color).

Edit 2:  I'd stay *far* away from Lexmark.  Back in the day (circa 1997 or so), they weren't bad printers...a bit pricey on ink/toner, but still OK.  Nowadays, 95% of their printers aren't worth the plastic they're made from, and the ink will cost you your firstborn.

ihavethatpma

Well that $10 printer that I was going to pick up was given away the same day I was going to get it. I emailed him asking if we were still on for the trade off, and he was just like, "Whoops, I gave it away today." I was a little bummed at first, but then I realized that I would've gotten what I paid for, which was not much. It wasn't a total bummer Craigslist day though, because I picked up a lot of 50+ NES games including Contra Force and Wacky Races from some guy in Clackamas.



ANYWAYS, so... I went to Costco and bought another NEW printer for $59.99 so hopefully this one will work out. It's an HP J4550, and a lot of reviews say that it gets paper jams, but I'm pretty sure that the ink is refillable so that's a BIG plus. Ink is SOOOO expensive!!! I would just write out my labels, but I feel so much better about packages I'm sending out when they have delivery confirmation numbers on every one of them.



I also found out what types of printers make those smaller labels that I see every once in a while, they're the Zebra thermal printers. Yeah, it's even more money to spend on another potentially crappy piece of hardware, but I think that it would be worth it. No more spending $20 twice a month for ink cartridges? Now that would be awesome! It looks like there's a lot of people praising the Zebra 2844 Thermal Printers for being very trustworthy and long lasting. I guess some shipping companies offer free printing labels for these as well, USPS excluded I think, and even if you can't get them free they'll cost just as much as the inkjet shipping labels a lot of you guys use, if not cheaper.



I don't ship a whole lot, maybe 10 packages or so a day (maybe that's a lot for some people, I don't know), but I think the thing would pay for itself in no time.



Sorry if I'm rambling on, I'm just kind of thinking this thing out. Do any of you use thermal printers? Can you give me any pro's and con's?

VGS_captmorgandrinker

If you print that many labels, a large enough thermal printer would be worth it, at least if you ship UPS a lot. Not sure how far you would need to scale down the normal USPS ebay type label to get it to print properly on a thermal (maybe 75%?).