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Everything you need to choose the right printer

Small Laser Update

The electronic chip supply shortage of 2021 has affected printer supply and pricing. The shortage is due to a combination of supply problems and increased demand due to COVID-19 induced work-from-home and a number of other factors. The impact has affected other sectors as well – a new car shortage resulting in significant increases in…
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Color Laser Multifunction Update – July 2020

A quick survey of current multifunction color laser or “Pagewide” inkjet machines comes up with some clear winners. All are print/copy/scan/fax, duplex printing, ethernet (most with WiFi), etc. – machines that can do it all, including high-speed, high-quality color. Comparison based on 2 years, 1,500 pages/month black, 500 pages/month color. The HP Pagewide machines are…
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Work From Home Update

Monochrome Laser All-In-One Machines For Working From Home With the recent surge in working from home due to COVID-19 restrictions, plenty of people can use a new all-in-one to replace their old printer or inkjet all-in-one machine. As always, the key is Total Cost of Ownership or TCO. In addition, there are certain key features…
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Web Page Printing and Output Format Issues

A well-designed web site looks great! But printing it doesn’t always work so well. There are a lot of options to help solve this problem. TL;DR: For the vast majority of situations, I recommend: Online viewable: HTML/CSS, generally with Javascript Downloadable Static Report: PDF Downloadable data for local manipulation/analysis: Excel As to the specific issue…
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HP = Heavy-duty Printing

Hewlett-Packard laser printers for Heavy-duty Printing Sometimes you just need to print a little, and keeping the price of the printer low is important. Back to Basics gives you some options for 100 to 1,000 pages per month. But if you are a heavy-duty user – printing from 1,000 pages per month up to 10,000…
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HP vs. Brother – Inkjet Multifunction Showdown

We have compared every currently listed multifunction inkjet printer from Brother and Hewlett Packard that has Print/Copy/Scan (most have Fax too) and duplex printing. The results are a little surprising. HP – 12 Printers The HP printers are primarily in the Envy low-end group – $79.99 – $129.99 – and OfficeJet Pro group – $119.99…
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HP Inkjet Comparison

Hewlett Packard All-In-One Inkjet Comparison HP Inkjet all-in-ones are very popular. They tend to be very feature rich with prices starting well under $100. But is the least expensive printer really the best deal? Let’s look at TCO on the latest offerings from HP. The results may surprise you! Last year’s clear winners were the…
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Back to Basics!

Monochrome Laser Printers for Inexpensive Output Sometimes all you need is a good fast inexpensive printer. No color. No scanning. Just a good monochrome (black & white) printer that doesn’t cost much to buy or to use. If you are looking for color & scanning, take a look at HP Inkjet Comparison for more information…
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Printer Math: 135 = 180 = 250

Late breaking news! In just one day, the price of the best printer in this comparison dropped another $20, from $270 down to $250, making it an even better deal! The price of the worst printer also dropped, by $15. So the overall equation is largely the same, but it is constantly changing. No, that’s…
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A Few of Our Favorites

There is no one best printer for everyone. But there are some that seem to hit “just right” for a lot of users. A few current top models: Brother HL-L5100DN This is a good mid-range monochrome laser printer. Nothing fancy, but includes wired networking, duplex printing, decent speed (42 pages/minute) and a 250-page paper tray.…
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