My fiancee has another 18 months of uni left, doing her masters, and at the moment (noting that of course her workload will only increase, not decrease) she's printing about 100 pages in colour a week.

She doesn't have to print out about half of what she's printing (study guides) but it certainly helps her study being able to take her reference materials with her whereever she goes (just needed to clarify before people start querying the amount of printing).

Our current printer, a Canon i250 was great when we got it for the little printing we were doing, but considering we're printing near enough to 6000 colour prints a year, I've decided that it's time to upgrade to a serious printer.

With the study that she's doing, even post graduation we will always have a office on-the-go, so I'm considering buying a fairly robust printer that will handle almost medium-office capacity printing and should keep us going for the next 2-6 years (if not longer)

I've come across a few nice printers, including a range of Solid Ink printers, and just wondering if anyone here has experience with these, or can offer me advice.

Is Solid Ink a viable alternative, or am I just being crazy? I'm considering this series of Solid Ink printers, (probably the DN), so any other information [including non Solid Ink recommendations] would be great.

This thread seems better suited for the Travel Technology Forum so I'm transferring it there.


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Cholula
Travel Safety/Security Forum Moderator

Solid Ink has its downsides if you are doing a lot of color, and particuarly large blocks of color (like photos). Lasers are really reasonably priced now and would be your better bet. We have an Oki C5150n that cost us about $400 and LOVE it, it has more than paid for itself, its networked, it has been maintenance free for 2+ years, is fast, quiet and great print quality.

Solid ink costs can add up quickly. Unless you need color all the time go with a good decent 250 dollars laser printer, you'll get tons of prints from it before needing new toner - then go to kinkos if you ever "need" color.

-Vinent

I just bought the HP LaserJet 2600n and I love it. It's on sale for $300 at Best Buy.

Looking at the OP, the first question you need to ask is does she really need to print everything in color or just print it out?

If she just needs to print it out, I'd say get a decent B&W laser and then a light duty inkjet for the occasional need for color.

If she needs everything in color, I'd say a color laser would probably be the best bet. Inkjets while they produce stunning results, tend to go through ink cartridges quickly and the costs tend to add up. Solid ink, I'm not a fan of. I used one for a while. I found I had to be careful handling the printouts. Since the wax was deposited on the surface of the paper it could scratch off, and if you were folding the sheet, it had a tendancy to crack. That said the color output was stunning, but I don't think it out weights the draw backs. I don't remember the model I used but it was Phaser before Xerox bought the company.

How much does the catridges cost and what is their expected life? This is very important with the amount of printing you are doing. There are a number cases where a more expensive printer ends up being cheaper on a per page basis then a cheaper printer when all of the costs are figured into it.

How easy is it for you to find replacement catridges? I had a really nice Epson printer a number of years ago that it was hard to find catridges for locally, so I had to always order them and have a number of spares on hand. This may not be much if the catridge may cost $35 each and need 1 color and 1 for black, but if you go with a color laser you may be paying $100+ per catridge per color (4 color Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black are used to print everything). The good news is the toner catridges should last much longer then a inkjet, so you should need fewer of them.

Both colour laser and solid ink technologies are good choices. I have a Tektronix/Xerox Phaser solid ink printer and love it. The colours are nice and I like how printed text has a raised look and feel (like printing on currency). In my opinion, the solid ink is cheaper than colour laser in terms of text printing with occasional colour graphics. Solid ink printers have cheaper and more environmentally-friendly consumables which consist of ink blocks that are melted down and used up and a maintenance kit which is really just a roller infused with some kind of silicone oil. The maintenance kit can be taken apart and the spongy roller is the only thing that can't be recycled; the rest of it is easily separated plastic and metal. Colour lasers require four toner cartridges which get pretty pricey. I would say that four colour inks + maintenance kit for the solid ink printer would come out cheaper than four toner cartridges for the colour laser on an average per-page cost, but this depends on how graphics intensive the printouts are going to be.

One further note is that the Xerox solid ink printers need to be on all the time, so that the ink is kept molten. Each time the printer is turned on (cold start), it will expel a small amount of ink to purge the printhead. For this reason alone, a colour laser may be better for home use.

FewMiles..