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OK so this household needs two printers, a color laser for downstairs to be used for business, and a color printer to be used up in my workroom primarily for photo printing. It would be nice to have a scanner on that one, as well. I'm assuming that one has to be ink jet as usual. Lasers aren't ever used for photos are they?

Tell me what kinds to get.
Love, Ima

I got a huge discount and ended up with an HP 2605dn several years ago. I use it to print pictures.

I've been printing brochures for business, both on an inexpensive color laser printer and an inkjet printer, and the color ink for both was driving me to the poor house, especially since the brochures tended to be heavy on blues or reds as background colors quite often - darn those manufacturers. I did an informal survey of printers, ignoring the manufacturers' claims of "cheapest ink printers" and did my own cost per page analysis, looking at the cost of the ink cartridges, page capacity of the cartridges, single or tri-color cartridge, could they be refilled by someone like Cartridge World (I don't want to mess with that my self - way to messy to screw up, trust me on that). Anyway, I ended up purchasing an HP Officejet 6500A Plus, available at both Costco and Sam's Club for $139.99. Office Max has it on sale for $149.99 most weeks. It is a 4 function all-in-one - printer, scanner, copier, fax. The scanner on this machine is significantly faster than on the Officejet 6310 it replaces, and it works very well. The ink cartridges it uses are the 920 or 920XL series, and there are separate Black, Magenta, Cyan and Yellow color cartridges, so they can be replaced individually if you print one color more than others, and yes, Cartridge World can refill them (at least some of the stores can/will, but maybe not all of them at this point). It's the cost of the replacement cartridges, and the refurb cartridges, that led me to purchase this printer, and I'm very satisfied with its performance. This printer also comes with double sided printing capability, which is really nice and works well. Obviously you wouldn't print pictures on both sides, but for text documents, you could save half your paper costs this way! And I save lots of time printing my two-sided brochures. I use a 24 pound or 28 pound paper and even the graphics don't bleed through (usually).

This printer can be set up for wired or wireless networking. I started wireless, but got annoyed with the several second delayed response to start printing, and since the printer sits next to the router and I had an extra port available, I connected it with an Ethernet cable, which eliminated the delay.

Interestingly enough, when I visited my daughter 3 weeks ago, I found that they had bought the same printer, quite independently of my decision and for their own reasons, but I was pleased! My daughter has it set up wirelessly, and didn't know there was a delay to start printing until I said something about it. She is usually in another room when she hits print on her laptop.

I have recommended the HP 6500A Plus to several people already, and I would recommend it to you too.

that's a great rec for the inkjet, Ozzie. And I'll look into the 2605, YBT.
Love, Ima

Ima Facultiwyfe wrote:that's a great rec for the inkjet, Ozzie. And I'll look into the 2605, YBT.
Love, Ima

Ima,

They may not be making it any more, I'm sure they replaced it with a comparable model in the $300 range. Like one of the printers Ozzie mentioned it duplexed, which was a huge advantage as I wanted to print a lot of text and reduce my paper usage. I am just now replacing the color toner for it, but again as Ozzie noted for his printers, it is fairly expensive($225 for all three colors). But that toner has lasted 3 1/2 years as I do print pictures but maybe only a couple a month. I've replaced the black toner twice. If you do a lot of picture printing, it becomes a balancing act of the printer cost versus toner/ink usage costs. I would just be certain which features you are dead set on having, that will help limit the field of printers for you.

Brian