Reply 20 of 27, by digger
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Zup wrote on 2021-05-13, 14:21:cyclone3d wrote on 2021-05-13, 06:46:...always had trouble with the ink drying out, the heads getting clogged, and them having trouble actually picking up the paper...
I bought a (cheap) laser printer because I was too lazy and let the ink dry out.
This. Right here. I remember going through several different printer technologies:
- 9-pin dot matrix: cheap and reliable, cartridges easy and cheap to refill with aftermarket methods, but poor visual quality. Also, you had to wait for the ink to get dry.
- 24-pin dot matrix: more expensive, but equally reliable, considerably better visual quality, but still not comparable with inkjet and laser tech
- Inkjet: I've come to utterly despise this technology. 🤮 I never printed often, so cartridges would keep drying up, and those suckers were expensive to replace! Inkjet printers are such a scam, whether you print regularly or not. Also, maybe it's because I mostly used HP Inkjet printers, but they weren't very reliable in my experience. Also, it still required you to be careful with your prints until the ink was dry.
- Laser/LED: This is the way. ❤️ Fast, high quality output, no risk of smudging anything, because there's no wet ink, and most of all: reliable! Even if you very rarely print something, it's always ready to go. The downside: they're more expensive, especially if you want a color printer.
A word of advice: if you don't need color printing, and you can get your hands on one of those old laser printers that take regular toner powder (like photo copiers do) without requiring any proprietary cartridges, go for it, and hold on to them! Many of those older models have a Centronics interface, so you can hook them up to a parallel port. As for driver support, they probably support PostScript, so you'll also be good on the driver and software support fronts, even with software from the DOS and 3.x era.
I remember recommending my Dad to buy a used 1200dpi laser printer (from a pallet full of those things) at a computer trade fair once for just €30. It turned out to be a golden find. It simply took regular toner, the output quality was top notch and it worked with regular PostScript drivers. Unfortunately, it got damaged during renovation work done at his house, some time later. Some plaster powder must have gotten inside it or something, even though it was covered up with plastic sheets. He bought a color laser printer/copier to replace it.
If you value your money, please don't ever buy inkjet printers. Not in general, and certainly not when you don't print often. I don't care what people tell you about the technology having improved: it's still liquid ink that inevitably dries up sooner or later if you don't use it often. Also, I really see no nostalgic value in older inkjet printers. Older laser printers are a completely different story, on the other hand. But of course that's just my opinion.
As for what I use to print: I still have my trusty Samsung ML-1610 that I bought back in 2004. Perhaps the best €80 I ever spent. For that price, it even came with a half-filled toner cartridge that lasted me for a long time. It doesn't print color, and I don't need it to. I very rarely print something (about once or twice per year, if that). But whenever I need it, it's there for me. I power it up and plug it in, and it works instantly. All common modern OSes support it out of the box. It has a USB interface though, so you'll probably want to look for something older.
