I need advice: best laser printer for under $500? (1 Viewer)

[Bob McLaughlin]

I am looking for a new printer. I am only interested in printing text, only in black and white. I believe the best way to go would be a laser printer, but correct me if I'm wrong. All I've seen on the market are HP laser printers. Does anyone have any recommendations or advice for me?

 

[Jason Handy]

I've had great experience with HP Laserjets.

 

[Bob McLaughlin]

Jason, what's the maintenance like on those laserjets? Do they need to be professionally cleaned or maintained? Thanks for your help!

 

[Jason Handy]

Bob,

I have not needed to maintain my Laserjet at all, and I have had it for 5-6 years. My advice to you is this: get one that has a proper horizontal paper tray, not the top-loading mechanism where the pages are gravity-fed; I notice this leads to some paper jams as 10-15 pages go through at once.

I need to replace my toner cartridge, but I do not count that as maintenance. I have had zero problems going from Win 3.1 to Win 95 to Win NT to Win 98. The drivers are as solid as a rock.

Hope this helps.

Jason

 

[Bob McLaughlin]

Thanks, Jason!

 

[AjayM]

I've been using HP printers for basically as long as I can remember. A few hints, always buy a little more printer than you think you'll need. It's better to under-work a printer than it is to over-work it (HP has recommended limits to printing limits). If the printer is going to see heavy use, cleanings and such won't hurt anything and is typically nothing more than blowing out the dust and paper particles. A $500 laser printer is pretty much going to be disposable, if anything goes wrong with it, it will cost a fortune to repair. I blew out a formatter board on HP 8000 series printer and the repair bill was around $800 if I remember correctly, this happened literally 3 weeks after the warranty ran out. HP wanted $1600 (I think) for a blanket service call, meaning that I paid them $1600 and the printer would be fixed no matter what was wrong. The printer is now under a full service contract .
Andrew

 

[DonRoeber]

Don't forget to check Ebay. These printers are workhorses, and will gladly live forever. I picked up a LaserJet 4000 and a JetDirect network card over the summer for about $450. the guy even threw in a duplexer. It's been reliable, and has about 65k pages printed on it (not by me).
If you do need parts, www.printerworks.com has just about every HP part for almost all of their printers.

 

[NickSo]

http://www.bensbargains.net/#newsitem1014224257,38832,
Amazon has this 15ppm BROTHER printer for sale at $240 after INSTANT rebate...
also this one:
http://www.bensbargains.net/ktalk/10...2,37685,.shtml
LExmark for $70 after instant coupon and MIR