We have two printers, which are relatively old.
One is a positively ancient HP 2035n laserjet. It's about 15 years old,
and has been amazingly reliable. Toner cartridges are about $70 to $100
and they last quite a while. Maybe 2 or 3 thousand pages. Strictly black
and white.
The second is an HP 8600 officejet. Not as old as the laserjet, but at
least 10 years old. It's also been very reliable. Occasionally one of
the print cartridges will clog from dis-use, but running a cleaning
cycle clears it up at the cost of a sheet of paper or two. Ink
cartridges are ridiculously expensive at about $30-$40 per cartridge,
which only hold a few grams of ink. There are 4 cartridges (black, cyan,
magenta, & yellow), so a full set runs up to $160.
Recently the laserjet has been experiencing a problem where it will drop
offline for no apparent reason. Power cycling it will revive it for a
little while, but it's becoming a PITA.
So we are looking at tank printers, which can be had for around $300,
and often a lot less depending on what you want from it (print, copy,
scan, fax). We need all 4 of those, so we are looking at one that can do
all 4 for about $300. The bottles of ink only cost about $20, and they
last for nearly 8,000 pages. According to the makers, the ink does not
dry out because it's thermally activated.
So we are considering replacing both with an HP 7602, which does it all,
print, copy, scan, fax, auto sheet feeder, 2-sided printing; the whole
ball of wax. They are telling us that the included ink will last 2
years; probably more based on what we use it for. It only prints about
15 pages a minute (half the speed of our laserjet), but that's not an
issue for us. The cost of ink/toner should make up for it, and we'll
only have one printer to deal with.
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 7/23/2025 8:28 AM, Nate Burke wrote:
I'm looking for a (hopefully cheap) printer/scanner to leave at my
Mom's house. It will only be used every couple months make 2 or 3
copies of documents. I'm guessing that Ink jet printers will dry out
with that long between uses. Do laser printers have the same issues?
I haven't had a laser printer just sit idle for that long.
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