I Need a printer recommendation

[jzukerman]

All the manufactures base their toner usage on about a 8 % page coverage and the amount of pages printed since the toner was replaced. Its not all that accurate and thats why there is always more toner left over in the cartridges. On the brother printers there is an easy way to reset the toner usage. For my printer:

http://blog.tonerparts.com/how-to-reset-brother-mfc-9125cn-printer-toner-counter/

As for the cartridges, I buy refilled because of the price. I can get all the colors which include 2 black cartridges for around 68 bucks. I do not mind refills because I am not going to buy brand new and waste all that money. They work fine for me.

My clients have had bad luck with non-OEM toner leaking all over the place and eventually ruining the printer. I tell them to keep using the OEM toner to reduce that issue.

 

[coffee]

My clients have had bad luck with non-OEM toner leaking all over the place and eventually ruining the printer. I tell them to keep using the OEM toner to reduce that issue.

Thats why if your using refilled cartridges that you find a supplier that does a good job and stick with them. I cannot argue your statement as there are a lot of companies that simply refill them and send them out the door. What normally happens is the wiper bar is damaged and starts leaking excess toner. Any toner I get that leaks is returned for a free replacement.

There are companies out there that actually rebuild the toner cartridge and test them. These are the ones that I buy from. My failure rate is actually very small and havent had any problems. The real issue is that a lot of buyers base their purchases on the lowest price possible. That means the failure rate is going to be somewhat high. They do not check into if the toner is simply refilled or actually rebuilt. A lot of the companies I buy from only fill the cartridges up to 3 times and then retire them.

 

[jzukerman]

Thats why if your using refilled cartridges that you find a supplier that does a good job and stick with them. I cannot argue your statement as there are a lot of companies that simply refill them and send them out the door. What normally happens is the wiper bar is damaged and starts leaking excess toner. Any toner I get that leaks is returned for a free replacement.

There are companies out there that actually rebuild the toner cartridge and test them. These are the ones that I buy from. My failure rate is actually very small and havent had any problems. The real issue is that a lot of buyers base their purchases on the lowest price possible. That means the failure rate is going to be somewhat high. They do not check into if the toner is simply refilled or actually rebuilt. A lot of the companies I buy from only fill the cartridges up to 3 times and then retire them.

Which toner rebuild companies do you use? I forget the ones that my clients have had bad results with.

 

[coffee]

Which toner rebuild companies do you use? I forget the ones that my clients have had bad results with.

For Brother I have had good luck here:

http://www.ebay.com/usr/tonerinbox

 

[fencepost]

I'm also a huge fan of the Brother printers, though I have a lot less experience with the color ones.

Regarding the toner still being filled, if you go through the web interface on most of them you'll find an option for the toner behavior: "Continue" or "Stop" with "Stop" as the default. Change it to Continue.

The other caveat I've had with at least the bigger multifunctions (anything with an LCD) is that at 100,000 pages they all start kicking up with errors to replace the laser and PF kit. Brother says "Ship the printer to us for repair," and that ain't happening. You can actually find the parts listed in a few places, but when you add it up they're about the cost of a replacement printer, before you factor in any margin or labor. I tell people about this, and say "Basically you just use it until it dies or gets unreliable, then replace it and you'll still come out ahead on costs."

I put together something I should return to a few years ago, something looking at TCO for various printers at various page counts. For the Brother printers I just put in the full cost of the printer as the "maintenance kit" cost, and estimated that the printers would last until ~150k pages - I've seen a couple still going at beyond 250k pages, but they were mighty creaky. I've done a few internal updates of the spreadsheet I used and I think some of the Dell printers aren't terrible, but the Brothers are still pretty close to being the winners for the areas they cover.

 

[allanc]

Everything. They don't have the world's most stable or fast network, and I don't think that's helping. They are getting results like this and I don't even know how to google this problem:

And that's just today. Every day it's something else.

Does the manual have a troubleshooting section?
For example, one of my clients has a Brother MFC and that section has diagrams of different print quality issues with their remedies.

 

[TechLady]

I'm curious how my link in my post (#10) somehow got changed to Macmall instead of Amazon??

Also: no, the manuals for the thing are all but useless.