So hopefully it doesn’t seem like we’ve jumped the shark before things have even gotten rolling, but today I’m going write about… printers.
“But Bob,” you ask, “this is a blog about graphics. Why are you writing about printers?”
Well, first of all, because my trusty HP PSC 1315 All-in-One is wheezing its way out of existence at the moment. I’m shocked that a $50 printer/scanner lasted me over 5 years, but it’s held up quite well.
Secondly, because this blog is about our graphics research and research means one thing… printing out boatloads of other people’s research to read through. Sure everything’s a PDF these days so I could read it on the screen, but screens mean internet access and internet access means hours wasted on Reddit, Facebook, or Minecraft instead of reading. Eventually you realize that while you just spent hours building TNT-powered sheep cannons in a pixelated voxel world, your PDF, sadly, did not read itself. I know that I have a much higher chance of actually reading something if I can kick back on my couch or bed away from the those horrible backlit time sinks and read something on a good ole’ stack of dead trees and ink.
Convinced yet? If not, then this post was written by Chris. If you are, check out the sweet laser printer I just ordered from Newegg.
Looks pretty humble, but check out the specs:
- 27 pages per minute (a page about every 2 seconds!)
- Wired and wireless network connectivity
- Auto-duplex (prints on both sides without having to refeed!)
- Only $150 shipped.
On top of that, the toner cartridges are only $57. That’s what it already costs me to replace my inkjet cartridges, except the toner cartridges will print about 2600 pages before needing to be replaced, and you can set the printer to toner-save mode to get even better mileage out of them.
Now, granted, it is only a monochrome printer, but I’m primarily just printing text these days anyway (research papers and whatnot). I’m particularly excited about the auto-duplexing, because I can save half my paper that way and I might actually have a fighting chance of getting a staple through some of these research papers. In fact, I’m kinda surprised at how excited I am over… a printer.
As a disclaimer, I have not received the Brother HL-2270DW yet, so I can’t comment on whether or not it’s actually all that and a bag of chips, but the Amazon and Newegg reviews are pretty positive. Assuming it doesn’t catch fire and burn my house down* when I plug it in, I think I’ll be happy with it.
* If it does catch fire and burn my house down, I reserve the right to edit this post with vicious commentary representative of only a single user’s poor experience with the HL-2270DW, neglecting everyone else’s glowing reviews. You know, like a real blogger would do.
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Apparently there’s a sensor or something that tells you when the toner is running low on Brother toners, and it trips it way earlier than it should (i.e. you still have a lot of usable toner). My friend that works at Staples said there is a way to override it. You might want to check it out when your Bro tells you that it’s low on toner.
I think I remember reading something about that, Verent. Someone on Newegg suggested putting a black piece of electrical tape over the toner cartidge’s optical sensor to prevent it from tripping early.
Supposedly this model has newly designed cartridges. I don’t know if they fixed that issue or not, though.
At this point, I’m obviously biased, since HP essentially paid for my printer with the amount of complimentary ink they gave me
. Our printers are pretty well matched in terms of throughput (OfficeJet something-or-other) but I do notice the black ink going a little quickly (or maybe not too quickly, just depends on how you look at it, considering the amount of papers I print)