AKA: “Pining for the days of ribbons and dot matrixes… matrices… whatever…”
If you can stand the annoying slideshow format, and having to click “read more” to get the ad out of the way to read the rest of the caption, this PC World review notes a handful of expensive versus cheap printer options for small workgroup settings like a small church office. I’d like to add two things to this, that are only touched on a little in that slideshow.
First, the cost of the printer is NEVER the cost of the printer; the actual box is always an order of magnitude less than the cost of all the supplies you’ll buy for it over the course of it’s lifetime. You have to take into account a couple of factors to truly price out a printer. To do this, get a rough estimate of your total printing for the year; doesn’t have to be real exact, just ballpark. For any printer you’re looking at, look at the pricing for it’s cartridges. Those cartridges will each have an estimated number of pages they’re good for. Divide that number by the price to get the cost per page (for both black/white and color, if applicable). When comparing two printers, look at those costs per page, and based on the number of pages you print, you should have a general idea of what you’ll really pay if you purchase one over the other. Also remember that laser printers often have a separate drum that needs changing occasionally; that will also have an estimated number of pages they’re good for, and you should add that in to your equation. Lastly, you might need to do a little searching, but SOME models have high-capacity versions of their cartridges. At least a few HP models, and several Brother models do (I recommend Brothers because of this; it keeps their cost-per-page pretty low).
Secondly, do your budget a favor and don’t buy your cartridges at Staples, Office Depot, or whatever brick-and-mortar place you shop at until you’ve looked at the online prices for those same cartridges. Get the cartridge’s ID number, check Staples.com for the retail price, and then go look at Provantage.com and see what they’re charging – I can almost guarantee you’ll save A LOT of money. And Provantage is good people; I already mentioned them in my posting about places to buy online. To do more price comparison, go to Google Product Search (I still use www.froogle.com as the url) and put in that cartridge number. Warning, though – be careful who you buy from online (obviously); if you’re going to use a place you’ve never heard of, check them out before trusting them with your credit card number. I’ll vouch for Provantage and NewEgg though.
I’ll put up some reviews for individual printer models as I find them. Lastly – check those online stores for prices on those PRINTERS too, if you’re going to buy one!