Topic: Laser printer recommendations? (Read 3267 times)

Kathy Wendorff · « **on:** May 04, 2007, 03:44:45 PM »

My Brother HL-5140 laser printer just bit the dust after only 1 year and only about 2000 pages -- just when I want to print out a clean manuscript for submisson to a contest. I am NOT pleased with the workmanship and support for this printer, but we did like having a laser printer.

Does anyone have a basic home B & W laser printer they can recommend? Or maybe a printer/scanner/copier combination? And one that will do envelopes? (The 5140 mangled every 2nd envelope that went through the manual feed, which I found after getting it is a congenital defect of the breed.)

Kathy W., grumbling

Ingrid · « **Reply #1 on:** May 04, 2007, 05:20:40 PM »

Both of my Canons have been fine. The current one is a fax phone combination.

Ingrid

Lance Charnes · « **Reply #2 on:** May 07, 2007, 02:33:30 AM »

I've never regretted buying an HP laser printer, either for work or home.

I currently have an HP combo laser printer/fax/scanner, 24 ppm, that I bought from Staples on sale for ~$600 (probably available online for less, but it was an immediate-gratification thing). I don't have the model number handy -- the printer and I are ten time zones apart right now -- but I bought it last year and the latest models are probably cheaper and better anyway.

There are cheaper single-function HPs. If you're going to be printing out full manuscripts, you probably won't want an 8 ppm printer, so you probably won't want a bottom-of-the-line model.

Kathy Wendorff · « **Reply #3 on:** May 07, 2007, 07:00:37 AM »

Thanks, Ingrid and Lance -- that gives me somewhere to start. We have an HP inkjet which has never given us a lick of trouble, and I'm glad to hear that may extend to their laser printers.

Time to start Googling...

Kathy W.

CathyJ · « **Reply #4 on:** May 07, 2007, 05:20:25 PM »

My current HP is a replacement for one that died under warranty -- and their customer service was pretty flaky (with the one that was problematic, they kept having me try stuff that the prior customer service rep had already had me try, that didn't work). This one seems okay so far. My older HP worked fine for a long time, but this one doesn't seem as good.

I've also had a Konica-Minolta that I wouldn't recommend unless you have newish power lines in your house. My old house/old power lines couldn't handle the surges. It did strange things to my surge protector and my computer acted funny when I used the printer -- especially if the a/c happened to be running.

Cathy

Brenda B. · « **Reply #5 on:** May 08, 2007, 10:31:42 AM »

I dont' have a recommendation for a brand, but I do highly recommend making certain it has enough memory. I talked to the computer guy that services machines at my office and he said what was important was the number of pages per MONTH, of all things. To print out an entire manuscript takes a great deal of memory and you don't want to have to do what I do, which is print in 20 (or less) page batches when you're trying to print out 200+ pages.