Computer printers that don't suck?

[cannon_fodder]

Anyone have any idea of any printers that don't suck?

Throughout history every printer I have ever owned has sucked.   I've spent far more time screwing with the installation of printers, the alignment, the ink/ribbon, jams, expired ink, ink that empties in 10 second. . . than actually printing stuff. 

I bet the average number of pages I actually print in a year is under 50.   Pictures, documents, everything.  but my printer is out of ink?  Screw you printer. My ink expired?  There goes $100 in new ink.

I hate you.

/vent

[waterboy]

I'm still looking for a good ink jet. I have a great Apple 600dpi laser printer. Good quality but slow and b/w only. Kind of like a big Studebaker only now its so old the drivers won't work on newer systems. I can only use it on an old  133mhz Mac clone.

My Epson meanwhile is an ink thirsty, temperamental grumble that works when it feels like it and is always low on ink. Its ink is like buying gold. Does a fine job when it does work though.

Heard the new Kodak is a good printer. Anyone tried it?

[TheArtist]

 I have a Canon pixma mp500 I got at Best Buy.  Have had it for several years now. Never had a problem with it. Dont really know how much printing I get out of the ink cartriges. Dont seem terribly bad, course not wonderful either lol.

[flybriz]

Ink jet printers are notorious for consuming ink like it was Marshall beer.  I print stuff here and there, and my wife prints a lot of recipies.  I had numerous ink jets because I liked the idea of being able to print photos.  Now that Wally World and Walgreens do cheap digital prints, I scrapped the ink jet hog and picked up a Samsung wireless color laser printer for about $175 at Sam's Club.  Best decision ever - I had it running in about 10 minutes, no wires, nice crisp prints (does photos okay but not photo quality)...  Great general use printer.  The toner is a bit pricy but lasts for hundreds and hundreds of prints and doesn't "dry out" like the ink jets.

[cannon_fodder]

I'm better now.

I have a HP 5180 (I think) photo printer/scanner.  It works fantastic, when it works.   Really my only problem is BS expiring ink and the need for 6 different ink cartridges (colors colors everywhere!).  The prints are really professional quality, but damn it can be annoying.

And yes, if you actual use it the sucker can burn ink like no other.

Had to vent.

[Gaspar]

I have more printers than a human should be allowed to own. 

For color photos, I have one of the Canon Pixma series.  I love the quality but ink prices are high.  I also have several Epson Stylus series printers for large format color proofs.  Ink is cheaper but the print heads are not part of the cartridge, so they clog easily and require cleaning to get a decent print.

I have an HP 5000 duplex laser, that is what I use most for B/W because it only costs pennies per print.  For color laser I have a Xerox Phaser 7000DN that is almost photo quality and only runs pennies a page too, but it weighs 180lbs.

Ink jets are great for high quality photos but you end up paying a fortune for Ink.  Lasers have come way down in price and yield great results for a small fraction of the cost of an ink jet print.  In fact, by the time you replace your cartridges once on most ink jet printers you have spent enough to buy a good color laser printer, and the toner cartridges in laser printers will last for years (at least in my case they do).

I find that the software for HP products (printers and scanners) uses up a ton of real and virtual memory on both PCs and Macs.  I stay away from ever loading any HP software.

Good luck!

[Nick Danger]

+1 on the Samsung laser printers. I have a b/w one that is a workhorse, and it probably cost me around $125 new. You get a lot more mileage out of a laser cartridge, and it doesn't have heads that clog.

[Wilbur]

Ditto here on the Canon Pixma.  I have an all-in-one that is soooo easy to use.  Prints great.  Ink is a little pricey, but, I think all ink is expensive.

[nathanm]

If you really must print photos at home, get an inexpensive dye-sub photo printer. Or just do the smart thing and outsource that function. (unless you're printing nude photos of your wife!) 

Use a laser printer. Any decent laser printer will be far more reliable and even inexpensive compared to an inkjet. The reason you can buy inkjets so cheap is that the initial outlay is subsidized by the manufacturer because they know you'll be back for overpriced ink.

Color laser printers are even cheap enough these days and good enough that they can take the place of an inkjet for some color printing.

[TUalum0982]

I always had good luck with HP printers until a couple of years ago.  I switched to an Epson cx6000 and it has been great.  If you are looking for something wireless, try the Epson workforce 600.  You can get it on sale at best buy for 120-150.  It retails for 199.99.  If you read the reviews from bestbuy.com from actual customers, many of them returned HP printers and got this one.  It is rated 4.8/5 stars with I think 40 something reviews. 

Its going to be my next purchase!

[Hometown]

HP used to be, and still may be, the leader in printers.  I love my Hewlett Packard "All-in-One."  It's an older model (about 8 or 9 years) that I won't let go of even though I have a Dell All-in-One that I haven't taken out of the box.  Shucks, if my HP All-in-One had wheels I could drive it.

It prints, and prints good quality photos, faxes, scans and copies.

You younguns will never know how much trouble we used to go to to make a copy.

But I did switch from HP to Dell for my desk top computer.  I hate typing on laptops.

And at my old office in San Francisco just about everyone had switched over from faxing to using digital senders (they convert document to pdf and email it for you).

If I had to put money on who will eventually replace microsoft as the preferred office suite I would bet on Adobe.

[nathanm]

HP used to be, and still may be, the leader in printers. 

HP is laser printers.

Brother makes some pretty good inexpensive laser printers. We have a lot of them out in the field but rarely have trouble with them.

If you're truly pumping out the pages, an IBM/Lexmark Infoprint will serve you better than anything HP makes, though. Heck, these days for office use, your copier may be a better printer than almost any printer.