The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5) - All-In-One Laser Printer or Inkjet?

All-In-One Laser Printer or Inkjet?

If money is no object up to $2000(US), would you buy an all-in-one inkjet or laser printer?

Adam N
Monday, February 23, 2004

Perhaps my original post was a bit ambiguous...

If money is no object up to $2000(US), would you buy an all-in-one inkjet or an all-in-one inkjet laser printer? Does the color copying feature on laser all-in-ones beat the copying feature on inkjets. Can't find any consumer information comparing the two.

Adam N
Monday, February 23, 2004

My wife recently purchased an all-in-one laser printer. It's a miserable beast, and I wouldn't recommend them for anyone. It's not the laser part of things that I dislike, but rather the all-in-one aspect.

The driver has a habit of making additional copies of the printer in the printers entry, and taking one of the copies offline. The general feeling in this house has been that the driver writers are not so skilled as one might like in a driver writer.

It's honestly pretty good at all of the things that it does. Only the flakiness of the driver is bad.

Clay Dowling
Monday, February 23, 2004

I used to have an HP all-in-one inkjet, and it was a piece of crap. I'd never buy one again. It may be more clutter, but I now stick to buying machines that have one function and do that well.

Nick
Monday, February 23, 2004

Since you need color 2K sounds as low-end for laser all-in-one and some serious money for Ink one.
It's unclear what are you actually looking for: some home toy, ocasional copy or serious load with thousand pages per year.

I have great expirience with B/W laser all-in-one device I can use but I bet it is well above this 2K range.

WildTiger
Monday, February 23, 2004

>> "I have great experience with B/W laser all-in-one device I can use but I bet it is well above this 2K range."

That's interesting. Thanks. Anyone else have good or bad experiences with all-in-one B/W laser devices?

Adam N
Monday, February 23, 2004

I have to second Nick's comments on the HP all-in-one inkjet line of printers. Avoid them.

There is no setting for the amount of ink that it uses to print a simple page, but if there was a way to check it, it would definitely be set on "insane". The paper literally cannot hold any more ink - and that's the way they like it.

They can afford to basically give the printers away and make it back plus more on the ink that it guzzles down. Plus the embedded HP scanners tend to put this annoying white line near the middle of each image scanned. Stand alone HP flatbed scanners seem immune.

The last glitch I had with it I seriously considered having an "Office Space" printer smash-a-thon and charge $1 per swing with a sledgehammer.

Carly's ink junky
Tuesday, February 24, 2004