I've finally had it with having to maintain a Leopard partition for the sole purpose of running my Lexmark Z515 printer...no Snow Leopard drivers ever released, and now discontinued, and I'm ready for a new printer.

My needs are reeeally minimal... I go months without even using the printer other than to run a test page to keep the ink flowing, and I doubt that I print as many as 150 pages/year.

Bearing in mind that I don't mind spending some extra bucks for quality and a good (ink) cost/page ratio, can anybody recommend both an appropriate printer and a good source? (It's not even mandatory that it print color.)

Note that Staples is the only store around that sells such stuff, so I guess it'll have to be an on-line source.

Thanks.

My last three printers have come from Staples. Their prices are competitive and they have a good selection on their web site. I generally order from the web site with delivery to the store to save shipping and handling charges.

Other than a laser, I have not seen a b/w printer in years. Canon and Brother seem to do a good job of keeping current drivers for Macs and to me that is a big thing. Epson and HP are pretty proprietary about their drivers and HP has not been good about updating Mac drivers for older printers. With Epson, if you don't like their drivers you can always use Gutenprint.

I've had a Canon Pixma IP500 since Oct 2005 and it has not given me a bit of trouble. I refill the cartridges. Both of my daughters bought Canon printers based on my experience (one about two years ago and the other about three) and both have been happy.

Staples....I've bought plenty of stuff from Staples (although not my printer) and have never had any issues whether in-store or on-line. The couple of times I wanted to return a purchase, it was not a problem.

I bought a Brother b/w laser (2040, I think) from Staples a few years ago for around $100 and have had no trouble with it. finally replaced the original cartridge last year. great quality, hooked up to my Airport Express so it's networked.

Staples also has a policy of "110% price guarantee". It pays to find the cheapest price you can on any item, then ask them to match it (less 10%).

My own experience (as I think I recounted elsewhere) involved the USRobotics modem which Staples was selling at ca $86. Online I found it for $49. They accepted that and I got it for 10% less than that (which means they sold it to me for ca 50% of their asking price).

it's rare to find a place that matches online (non local) prices. is that normal staples policy?

In Canada it seems to be the normal policy. Of course, it could have been a fluke in the store I patronized and only because the salesperson might not have been au courant on the store's policy.
That said, I've found that most stores, not wanting to lose business, will match any printed advertisement, local or otherwise.

In December I was looking for a bluetooth earpiece that one of my daughters wanted from Santa and I took an on-line printout into a Future Shop store (large national electronics retailer in Canada) and they matched the price.

It may have had to do with the fact that the other retailer was Canadian and also has mortar and brick operations, so the comparison was almost apples-to-apples. I say "almost" because the other retailer was only offering the better price on-line.

Future Shop owns Best Buy in Canada.
Their price-matching policy is 10% of the difference, unlike Staples, which is 10% of the price.
That's how I saved 20 cents on the Apple Battery Charger which I bought at Best Buy (against Apple Store's online price).

I'm nor sure if you mean the policy is Best Buy or Future Shop or both. In any case I guess they have some flexibility...or were not having a great month......as the matched price was about 8 bucks lower, not 10% of the difference.

Indeed, you must have gotten a bonus and/or a clerk who wasn't paying attention.

Responding to the most recent post.

First, thanks to everybody for the heads-up on Staples; I've been put off by their prices on less expensive stuff and never imagined that they'd offer good printer values, but it looks like they indeed do. (In-store, though, 80-85% of their displayed merchandise is HP, so you've got to go on-line to do any real shopping.)

Second, I've now taken a quick look at the laser printers in my price range, and they all come up short in one respect or another. (By way of example, Roger's 2040 has been discontinued and replaced by the 2240, which has a nasty reputation for running its fan full-blast for 10-15 minutes after printing just one copy.)

So I guess it's onward to inkjet printers.

More (maybe much) later.

Actually, I got what I was supposed to get. I've since checked on their policy and the 10% of difference that you refer to is in addition to price matching. That is, they will match the price and go a bit further by also giving 10% of what the price difference was.

If you got the same deal, your 20 cents might have been in addition to a two dollar reduction to match prices.

