Good experiences with all-in-one laser printers?

December 2, 2006 11:37 AM

Anyone have good experiences to report with all-in-one (scanner, copier, printer) *laser* printers? For additional details...

We live in a small NYC apartment with limited space, but both my wife and I write for a living, and we need a solid, reliable printer; copier and scanner functionality are needed often enough that we've bought a series of all-in-one inkjet printers over the last few years, but ink cartridges are expensive and the inkjet mechanism really isn't sturdy enough (because not designed for) heavy/frequent use.

Fair enough.

If we had more room, we'd buy a workhorse laser printer and a scanner as separate devices, and maybe the answer is, in fact, "find the room for both, idiots, and do just that."

But on the chance that the hive mind knows better, we're asking: can anyone recommend an all-in-one (scanner, copier, printer) *laser* printer that will print 50pp per day and hold up for a while (read: more than a year.)

Details: The printer will be attached to a Windows desktop machine (extra points if there are compatible Linux drivers available, as we occasionally boot into Ubuntu instead of XP) and network-shared to a Mac laptop.

posted by enrevanche to computers & internet (13 comments total)

My brother has a Dell Photo 924 (all in one) printer. He is very impressed with it. I have read the ratings about it and it gets good marks. Perhaps you could google it.
posted by JayRwv at 11:45 AM on December 2, 2006

I have an HP LaserJet 3200. Print, fax, scan, copy. Cheap, durable, has lasted for many years now (five? something like that.). Fully Linux supported, including scanning.

I believe that particular model is discontinued now, however in my experience, HP makes excellent laser printers. My guess is that a current HP Laserjet all-in-one will serve your needs.

The only flaw I note is that it tends to suck in more than one page at a time when copying or faxing, so I tend to copy one page at a time. There's some little rubber page-grabber rollers that I can replace that would probably fix that problem, but I'm too lazy to do so.
posted by jellicle at 12:14 PM on December 2, 2006

Don't buy a Canon all-in-one under any circumstance. We have one that is a printer/scanner/copier and it has been a disaster. We'd love to throw it out of the office window, but we are afraid of hitting someone on the sidewalk down below.
posted by jayder at 12:22 PM on December 2, 2006

I have an HP LaserJet 3030 all-in-one B&W laser printer-copier-scanner. It works great and I would recommend it. I don't know if it's still in production though. I bought it at Comp USA.

I used to be in the printer business and here are a few things I learned:

Before buying a printer, do a cost analysis of how much the toner costs. The way you figure out cost-per-page is you divide the cost of the toner cartridge by how many pages the manufacturer says you can expect to print with one cartridge.

Example: the cartridge costs $100 and the box says you will print 5000 pages with about 5% coverage on each page.

$100/5000 pages = .02 per page

Dell practically gives away their printers (which are manufactured by Lexmark) but they really mark up the toner cartridge and they are often the sole provider. There is not much profit in hardware anymore so the printer manufacturers count on getting the consumables business.

One toner manufacturer that I can recommend is Teckno-Laser based in Montreal. I went on a tour of their factory and they have stringent quality control practices in place. In particular their Reflexion brand is high quality and is a good deal... if you can find it. It won't be at the big-box office supply stores. You'll have to find their dealers. They have a couple of other brands that are good too.
posted by Soda-Da at 12:52 PM on December 2, 2006

I just got the HP LaserJet 3390 for our small business (3 people) office. I bought it a month ago when they were offering a $350 rebate. I like the machine a lot, especially compared to the Ink Jet all in one we had before, but if I were you'd I'd hold out for a better deal.
posted by robinpME at 12:54 PM on December 2, 2006

I bought a Samsung SCX-4100 for my wife to use in her business. It does printing/scanning/copying but not fax, which some all-in-ones do.

Was really, really cheap, with the disadvantage that the toner cartridges are 3000 page, for only a little less than others sell a 5000 page one for. And it does feel pretty plasticky.

For all of that, it has lasted really well so far in lightish use (say about 20-50 pages per day), and, the big seller for me, it came with Linux drivers which have worked just fine for me under Ubuntu (although I can't say I've ever tried to scanning side of things, we use it as a printer/copier).

I'd buy another one, if it ever dies they are so cheap I'd just replace it. If you have heavier use perhaps you'd want something slightly more solid however.
posted by markr at 3:10 PM on December 2, 2006

I have a now-few-years-old Brother MFC-8820D that has been an utter workhorse for me through thick and thin. I'm a researcher/academic and am ashamed to admit that I can really slay some trees at various points in my work.

I. Love. This. Machine.

This thing never complains, never jams, does automatic duplex like a dream. Scanning functions and automatic feed are fast as well. I don't use the fax function as much, but when I've needed to it just works. Before this all-in-one I had a plain-old Brother laser printer (I think an HL-1240 or something like that) that was similarly dreamy, and the only reason I got rid of that was because I wanted a scanning function, and when the drum needed it's however-many-hundred-thousand-page replacement it seemed a good time to just roll up to a new machine. When this machine finally goes (or, at the rate it's performing, when replacement kits just become too expensive compared to the market) I will probably buy another Brother, unless I find out that they've managed to destroy a great thing.
posted by shelbaroo at 3:24 PM on December 2, 2006

It's a fairly big machine, but I really enjoyed the Xerox WorkCentre C2424 we used in the workroom at my last job.
posted by willpie at 6:56 PM on December 2, 2006

I have had success with our HP Laserjet 3055. I have it hooked to our home network and it prints, scans, and faxes like a champ. I've been using it with OS X, XP and Ubuntu (on occasion) and had no problems with setup or use (though I haven't tried scanning under Ubuntu, so YMMV).

A nifty feature is that it can scan to a machine over the network; when selecting the scan option it asks me which machine I want to direct the scan to, and then sends it. I can walk back to my laptop and the file will have been downloaded. Nifty.
posted by mjbraun at 9:58 PM on December 2, 2006

We've had good luck with the Brother printers (multifunctiona and otherwise) as well, but for constant use, the Lexmark units can't be beaten.

We have a client that printed a couple hundred thousand pages on their IBM (made by Lexmark) and moved it to another location where it's still in service 8 years later. Other than consumables (toner, drum, and rollers), the only thing it's ever needed was a cleaning due to the toner cartridge being left in during shipment.

They have other, smaller units that have been in service for just as long, but with less than a tree a day running through them. ;)

Infoprints last forever.
posted by wierdo at 10:15 PM on December 2, 2006

Just as a followup to anyone who finds this question later: we went with an HP LaserJet 3055 laser printer/scanner/copier/fax.

Installed it as an Ethernet device. Networked printer sharing Just Worked The First Time. Haven't tried setting it up with Ubuntu yet, but that looks to be well-supported.
posted by enrevanche at 3:18 PM on December 27, 2006

Update to the update: for Linux support of the HP 3055, see HPLIP, "an HP developed solution for printing, scanning, and faxing with HP inkjet and laser based printers in Linux."
posted by enrevanche at 1:08 AM on December 28, 2006

Final update - as of mid-April, there are no Vista drivers for the scanner/copier functionality of the 3055, just basic PCL printer drivers.

Everything works like a bandit under XP, OS X and Ubuntu.
posted by enrevanche at 6:30 PM on April 19, 2007