An old school portable printer

September 6, 2009 7:45 PM

Looking for a (cheap) portable, parallel printer that prints in A4 size.

I have a portable device, which I need a printer for. The printer must have a parallel (DB-25) port. I need the printer to be as small as possible, so I can take it with me to different places. But be able to do basic A4 printouts (just text). I found a small printer but the cartridges were like $60 each!.

So basically. I want a cheap tiny printer, which does basic A4 prints out. Which uses cheap ink cartridges.

I don’t know much about printers. So any help would be grateful!

posted by saxamo to Technology (3 answers total)

So, are you looking for black & white or color? For Windows or Mac? Plug into wall power or battery?
posted by exphysicist345 at 9:11 PM on September 6, 2009

IEEE1284 printers have been all but phased out in favor of USB and network printers. What's your portable device? Have you tried combing eBay for A4 parallel printers?
posted by ostranenie at 4:21 AM on September 7, 2009

Response by poster: I need a battery-powered printer. It doesn't have to print in colour, just black text. I searched the Internet for a few hours today and it looks like I'll be going for the HP 450 portable printer. It runs off a battery and has a parallel port. The ink cartridges are pretty cheap too. It's 13" L, 7.5" W and 3" H. So it's pretty small too.

I'll be going for this one unless anyone can suggest a better printer! Thanks anyway all!
posted by saxamo at 6:50 PM on September 7, 2009