Wireless Printer

Tim Naehrings Girl

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My old printer finally died and I figure this weekend is the best time to get one. I have a Toshiba laptop and I will be printing from my phone. Any suggestions on which brand is best? I don't care about price of the printer as much as price of the ink and how often it needs to be changed.
 

luckiestman

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There's a new one just reviewed in wsj that is like 400 bucks but great on ink. I'll see if I still have that paper.
 

Reggie's Racquet

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This is the one I use. Great printer, scanner, copier. Great price. Laser not inkjet. Wireless work well. Easy to set up.
Brother DCPL2540DW Wireless Compact Laser Printer
 

gtmtnbiker

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This is the one I use. Great printer, scanner, copier. Great price. Laser not inkjet. Wireless work well. Easy to set up.
Brother DCPL2540DW Wireless Compact Laser Printer
I also have a Brother laser printer (HLL2380DW model) and it's great. Definitely go laser instead of ink.
 

Couperin47

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Lasers are the answer for cheaper operation and guarantee that will print perfectly when you haven't used the printer for a month. The downside is they cannot match the photo realism of a high end inkjet using special paper. This weekend, for color, the Canon MF8280cw color laser multifunction (print, copy, scan, fax) with wireless can be had at Newegg for $153 including shipping.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828142618&ignorebbr=1

This includes starter toner carts (half filled) at the very least you want to almost immediately buy a full black toner cart, generic versions of the whole Canon 131 series carts are available from numerous sources at Amazon for under 1/3 the cost of genuine, making operation very inexpensive.

If B&W is good enough, Staples currently has the MF217W Canon, the equivalent low end monochrome multifunction on sale for $100:
http://www.staples.com/Canon-ImageCLASS-Laser-Printer-MF217W/product_1807523

With all due respect, I have found the output and versatility of the Canons exceed the Brothers and when you replace a Canon cart, you replace everything (toner & drum), on the Brothers, the replacement carts are just the toner, the drum eventually has to be replaced separately at costs that often rival what you paid for the whole printer on sale.
 
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Lefty on the Mound

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Couperin, I bought that exact printer about a year ago on your recommendation. Thanks!

What is your experience with the non-Canon ink replacements? Is there anything I should watch out for when selecting a 3rd party ink replacement?
 

Couperin47

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Couperin, I bought that exact printer about a year ago on your recommendation. Thanks!

What is your experience with the non-Canon ink replacements? Is there anything I should watch out for when selecting a 3rd party ink replacement?
There are a bewildering number of generic replacements for Canon carts at Amazon. Thanks to the lousy search capabilities, most searches return 2,000+ responses making them close to useless. The best deals are always for 3-6 carts, which can often get the price of each cart down to $20 or even lower, but this just increases the risk if you get bad carts. I have found the comments generally can eliminate the worst of the suppliers and there is no reason to avoid rebuilt carts vs. brand new generics as it's fairly easy for any reputable refurber to do a quaility refurb.
The 'special quality' of the toner itself is, these days, mostly a myth. My Canons are all now older models that use the older FX9/10 carts. These have a slightly hidden refill plug that makes refilling them rather easy. I've been buying 10 packs of refill toner and find that each cart can be refilled twice with no change in quality. The drum coatings and wipers of the average cart can easily handle 3x the toner in the average cart. What normally limits reuse is the storage capacity for used toner. Once that fills and backs up, you get a mess. Attempting to empty the used toner compartment is a great way to coat everything in the room with toner dust, so I discard before that happens. Decent quality refill toner can easily be had @ 10 for around $30, shipped. A generic cart @ $20, refilled twice for $6 yields 6,000+ pages for c. $26...stupidly inexpensive. Color means replacing 4 carts but the costs are still so dramatically lower than any ink & special paper as to be a no-brainer.
 

derekson

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I got one of those Canon printers months ago and am still on the starter cartridge. I despise, though, that I have to load Canon crapware onto my Mac to scan documents instead of just using the MacOS utilities.
You don't need to load Canon crapware. I scan with my Canon MF8580 on my MacBook Pro via Preview with just the basic Canon drivers that automatically downloaded from Apple when I added the printer. I'm able to scan over wifi this way too.

I don't understand why anyone would spend $400 for a wireless inkjet, even if it has reasonably sized ink tanks. This multifunction color laser printer was only $300 from Staples ($600 MSRP) and while toner cartridges are more expensive than those bottles of ink for that Epson, they last for thousands of pages of printing. And you don't need to worry about them drying out if you go several weeks without printing much. This laser printer also does double-sided printing and has the option for multiple trays for paper etc. And it has the ability to function as a fax machine too, for the occasional person stuck in the 90s who wants me to send them a fax.
 
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Tim Naehrings Girl

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I went ahead and got the Brother before the Cannon discussion started. It arrived tonight and so far set up was very easy. I got an extra toner to start with so I should be set for a while since I just need it for household use.
 

crystalline

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I got one of those Canon printers months ago and am still on the starter cartridge. I despise, though, that I have to load Canon crapware onto my Mac to scan documents instead of just using the MacOS utilities.
Oh...the horror.
It is excellent practice to avoid installing any software supplied by a hardware manufacturer. That includes printer and hard drive software.

