What's a fabulous printer?

[digitalwanderer]

Not just a decent one, FABULOUS! My wife has been printing a hella lot more stuff lately and our Lexmark X5435 is just driving me bonkers! Its print quality and such is fine, but the paper feed keeps not getting paper and I have to stand over the damned thing and force sheet after sheet into the feed to make it print.

What is a solid f-ing printer that I won't have to monkey with all the time? It needs to be colour, and money unfortunately is still a big part of the decision...but I'm real tired of this one and need something decent.

 

[MfA]

First check the bankruptcy auctions for a nice color laser

 

[digitalwanderer]

Good thought! Thanks.

 

[Davros]

wait till you have to deal with envelopes

 

[digitalwanderer]

Ugh, been there buddy. I NEVER get the orientation right on the first try ever.

At least the wife is seeming reasonable-ish about it, she's only said a soft no so far.

(I can work on a soft no, I'll just wait until next paycheck when her raises/promotion kicks in and try again.)

 

[Blazkowicz]

I use a HP Laserjet 4M. what's fabulous about it, it's from 1993, is slightly big and very dirty, I don't know where it came from, but it just works. Even paper feeding is fine (it takes perhaps 100 pages in its loader, and it's easy) ; in comparison a more recent but lower end, compact HP printer had to be fed page by page..
The non plug'n'play installation is easier and faster than plug'n'play (because, drivers are included in XP).

so,
- laser is fabulous. no cartridges, and still working after decades.
- HP seems to be a good brand, while I curse Epson and Lexmark (but because of their dreadful inkjet stuff). I believe Canon is a good brand too.
- paper feed will be great on a bulky, office-type machine, but might be a problem on consumer-device piece of crap. so you should definitely target a printer with a good build quality. How to know that, I don't fscking know, except for those clunkers that keep on working for decades .

I checked on that HP I used and found out it had a great reputation.

 

[Mize]

Ugh, been there buddy. I NEVER get the orientation right on the first try ever.

You realize that all paper feeds have an icon showing the orentation, right? Little paper showing a corner folded with writing either on the corner (face down) or front (face up) and the corner indicating top.

 

[digitalwanderer]

I use a HP Laserjet 4M.

I know that printer rather well, I used to service them all the time in the late 90s at US Steel. Fricking workhorse of a printer, I just didn't think I'd be able to afford one.

You realize that all paper feeds have an icon showing the orentation, right? Little paper showing a corner folded with writing either on the corner (face down) or front (face up) and the corner indicating top.

Really? I did not know that...

 

[Davros]

just wait till the gum from the envelopes starts coating the roller

 

[Blazkowicz]

You've made me think of those enveloppes with a window, which will presumably work with that kind of formatting .

http://www.saxe-bretagne.com/images/lettre-m-poignant-2.jpg

now I'd like the printer to output that letter already folded, 'cos I'm such a lazy bastard.

 

[Mize]

just wait till the gum from the envelopes starts coating the roller

We print labels rather than run envelopes through a laser printer (ours is also a color copier at the office).

As for HP laserjet 4Ms I still have TWO early nineties vintage and a 5000 running great. Others have come and gone.

 

[nutball]

The LJ4Ms were great though to be fair they were the thick end of $1k/£1k/FF10k in 1993, nearly twice that if you wanted PostScript. That's 1.5-2.0x that in modern money. What sort of printer do you get for $2k/£2k/€2k these days?

 

[Richard]

Its print quality and such is fine, but the paper feed keeps not getting paper and I have to stand over the damned thing and force sheet after sheet into the feed to make it print.

Hmm... all printers I've used eventually get that way. Epson, HP, Lexmark, whatever brand you care to name.

 

[Davros]

there is a trick of putting a piece of fine sandpaper in the printer