| > And colour laser is still expensive. I've used colour laser printers at home for quite some time. An older Xerox (6125?) for some years which I later replaced by a 6510 (built-in duplex, faster) when that started to exhibit problems. They cost a lot more than for cheap home inkjets when looking at the initial outlay (£150+ compared to £30+) but once you consider the cost of ink (even just black) including the fact that if you don't print regularly you waste a pile on head cleaning as they gum up, after a cartridge or few you hit break even.¹ Or you used to. Manufactures seem to have got wise to the fact people were starting to get wise to this: the price of official consumables has gone up, and they've cracked down on 3rd party toner carts much like the inkjet world. Running the models that have replaced the 6510 would cost considerably more per page² even if using official cartridges for the 6510. I found this out when looking for a laser to replace my Dad's inkjet that had just died. Looking at second hand units of models that are still dirt cheap to run, they are selling for silly prices – presumably people & small businesses that print high volume are collecting them while they can. I will be taking very good care of my current printer to try make it survive as long as possible… > I know it is wishful thinking but I do hope someday we could have some innovation with Colour Laser. Unfortunately the only innovation seems to be in techniques for gouging money out of customers, inspired by methods that have worked in the inkjet market. When you achieve world domination you may have to cast the laser printer market into the same volcano as the inkjets and completely start afresh. ---- [1] Also, the output quality is far better unless you use more expensive paper (I get crisper black text out of my laser on cheap stock paper than inkjets get on more expensive stuff designed to minimise ink bleed and such). Photo output on plain paper is better too, though ink wins significantly once you buy speciality paper – though for the few pages of that sort of printing I've needed in recent years I've just had done at the printing booth in the local supermarket and that further beats home inkjet output and isn't particularly expensive for small one-off tasks. [2] noticeably more than 10x, as high as 25x comparing 3rd party supplies which the new models make harder to use. |