Example: Western Digital Mac backup software supplied with their drives deleted all the data on the disk.
https://community.wd.com/t/external-drives-for-mac-experiencing-data-loss-with-maverick-os-updated-for-november-6-2013/18212
--- Updated November 6, 2013 ---
On October 30th, 2013 Western Digital informed registered customers of affected products via E-mail regarding reports of Western Digital and other external HDD products experiencing data loss when updating to OS X Mavericks (10.9). Our investigation to date has found that for a small percentage of customers that have the WD Drive Manager, WD Raid Manager and/or WD SmartWare software applications installed on their Mac, there can be cases of a repartition and reformat of their Direct Attached Storage (DAS) devices without customer acknowledgement which can result in data loss.
HPC is right. If Canon software engineers were good, they wouldn't be working at Canon. Don't install any drivers you don't have to, and don't depend on software that isn't several years old and backed by a good software company.
 

gtmtnbiker

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And I have a Cannon MF229dw. If I scan a multipage 2-sided document using Preview, the scanned documents have incorrectly ordered and (sometimes_) duplicate pages. The pages come out correctly ordered when scanned with the crapware.
If you're doing any serious amount of scanning, I highly recommend getting a dedicated scanner. I use Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 Scanner. Excellent device and software.
 

Couperin47

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It is excellent practice to avoid installing any software supplied by a hardware manufacturer. That includes printer and hard drive software.

Example: Western Digital Mac backup software supplied with their drives deleted all the data on the disk.
https://community.wd.com/t/external-drives-for-mac-experiencing-data-loss-with-maverick-os-updated-for-november-6-2013/18212


HPC is right. If Canon software engineers were good, they wouldn't be working at Canon. Don't install any drivers you don't have to, and don't depend on software that isn't several years old and backed by a good software company.
ROTF, and utter nonsense:

1. The cited example, the "WD software" is neither driver or required software and, surprise, isn't software written by WD at all. It's free accessory software, not required at all and is, as most such programs a free, cut down version of software written by a third party (in this case On-track as I recall, at least in the PC world) and like most such free software, is worth just about what you pay for it..

2. The Canon software is a single driver/utility package that includes functionality to scan, convert to pdf and use many other features of the multifunction and works perfectly. As an example, good luck trying to buy and utilize ANY modern HP printer without installing their software package, which consists of multiple programs, one of which monitors ink levels and nags you to buy replacement consumables on line and, if you don't install that nagware...the HP printer won't even operate...which is one reason I have avoided all HP printers for decades. In the PC world, the basic printer driver is required for anything but the most basic features to work, the same for scanners.
 
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HriniakPosterChild

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ROTF, and utter nonsense:

...
As an example, good luck trying to buy and utilize ANY modern HP printer without installing their software package, which consists of multiple programs, one of which monitors ink levels and nags you to buy replacement consumables on line and, if you don't install that nagware...the HP printer won't even operate...which is one reason I have avoided all HP printers for decades. In the PC world, the basic printer driver is required for anything but the most basic features to work, the same for scanners.
This is in my wheelhouse.

"Like my HP Envy 7640?"

----
Edit: To be clear, this refers to printing/scanning from a Mac. It sounds like you have no idea how AirPrint simplified things on iOS and OS X.
 
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Couperin47

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This is in my wheelhouse.

"Like my HP Envy 7640?"
Well at HP's own support forums, your printer (which has a lot of 3rd rate reviews btw) they seem to be having issues getting it to work at all...even with HP's revised drivers.:
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Scanning-Faxing-and-Copying/HP-Envy-7640-driver-doesn-t-work/td-p/5027172

Exactly what version of Windows and what hardware do you have it working with ?

At Tom's we get more detail on the driver hell required to get this working, typical of all HP installs in Windows these days:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2552220/envy-7640-print.html
 

HriniakPosterChild

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Well at HP's own support forums, your printer (which has a lot of 3rd rate reviews btw) they seem to be having issues getting it to work at all...even with HP's revised drivers.:
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Scanning-Faxing-and-Copying/HP-Envy-7640-driver-doesn-t-work/td-p/5027172

Exactly what version of Windows and what hardware do you have it working with ?

At Tom's we get more detail on the driver hell required to get this working, typical of all HP installs in Windows these days:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2552220/envy-7640-print.html
OS X on my MBP.
 

Couperin47

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OS X on my MBP.
Bingo. You cannot run that or any other printer under Windows without their drivers. If the OP had said she was running any Mac, I would never have even entered this thread since I have never owned and never will buy into that particular closed system.. Please refrain from giving advice useful only in the Mac world to the 90% who are running Windows.
 

Couperin47

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Bingo. You cannot run that or any other printer under Windows without their drivers. If the OP had said she was running any Mac, I would never have even entered this thread since I have never owned and never will buy into that particular closed system.. Please refrain from giving advice useful only in the Mac world to the 90% who are running Windows.
The Canon MF series happens to be superior, but drivers and options can make a difference. I am aware that running under Mac OSes it's been well known that the scanning with the Canons seems to be an issue via networking. Not quite sure how often one wants/needs to scan remotely, but it's apparently been an issue for Mac users for years.
 

LoweTek

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I have a new in the box, opened but never used, Canon MF4270 Monochrome Multi-Function Laser. Anybody interested before I put it on eBay?
 

derekson

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The Canon MF series happens to be superior, but drivers and options can make a difference. I am aware that running under Mac OSes it's been well known that the scanning with the Canons seems to be an issue via networking. Not quite sure how often one wants/needs to scan remotely, but it's apparently been an issue for Mac users for years.
My Canon MF8580 has no issues with network scanning on either of my Macs.