Tips for buying a laserprinter

Tricord · Post by **Tricord** » Mon May 24, 2004 4:57 am

Well, I can't put it off for much longer, my having to write papers for university requires a decent printer. Until now, I kept asking friends to print 10, 20 pages but I think I'm starting to abuse now

Basically, I'd like a laserprinter because it's faster and cleaner than an inkjet printer (also, you can go over the printed text with a yellow marker). Inkjet printers may be cheap, but they run out of ink fast and ink is expensive. I have no interest in color printings either.

So, what I wanted to know, will I have enough with 600dpi? It's just to print documents and papers and that's it. Nothing fancy.

I was looking at this particular printer:
http://www.vdhsoft.be/memo/17566.HTM

Brother seems a good brand, also this model has more to offer than competing brands in the same price class (16ppm, 4MB memory, USB 2.0) and it has a toner that supposedly lasts 3300 pages, but it can be equipped with one that lasts 6500 pages. It costs €165.

I've never bought a laser before, so any feedback is appreciated..

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Mon May 24, 2004 8:34 am

Stay away from Brother and Lexmark. Stick with HP or Xerox.

Tricord · Post by **Tricord** » Mon May 24, 2004 8:54 am

Had bad experiences with Brother?

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Mon May 24, 2004 9:12 am

Brother is and has always been the lowest end of the scale. I've had a HP laserjet 1100 for like 5 yrs without a hickup. I cna print approx 5000 pages at 5-7% coverage.

STRESSTEST · Post by **STRESSTEST** » Mon May 24, 2004 9:13 am

Actually I've been using brothers for years, and they have always performed nicely

Recently (6 weeks ago) I bought a HL-1440 for the home. They are 300$ printers, but are being fazed out. So everyone is blowing them out. I managed to get one NIB for 120 bucks. It's a great printer and no complaints. USB also.

. They toner cartridge they use is made for over a dozen models so there is no worry of it becomming scarce.

So I'd tell you to get one of those since they can be found for less then some inkjet printers (In the US anyway)

Edit:

Just to be clear, the Brothers I've used for years were in a corporate enviroment with network printing, so they got used a lot by multi users. In all that time, we had to replace 1 drum.

On the other hand, the HPs (1500 dollar units) required 3 drums, and two complete paper pickup rebulds.... Good printers, but they require repair just like anything else. and just one of those pickup repairs ran in the 250 dollar neighborhood... Free brother printer the way I see it.

AceCombat · Post by **AceCombat** » Mon May 24, 2004 10:41 am

STRESSTEST wrote:Actually I've been using brothers for years, and they have always performed nicely

i concur, Atlanta Tech College has Brother laserjets, and they work just fine. only 1 drum and the usual toner cartridges are the only things we had to replace out of 7 printers total. the only real stupid issue we had was when some fuxor decided to use the Print Server computer, and managed to reset the printer settings. so me and one of the instructors, rebuilt a Dual P-2 server that was sitting on a shelf, and loaded it with Win2k Server, then locked out Control Panel and Print Settings completely. i got a few extra "A" grades for sticking around for about 3-4 hours after classes had ended and helped him get the server working, and fully configured so that only i and the instructors knew the PW and how to open up control panel and print settings, if someone needed something changed temporarly.

De Rigueur · Post by **De Rigueur** » Mon May 24, 2004 11:28 am

CDN_Merlin wrote:Stay away from Brother and Lexmark. .

I do mass mailings (send me your address

) and use a Brother HL-5040 and a Lexmark e210. The Brother toner cartridge is separate from the drum so you don't have to replace both when you run out of toner. I use toner refill kits, too. Both printers do OK. I've had the Lexmark for 3 years and the Brother for about a year -- no problems yet.

Warlock · Post by **Warlock** » Mon May 24, 2004 2:11 pm

CDN_Merlin wrote:Stay away from Brother and Lexmark. Stick with HP or Xerox.

'

whats so bad about a Brother cause i got one that was made in 94 and it still works damn good just had to replace a fan in it so far

Tricord · Post by **Tricord** » Mon Jun 07, 2004 6:32 am

Well, I bought the HL-5030 and printed a couple of hundred pages with it already, very happy so far.

Also, the driver includes a clean resize feature in order to scale and print multiple pages on one sheet of paper, which helps me save a lot of paper when printing slides. I know you can do it with powerpoint also, but this is cleaner. Works with anything you print, too (both in horizontal and vertical paper position).

So, I'm a happy customer now. It's been a while since I last bought hardware