I have a Dell laser printer I bought off of woot.com for $99 years ago. Still on its initial toner cartridge. Still works 100% flawlessly. It plugs in via ethernet, uses zeroconf/Bonjour, and requires no drivers. I still can't believe what a ridiculously good deal it was.
Like some other commenters here, if I need a color print, I just walk down the street and have a professional printer do it for one or two dollars for a huge glossy or matte high-resolution print. If you do the math, it's cheaper to do this regardless of how much you print -- per page, a consumer inkjet is more expensive than a professional print, and looks worse. There is no point.
(I can even just send it online, and walk over and get it sometime later when it's already done.)
When people ask me about home printers for very occasional use, I advise them to use Staples/Office Depot/FedEx office printers at 12-14 cents per page. Saved a lot of people from buying printers.
I got my printer for something like $100 on Ebay, and it's ridiculously reliable and the cost per page is dirt cheap. Why would I want to waste my time driving somewhere and paying to print stuff when I can do it in a few seconds at home?
The home printing market is only going to get more and more expensive if consumers are so stupid they can't go buy small business printers on Ebay that are a few years old and off-lease.
I'll admit I could just be out of touch, but who's buying these inkjet printers? Laser printers are dirt cheap to run (Brother) and they exist in color too. Photos cost like 50¢ each at my local walgreens and they look great.
Last year I bought an HP OfficeJet 8720 and it's a pretty amazing bit of hardware for $300. Yes, ink is expensive but I don't have to print that often so it's not a big deal.
It'd be amazing if you listed the price too for the cartridges. I'm sure you could make some money with a sortable list and affiliate links to buy printers based on cheapest price per printed page. What do you think?
Tried to buy a printer lately? Perhaps a computer? Part of the crap availability is likely due to the chip/component shortages that have gotten a lot of press, but some is also due to shipping.
I was looking at low- to mid-range workgroup printers and business-class desktop PCs for some clients recently. From at least some manufacturers the ones that were available were selling for at least $50-100 above MSRP depending on models, or you could order at normal prices (don't bother looking for discounts!) with estimated delivery end of May or in June. This article makes me think there's a chance those might be optimistic.
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