At any rate, it is interesting (per Virtual1's query) that the bricks & mortar store matched an on-line price.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant: Price matching less 10% of the difference.
Staples matches price less 10% of the whole (ultimate selling) price:
If an item to be matched costs $100 at Staples and elsewhere costs $80, Staples will match the $80 and tack on an additional discount of !0% (on $80 = $8). Thus the price becomes $72.

You've contradicted you self... (1) "Price matching less 10% of the difference" does NOT equal (2) "Staples matches price less 10% of the whole (ultimate selling) price."

Applying rule (1) to your example would result in a final price of $78.

Edit: Or did I respond incorrectly to an unclear post?

You responded incorrectly, though I'm not sure I'd call the post unclear; depends on how acute one's memory is, I suppose. The two statements you find contradictory refer to two different merchant policies, as grelber reported earlier:

And further...

I was talking about the two different selling policies — that of Staples and that of Best Buy & Future Shop.

For the record, irrespective of what published policies can be found online or elsewhere, in the final analysis it's what I have/had to pull out of my wallet to pay for the item.

Following is the exact wording/pricing (before taxes) from the Staples' receipt for the purchased modem:

USB MODEM [Staples price] 89.95
110% Price Guarantee [on] $46.99 –47.26 [= 42.96 + 4.30 (or 10%)]
Form of Proof 01-Circular/ROP
Subtotal 42.69 [53% less than Staples price]

Need more be said?!

1. In talking about the two different selling policies you juxtaposed two out of context statements (with neither clarification nor links), and I fell victim to the apparent contradiction.

2. I wasn't questioning the great buy you got when I quoted the Staples US and CA policies, merely pointing out that that's all that I or any other consumer has to go on. (In your example, "Form of Proof 01-Circular/ROP" suggests that you may have benefitted from some sort of promotion, and if not, were you aware in advance of the refund you were going to get or surprised by it, and if the former, how were you made aware of it?)

At the risk of further offending the sensibilities of the moderators with respect to the errant tangential path this thread has taken ...

Staples has numerous internal computer codes in their cash register system to account for the vagaries of their price-matching policy (since they don't keep the circulars or other materials or forward same to their accounting department — imagine the paper movement that would generate), and the store manager can override even those. Hence they punched in 01 as proof of another price they were willing to match. So that's their process.

As for the reference to Circular/ROP there:
I went to customer service (as mentioned) and asked the clerk to look online for the price match (I forget where, but it was some electronics store with Web presence). He found it and for whatever reason (he may have been too harried to consider whether it was legitimate from Staples' perspective ... who knows?) agreed with me, printed out the ad and told me to take it to the checkout. I did, they accepted it, and the rest is history (as documented in the receipt information given above).

Finally, I was surprised, because I didn't believe they'd do what they did. It may have been a comedy of errors, but I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

And just to bring it back to the original topic ...
Both Brother and Lexmark have new drivers available on Apple's download site. Both brands of laser printers are excellent. I chose my Lexmark E120n on the basis price (as noted earlier) and have enjoyed it for the past couple years.

You might want to jump on Staples printer sale. There's just one more day.
[Of course, it may be only in this neck of the (Canadian) woods.]

Thanks for the clarification.

So it looks like what we consumers have got to do is ignore Staples's posted policy, find whatever there is to find, and pray.

OK... Worth a shot.

> I chose my Lexmark E120n on the basis price (as noted earlier) [....]

You mentioned it in a different thread, and, as with your other post that so confused me, it would be helpful if you'd post links when they are appropriate. (Anyhow, it's been discontinued.)

Thanks for the heads-up on the sale, but it doesn't appear to be going on in my neck of the woods.

An update as a consideration to those who replied: After doing a bunch of shopping and reading a bunch of reviews I've decided that booting into Leopard on the rare occasions that I print is preferable to the major give-aways in size and/or silence that will accompany a new printer.

Better late than never: evaluate printers by looking at total printing costs.
Ink-onomics: Can you save money by spending more on your printer?

Thanks for the link. It confirms my gut feeling that ink cost is pretty much a meaningless factor considering the infinitesimal amount of printing I do.

Now, if I could only find a printer that only prints and isn't an edifice.

