New printer recommendations

[Ivor Windybottom]

I used to have a laser printer which in today's money would probably be about £10K.

Yes, but in terms of the fact that it prints pages of A4 then it's actually worth about £79.99, as that's how much you could pay for a shiny brand new one that will do exactly the same job, with a warranty and absolutely no pratting about scavenging for parts or whatever.

All laser printers are good, however cheap. I've never known one to print badly.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

Thanks - worth a try.
I tried calling the people I got the replacement carts I have from, , who just said I'd had them too long for a claim.
Apparently the software updates from Brother are designed to look for hooky carts, and just disable the printer. A Factory Reset doesn't fix it.

Cartridge Save might be worth a try to find out how to reset the thing. I'd already used a secret code, to enable printing of the toner when it stopped at 1000 pages or whatever - so you can keep going until it really runs out. There might even be new spy info online now (not found). At the time the local Cartridge shop couldn't help either.
CS kit is cheap enough - presumably they help if you buy from them.

It's cheap enough to try again if I can get phone support, the shoulder chips have shrunk over time. Thanks I'll let you know.
Actually a link on their site took me to https://ybtoner.com/brother/ which is USA but cheaper.

Brother introduced chips on their cartridges about 10 years ago. Some suppliers took a while to make cartridges that would fool the printer reliably. At one time you had to remove the chip from a real one and stick it onto the non-genuine one. Those days are gone now though, it's all now been reliably worked around, they all work now.

I have a mono and a colour Brother lasers. Both get firmware updates automatically via the internet. Both run on whatever cheapest toner I can get. Absolutely no issues ever.

 

[morqthana]

Yes, but in terms of the fact that it prints pages of A4 then it's actually worth about £79.99, as that's how much you could pay for a shiny brand new one that will do exactly the same job

For a colour laser?

Which one(s)?

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

Ah OK, a bit more for colour. But we're talking about printing invoices here.

 

[Justin Passing]

I called CartridgeSave. They were encouraging. As I think Ivor said, times have changed.
I'll have a go with the smaller size refills.

Regarding print quality, I had a sooper dooper photo printer years ago, which was higher resolution and plenty good enough for business.
Much better print than the cheapies. Cost 2 arms and 3 legs to run, though. Some may be better in the mid range now.

 

[robinbanks]

For my accounts. I’m old school.

Could be a solution there then!

No proper business uses inkjet for documents. Inkjet says "I don't know what I'm doing" to all your customers.

Especially when the envelope gets wet and the contents end up looking like a tie-dye t shirt

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

I called CartridgeSave. They were encouraging. As I think Ivor said, times have changed.
I'll have a go with the smaller size refills.

Regarding print quality, I had a sooper dooper photo printer years ago, which was higher resolution and plenty good enough for business.
Much better print than the cheapies. Cost 2 arms and 3 legs to run, though. Some may be better in the mid range now.

I just buy the cheapest on Amazon and Ebay. Works for me! I suspect they're all from factories in China, whatever the company name says. I've previously ordered whatever brand, where it shows a pretty box on the listing, thinking I'm paying a bit more for quality. Then a plain brown Chinese box turns up.

You occasionally get the odd job lot on ebay, where someone was clearing an office or whatever, it's worth a rummage. I have a stockpile for my mono one, which cost almost nothing. As long as the inner bag is sealed age isn't an issue for toner, which is powdered plastic, unlike ink which is mostly water or solvent that dries out.

I had one once that was really feint. I chucked it away and went onto the next. Cost me all of one tenth of a genuine one, not even worth fussing about.

I print lots of invoices, for my thousands of adoring customers. So every fraction of a penny saved per sheet soon stacks up.