What color laser printer is easily & cheaply refilled at home fromnon OEM toner?

On Sun, 26 Aug 2012 07:32:37 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On Sun, 26 Aug 2012 09:03:56 +0000 (UTC), "J.G."
wrote:

On Tue, 21 Aug 2012 15:47:57 -0700, Ashton Crusher wrote:

I don't recall HP saying their printers should be left on all the
time, only that they should be turned off properly, which means with
their power button, not just by turning off the power strip it's
plugged into.

I just downloaded the manual for the HP laserjet 3200m
http://crl.ap.buffalo.edu/faculty/phones/3200manual.pdf

I did a search (control + F) of the PDF for "power" and "turn off" but
didn't see any mention of what the recommendation is.

I leave mine on all the time - but folks said that's wasteful for
printing a page or three a week.

Any suggestions?

Can't speak for yours specifically, but most every printer made in the
past few years is in a very low power mode when not in use. The heavy
power is the heating element that fuses the toner and that is not on
until it is going to print.

True of my LaserJet 4 machines, and they were made in 1993.



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

On 8/26/2012 7:32 AM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On Sun, 26 Aug 2012 09:03:56 +0000 (UTC), "J.G."
wrote:

On Tue, 21 Aug 2012 15:47:57 -0700, Ashton Crusher wrote:

I don't recall HP saying their printers should be left on all the time,
only that they should be turned off properly, which means with their
power button, not just by turning off the power strip it's plugged into.

I just downloaded the manual for the HP laserjet 3200m
http://crl.ap.buffalo.edu/faculty/phones/3200manual.pdf

I did a search (control + F) of the PDF for "power" and "turn off" but
didn't see any mention of what the recommendation is.

I leave mine on all the time - but folks said that's wasteful for
printing a page or three a week.

Any suggestions?

Can't speak for yours specifically, but most every printer made in the
past few years is in a very low power mode when not in use. The heavy
power is the heating element that fuses the toner and that is not on
until it is going to print.


True, but some draw surprising amounts of power while they "sleep". A
Kill-a-watt" meter is handy to find stuff like that.

Ashton Crusher writes:

On 23 Aug 2012 13:11:32 +0900, Gernot Hassenpflug
wrote:

/../

There is a whole range of Canon printers dealing with this problem by
shipping with two cartridges: black and color. One can then select
black-only cartridge and print all one's work only in black. Refilling
either cartridge is also trivial.

The single Canon I tried did have both black and color carts. Yet it
insisted on using the color mix for black unless you did something to
force it to use the black - I forget the details now. You could work

Er, of course. You have to select the black cartridge. The printer is
not a mind-reader! This ability is what is special. In the other range
of models, which have 4 or more separate ink tanks, you also usually
have one or more black-only modes for plain media in the mono mode
selection, but it is not guaranteed: they might all use other inks as
well, that is controlled in the firmware.

With the range I described above, you can select black cartridge only
in the driver.

around it but it was a pain to deal with and simply wasn't a problem
with the HP. The thing that surprised me most was that so many
reviewers raved about its print quality and it was clearly, at least
to my eye, inferior to HP for the 90% of the printing I do. When
doing 4x6 color on glossy photo paper it did fine but no better then
the HP.

It is up to the printer manufacturer to determine what quality to give
for mono modes. Some use only black ink, some use other inks as well
for high-quality mono modes, and black only for lower qualit mono
modes. You can't rely on the next model having the same specs there.
--
Gernot Hassenpflug

Ashton Crusher wrote:

[mixing colours to reach black]

The single Canon I tried did have both black and color carts. Yet it
insisted on using the color mix for black unless you did something to
force it to use the black - I forget the details now. You could work
around it but it was a pain to deal with and simply wasn't a problem
with the HP.

Did you ever look at the HP greys and blacks with a loupe?

And how do you correct for colour tints? Believing that every
black ink will be colour cast free under every light, in every
density, on every paper ...

The thing that surprised me most was that so many
reviewers raved about its print quality and it was clearly, at least
to my eye, inferior to HP for the 90% of the printing I do.

Hmmm, that looks like you did something wrong.
Or used the wrong printer for the task.
Or used the wrong ink.
Or used the wrong paper.

When
doing 4x6 color on glossy photo paper it did fine but no better then
the HP.

What else did you print? Text on recycled paper?

-Wolfgang

Le Tue, 21 Aug 2012 14:07:52 +0900, Gernot Hassenpflug a écritÂ*:

"J.G." writes:

On Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:08:43 -0700, Ashton Crusher wrote:

Yeah, when I was working I went thru several color laser printers
with the idea they would be able to do color photos better then the
"expensive" inkjet process.

I'm slowly coming to the following hard-won realization, much to my
chagrin, regarding printing color photos at home:

0. B&W laser writers (such as my HP 3200m) are trivial & cheap to
refill 1. Most color laser writers are also trivial & cheap to refill.
2. However, color laser writers stink at printing pictures at home!

Given that, we are FORCED to look at ink-based printers: 0. IMHO, all
ink-based printers from HP are to be avoided at all costs! 1.
Kodak/Canon/Dell ink-based printers 'may' be a viable alternative. 2.
The key is to buy the printer based on the ease of "replacing" the ink!

Drat! Color lasers, which are the subject of this task, are slowly
dropping off the radar screen ... and the dreaded ink-based printers
are rising up, again.

Why is finding a decent printer to print photos at home at a decent
price such a miserable process?

Why is Epson not recommended in the US (I assume most posters here are
in the US)? Epson is great for photos, although as I concentrate on
linux Canon driver development I only use Epson as a backup. I buy 3rd
party inks for my Epson, haven't tried refilling it. I'm not aware of
any problems with the ink cartridges, but maybe there are, which is why
Epson is not being discussed here?

I don't have an Epson printer at home, but I have seen Epson printed
photos and HP printed conterparts. I mostly noticed that Epson colours
seem to fade a lot faster than HP's. True enough, the fading of HP
prints, although slow, is an awful lot faster than that of old photos
that were chemically treated !

In article , wrote:
On 8/20/2012 3:25 PM, J.G. wrote:
On Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:11:47 -0700, Ashton Crusher wrote:

Another thing to consider with lasers is startup time.

I print maybe one page every two or three days, on average.

I generally leave the printer on all the time.

However, I 'could' just as well turn it off, for all it has
been used.

But, when I had the HP d135 AIO printer, I remember admonishments
to keep it running all the time - otherwise it wasted ink (I was
told).

And, we all know, HP ink costs more than it's weight in gold.

So, what's the general consensus for leaving printers on
which are only used sporadically a few days of the week?

Does that play a role in our printer selection decision?


energy hogs, i would guess. they have to be kept at a hot temp for the
toner to be fused to the paper, so you're paying to keep it hot, and
then the a/c costs to keep the room cool. i guess in winter, if you're
in a place that needs heating, it's a wash.


My laser printer when it goes into sleep mode draws 6 watts which is less than
the damn night light i have in my upsatirs hallway.