I am a bit behind the times it seems in regards to printers.

[Chako]

OMG! I was forced to buy another printer! 

My not that old Canon Imageclass MF4450 was bought before I had the need for a network printer.I needed an upgrade, mostly pushed on me by my inability to print from my Apple IPad 4 on the Canon. I had a small Samsung network printer before the Canon, but it was only a small and simple monochrome laser printer and I needed something with more document scanning features. Hence my buying the Canon 5 or 6 months ago. I wished I had some forethought before giving away the Samsung to a close friend, and buying the Canon. I should have bought a network capable printer...but at the time, I didn't see the need for one. Well can't live in the past, and now I just finished installing my newest printer, and hopefully my last for a long time.

I now needed something that can talk with that Ipad. So network was a priority this time around. I also thought I would get another monochrome laser printer, but thought colour may be needed once again in the future. It came down to two HP printers, as they seemed to offer quite a lot of features, and both were on sale...saving money is always nice. One was a colour laser, the other a colour inkjet. After looking closely at both, and more importantly, a short visit to see what the consumables would cost, I opted for the inkjet. The cost was 100 dollars for all colour plus black, compared to 400 dollars for the colour toners. After talking to the sales guy, the inkjet beat the laser for cost per page...I kid you not. I didn't believe him until I did some online research in the store using my phone. Yes, the inkjet has very big ink reservoirs, and they are relatively cheap to boot.

There were a few other details that sealed the deal on the inkjet printer, the addition of an extra paper tray, and also the inclusion of an extra set of colour cartridges minus the black looked like a good pot sweetener. I almost forgot there is a paper duplexer included...and that is always a very nice feature to have. The printer also has the usual scan/fax/copy features, along with the usual top document feeder and scanner.

So I bought an HP Officejet Pro 8600 Premium.

When I got it home and installed, I was positively god smacked shocked! I mean, little did I know just how far printers have come for connectivity. A nice 4.5" touch screen opens a lot of options. What I found fascinating, there are Apps on my printer. I can now print all sorts of things from these apps, such as calendars, graph paper, different business form templates, games, comics, etc. Not used to doing this without a computer, but the apps are a very interesting feature of HP connective printers.

I also can now eprint anywhere. Not sure if this is something I would need, but I guess it is nice to have the capability. Apparently all I have to do is send a document to my specific printer email address, and I can print something at my home anywhere one the road. Yes, my printer now has an email address. 

So printers aren't just printers anymore. They now come with simple built in browsers and run simple apps that allow you to print content to keep you or your children occupied.

Go figure. 

[CanadianLMfan]

I can't read all of that!

[Chako]

 

[detron]

That looks really nice!   I would be happy with one like that!

mine is OK, paid $70 for it, but it takes non OEM ink like a champ.  so I got 8 yelloe, 8 magenta, 8 cyan, and 16 black cartridges for $23!!

I cannot complain.  the print quality is not in hte same league as your printer, but my next printer will be one similar to yours.

have fun playing with it!

[Chako]

So far, I have printed two different paper airplanes from the Paper Planes app. 

[enki_ck]

Glad to see you're putting it to good use.

I would never go back to inkjet though. I print way too much for that.

[CanadianLMfan]

 

[Chako]

The printer has a duty cycle of 25000 pages per month enki_ck.

[detron]

So far, I have printed two different paper airplanes from the Paper Planes app. 

wireless print configuration.  CHECK

[Nhoj]

My printers are always nice until they explode. I hope your new printer lasts you a long time!

[CanadianLMfan]

The printer is always cheaper than the refills.

[enki_ck]

The printer has a duty cycle of 25000 pages per month enki_ck.

I was refering to the price per page printed.

[Chako]

Oh lol. Well, HP states that this one is cheaper then most lasers. Based on the size of the ink cartridges and their price, I am tempted to agree with their figures tentatively. I won't know till I print a lot and see how long the cartridges last.

EDIT: I looked up the ink specs.

The HP 950XL black cartridge is good to 2400-2500 pages for a price of around 40 US dollars. The colour 951 cartridges of which there are 3, are good for 700 pages each. Those run around 23 dollars US. Not bad for pigment ink.

[kirk13]

All computer printers are the work of the devil and should be purified with flame!

[Chako]

That sounds like it would be a great Monty Python skit kirk13.   

[kirk13]

You think

You did see what happened to the last printer to defy me

[Chako]

Umm...no...but I bet you got blamed for it right? 

[Reinier]

The printer has a duty cycle of 25000 pages per month enki_ck.

That's a lot of paper planes.

[ducttapetech]

Was there fire or explosions?

sent from my mobile

[derekmac]

Did you go all Office Space on it??   

[Whoey]

Did you go all Office Space on it??   

(Image removed from quote.)

that was my thought...

Until a while back I had been using the same old HP Laserjet 1000 that we had used for years. It got to the point where the wife and I both upgraded our machines to 64 OSes, and that particular printer is a host based printer, which requires special drivers/software to run on the host, and they of course didn't make a 64bit driver or support it anymore (it's old!)

I bought a cheap Samsung laser ML-2160 that was on sale, which is nice and less than half the size of what we had, plugged it into my NAS, and I'm sorted. I have no idea about printing wirelessly, but it works just great as it is for our needs.

They've made little print server dongles for ages that allow you to pretty much share any normal printer on a network. I like having everything integrated too, but sometimes it's better if things are separate in case of failure. A WIFI version of the same printer tends to add $100/EUR/GBP to the price versus the same model without. One of the reasons I got the NAS I got was not only for always on network storage, but also to stop the need of our more power guzzling machines needing to be on to allow everyone else to print when needed. Also, if the new printer acts up it's easily replaced with whatever new model is on sale 

[enki_ck]

I was using one of those Samsung ML series printers too for quite some time. The drawer started acting up on me very early on though but I did manage to fix it mostly. I hooked it up to an old comp I have in the attic and use as a server via an extra long USB cable and shared it as a network printers with all the other computers around the house. Worked great. But when it died I went for a WIFI one. It gave me problems when installing it cause for some reason it decided it was on a 192.168.2.1 network and not 192.168.1.1 as the rest of the house and I couldn't log in to it to change it thrugh the computer for some reason. Ended up logging it using my cell phone, set a static address for it and it has been working and connecting flawlessly ever since. And I get 1600+ pages for $17.

[detron]

All computer printers are the work of the devil and should be purified with flame!

electronics run on smoke,  once you let the smoke out, they do not work any longer   

[Whoey]

I thought it was magic... 

[enki_ck]

But not just any smoke, blue smoke.

[Whoey]

I've seen my fair share of blue smoke escaping from electronics 

[ducttapetech]

But not just any smoke, blue smoke.

and techno voodoo

[sawman]

All computer printers are the work of the devil and should be purified with flame!

+1

[Cupboard]

my mum has the generation older of that printer and it seems to work very well. She had a few issues to start with which were solved by moving it so it got better signal. It was reading 3/5 but had some occasional hiccups.

A general +1 to the printer hatred from me, I think The Oatmeal sums it up very well:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers

Of the three we have in the office, there are only two computers that will print to all three. A fairly old 32bit XP machine and my 64bit Win7 machine. The other Win7 machines just will not print to our old double sided printer even if you give them the same drivers that work quite happily on mine. It got to the stage where it was cheaper to just buy a new double sided (and colour!) printer than it was for me to try and beat the other computers in to accepting a driver they didn't want to know about.

[derekmac]

We have a color wireless laser, Samsung CLP-325W, that we bought on clearance at Staples for something crazy like $30.  It works great, and is easy to setup and connect to.