I bought a printer today..

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For the first time in about 12 years I own a printer, I was getting fedup having to keep going to the library to print of documents even if it was only a few times a month. I bought a HP Deskjet 2540 All-in-One wireless printer and it cost £35 and came with a black and coloured ink cartridge already in the box which was a big plus as these are around £10-13 each.

Is there anything I should know about printers in general? they dont need any maintenance done to them do they? I'm a novice when it comes to printers it took me about 15mins to get the ink in and I had to use a youtube video lol.

 

So far I cant fault this one, overall it was easy to setup, no need for a manual, basically plug in and play. I have a ton of printing to do over the next few weeks so worth the investment I think. I think you can get the same one I got in Argos for £29.99 but I got mine in black as it looked nicer and was £35 in ASDA.

 

The usual thing i have found with the cheaper printers is the cost of ink outweighs the price of the printer ie cheaper to buy a new printer than replace the ink carts (this has happened with me I have the Advent AW10 which is basically a rebadged Kodak)

Another thing to watch out for on inkjets is the nozzles drying out if you dont use it often I have this issue with mine and wasted two loads of ink carts cleaning the heads just as well they were cheap 3rd party ones from Ebay and not full price versions

 

I agree with mojorsin, printers are like razors, they make the money off the consumables, check the running cost of your printer before buying.

I'd recommend a cheap black and white laser over an inkjet for general use.

Inkjet nozzles get gunked up over time, even on the models with nozzles in the cartridges, generally you need to bin them after 3 years.
You have to be careful how you turn them off to ensure the cleaning routine runs each time, and you are supposed to run a special clean print routine every few months.

In Asia you always see Inkjets fitted with special reservoir systems so they dont have to pay for official ink.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_ink_system

 

Yeah, its very handy to have one at home but I have noticed mine getting used less and less, seeing as I can print from work now.

I bought a Samsung laser one about 5 years ago, it still has half of the toner left, I only print in B+W

Ed

 

I have samsung b+w laser + scanner, its cheap to buy but you have id and counter chips in the toner cartridges, so yeah shop around.

New toner for mine can cost £50.

http://www.cartridgesave.co.uk/toner-cartridges/Ricoh/SP-112.html?gclid=CNKn5u3gvMgCFYMSwwodKywNyg

3p a sheet.

Other printers can be
0.7p a sheet.

 

I have been looking at laser printers, I have found one where toners cost £40 for all 4 and last between 2500 and 3000 pages.

Now to persuade the wife.

 

Let us know what you go with

 

Will do

 

Need abit of help..
I have both black and colour ink cartridge installed into my printer.. My colour ink has reduced dramatically but my black ink is fine. This doest make sense to me as I've used way more black ink than colour ink. I could be wrong, but is it possible the colour black is being printed from my coloured cartridge and not the actual black ink cartridge? that's the only conclusion I could come to.

 

Thats why I dont like most colour printers, print a web page with purple or blue in colour, watch £10 in ink go down the drain...

Then when you start to run out, combined color cartridges will typically run out of magenta or cyan, meaning you might have lot yellow, but you have to bin the cart anyway.

Of course you can tick the greyscale box...