Inkjets are cheaper to run and fine for home use. I just bought cheapo Wi-Fi one -- no more hunting for the cable, and multiple PCs can print to it -- from Lexmark and it's prefect. $79

If you think this is bad, check out the prices of all four toner cartridges for a color laser printer. All the ones I've checked are almost as much as the printer. And now we're talking several hundred dollars. In other words when you buy a color laser printer you are buying 4 toner cartridges and a nearly disposable printer.

This is just the old Schick-developed tactic of "Give away the razor and sell razor blades". HP is guilty of it, too ... just not as guilty as Samsung. This also explains over-priced ink jet cartridges. But when the price of printers approaches pocket change and the price of toner reaches to the sky, how can we expect printers to last longer than the toner cartridges they come with??

Personally I'd rather pay twice as much for a printer and pay a more incidental price for supplies. Even at that, printers would be much cheaper than they were 10 or 15 years ago.

Thankfully, I have very little need to actually print anymore. Everything is printed to PDFs and kept in PaperPort here. The paperless office -- two decades late.

Mike Barton said that inkjets are cheaper. They are only cheaper if used regularly. Toner has the advantage of starting out dry and will not dry out in the jets or piping.

One of the things that I do is to consult with companies regarding vender selection. "Throw-away" printers generally come up in our conversations. They are deal for once in a blue moon printing as appears to be the case for Mr. Schwartz. In these cases, I really do reccomend spending the extra and going laser. They offer fewer problems to the occasional user.

However, as he learned, the per page toner cost is one of the biggest factors (after weeding out the low quality printers).

In general, the more you pay for the printer, the lower your toner cost will be. It really does become an equation based on printed pages per year.

BTW, there are several firms that sell "generic" toner cartriges. They can work quite well if you find the right vender.

I am suprised by the $'s in this story, because my experience has always been that HP toner cartridges are more expensive that those for other manufacturer's printers. You typically get better print quality, because HP replaces more of the print mechanism. But maybe the economics have changed - its been a while since I bought a printer.

What I would like to see is a story about PCL compatibility. I print a lot of loan docs for lenders, and some come as PCL files. And some lenders insist you have a real HP printer. And some of my colleagues stick with that - and others say they never have any problem with "PCL emulation." What's the true story and compatibility?

Over the past several years, HP printers have been notoriously terrible, allownig other manufacturers to take over the game.

Samsung has been making very good low end and middle end laser prniters for a number of years now, and all of them come with starter toner as well. I used to buy HP exclusively nutil about 5 or 6 years ago, when they started making them like crap. And I am almost exclusivly Samsung now. Toner prices are much the same accross the board if you really lok at it. Go check out cdw.com, which makes it real easy to find the specific toner for you, and yuo will see that most toners are all ni the same ball park. And you may also want to verify that that $65 HP toner you are talknig about is not the cheap version of their high density cartridge fo rthe same printer that costs twice as much and give you the same quantity as the $90 samsung.

Just words of advice from a user...

I have used both, and as a home user since I don't print regularly the laser is the only way to go.

The ink jet printers all dry up and even if you remove the cartridges from the printer for storage the jets clog and you waste a full cartridge just to clean the print heads. I end up buying a new printer for essentially the cost of replacement ink each time I need to print color and throwing away the old one.

We got a new all-in-one b/w laser (HP 3390) last year. The starter cartridge lasted basically one year (1500+ pages). The new cartridge costs $130 but is expected to last 6,000 pages. At the rate I print that is 3-4 years worth. There is no way an ink jet can even come close.

You neglected to mention the Microsoft Windows license that is needed to run the HP Laserjet 1018. It only works with Windows. The Samsung works with Windows, Linux, Mac, etc. At CDW the difference in the cost of the toner cartridges is $10.00.

A small factual correction to Bob's post. It was King Gillette who developed the concept of selling the expensive well-built razor at a loss, and making the money back by charging a fortune for the blades. Somehow it's easier to accept for cheaper items like electric toothbrushes, but when you start looking at hundred dollar toner cartridges you have to wonder why there hasn't been any competition to drive the prices down.

I find that for home use, where I print maybe 5-10 pages per week on average, that a color inkjet is my best option, with the following caveat. I only buy inkjet printers if I can find generic or clone inkjet cartridges, usually on eBay. For example, I just bought a used Epson C88 printer at a thrift shop for my sons at college, then came home and ordered 15 cartridges, 6 black and 3 of each color, for $24, including S&H. Each black cartridge is supposed to be good for about 400 pages of text, so that adds up to a lot of homework, and they have the option of printing color as well.
Yes, the owners manual says that the use of such cartridges voids the warranty, but I'm not going to get warranty support in any case, so who cares? And if something does quit working, the cost of a new printer is still more than offset by the savings on the clone cartridges.

...and all things old are new again. This has been the practice for many years now.....

... and your point would be... what?

Printers have become disposable, so what?

Not worth getting repaired.
Not worth new consumables.
Not worth fulmanating about.

Get over it.

One more warning for color laser printers- there is even more to replace in addition to the toner cartridges. There is a drum or belt, a waste toner tank and even some other parts that have to be replaced. I bought the first color laser under $1000. The updates to the software made it harder to print envelopes for greeting and holiday cards, which are odd sizes. Then it decided it was out of magenta toner, and would not even print black only. I looked at the price of a toner cartridge, $140, and got an inkjet.

I don't buy strange ink. I have a buddy that had the same printer, and he said that he had a cartridge he did not need, since that printer failed. I put that cartridge in my printer, and it did not work either. I put the manufacture's cartridge in, and guess what- the printer worked. I don't do that much printing that it is worth trying to save money on the cartridges. In addition, HP and Epson seems to be getting more resonable on priceing them.

This is a worldwide problem, the best option is to use alternative suppliers who either do alternative or recycled replacement carts, or supply toner and do it yourself.

As has been mentioned colour laser printers are worse.

I have a 10-year-old Apple LaserWriter 12/640PS with its original cartridge, about 10K pages. I use 3-hole paper in it, and print simple texts, music, occasional photos etc., about 20 sheets per week. It started to fail, so with the side cover off and a small fan blowing, it no longer fails.

My wife got a cheap HP printer a year ago and as soon as it finished printing the images of the two birds on the test page, it stopped working claiming it needed a new color cartridge. Won't print black, just won't print. Bot a new cartridge. Feh.