Printer purchase advice

[Rich Engelhardt]

Same as it ever was. Back in 1989, I bought one of the very first inkjet printers: an HP DeskJet. They were already on the second or third generation of LaserJets at the time. And I seem to recall that their Ethernet-to-parallel network adapters had a 'Jet' in the name as well.

Yep - the good old JetDirect. Man the struggles I had with those nasty little things.

Here's one of the originators of the HP laser line telling some of their story.

https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/time...et_page_00.htm

[Bill George]

I am thinking of buying a color printer to do decals with, the Epson uses a ink jet bottles and I think the ink jet does a better job than color laser. I would rather have a laser but now all the schemes to prevent using aftermarket ink and toner is putting me off.

[Bill Howatt]

If you want to print then you have go with the system.
I haven't heard anything about laser toner cartridges having chips, expiry time, etc (other than they tell you the recommended shelf life is 2 years typically). My experience with chips was with inkjet cartridges and an aftermarket company I used to deal with had cartridges that were chipped or unchipped so you could use them instead of the OEM products.
My suggestion is that if you want to use a certain printer, reach out to the aftermarket companies and inquire about replacement ink concerns.
BTW, one of the reasons for the time-sensitive cartridges is consumers would have expired, gummy ink and it wouldn't work properly and they bad-mouthed the printer.

[Brian Elfert]

Laser printers definitely have chips too. I had a chip fail in a generic cartridge in my Xerox color laser printer. The cartridge manufacturer replaced the cartridge, but the second cartridge failed in some other way and I went back to OEM cartridges.