You might reread that article a bit more closely. If you truly do only an infinitesimal amount of printing, as the article indicated, there is a high probability the ink in an inkjet may have dried up. That can be very annoying as well as very expensive. I once had a seldom used Epson printer and almost every time I tried to use it, I spent ten or fifteen minutes running and re-running the head cleaning cycle. In the long run not only was that time consuming, but it did make the per page ink cost significant.

I have not had that problem with the Canon I replaced it with.

I already digested that, but thanks for reinforcing it.

I'm ready to buy, but I haven't found anything that both meets my specs and gets good reviews, so I've given up looking for the time being. (That, and I hate shopping!)

My per-page ink cost, even if it's exorbitant, just plain doesn't translate into enough bucks to call an economic emergency.

Every time I turn around I find a place like Staples selling superb B&W laser printers for under a hundred bucks.
If you're only using a printer occasionally, you certainly don't require color. And a laser printer doesn't complain (ie, have ink jets which clog up) if you don't use it frequently.
Even though you can't find a Lexmark E120n, I'll just note (again, I think) that the small toner cartridge it came with (ostensibly up to 200 copies) lasted for over 600 copies over a period of 2 years. I'm just barely into my 2000-copy toner cartridge (which only cost $65 or so).

FWIW my experience has been much the same as Grelber's. The only difference is I have a Brother laser. I have a preference for Brother because unlike some manufacturers they stick with the standard CUPS and TWAIN systems rather than their own proprietary drivers.

Jawohl!
Brother and Lexmark run neck and neck in the laser printer market — pretty much identical (and positive) reviews, pricing, etc.

Thanks to both you and grelber for your insights, but the laser printers I've looked at so far either haven't got as small a footprint as I'd like (*), draw nasty reviews, or both.

(*) The Lexmark I'd like to replace measures 5" x 16" x 8" deep, and I value that tiny footprint enough to both spend a few extra bucks on ink cartridges and boot into Leopard on occasion to perpetuate it. As I said, though, I'm still looking, but I'm not on a mission.

Aside: I've never run into an issue with a clogged inkjet, but I have run into dried or drying cartridges, which I now know (thanks to the nice people at YoYoInk! ) can be rejuvenated, for a while at least, by soaking their print-head in warm water.

I've never experienced either condition. I get my cartridges refilled by a local vendor, Island InkJet, and the refilled cartridges are in small sealed bags (the same kind of seal as sandwich bags). They go into a drawer, ready to pop into the printer when one is used up, and it will sometimes be several months before I have to take one out. Never had a problem.

> Never had a problem.

Maybe you're just lucky, but more than likely you're using your printer often enough to head the drying problems off at the pass.

I've never have issues with Lexmark or remanufactured cartridges out of the packaging, only after they've sat idle in my printer for weeks or months.

Perhaps you're right. Although I don't print much, it's not likely to be more than a few days before I print something....even if it's a single page....and the printer would never be idle as long as weeks or months.

Too bad you can't find an E120n. Mine measures 15"W x 8"H x 9"D.

Here's the bad news.

This, though:

> Mine measures 15"W x 8"H x 9"D.

Lexmark: Size (in. - H x W x D) 9.8 x 15.3 x 14.6 in.

I guess yours is an older model, and it is bigger than I'd prefer, but the difference is a deal-breaker.

Lexmark: Recommended Monthly Page Volume 250 - 2,000 pages

Is that for real? I don't think I've printed 250 pages in as many years as I've been running my printer.

Lexmark: Noise Level, Idle 26 dBA
Print Noise Level, Operating 49 dBA

Is that as loud as it sounds? And must the machine be left powered up at all times, making the "Idle" noise level all the more important?

I've consistently run into all those issues during the course of my shopping.

The E120n is pretty quiet; I don't have a decibel meter, so I can't help you out there.

It's rated at 10,000 copies per month.

I only turn it on when I need to make a copy. It runs through its set-up and diagnostics in ca 30 sec and then it's ready to roll.

I bought mine at the end of October 2008 (2.5 years after reading the review of it), 3 years earlier to the day of my acquiring my new iMac.
I ran it on OS 9 and when I updated my iMac's software, Apple immediately installed an updated driver version for Lion.

Decibel (Loudness) Comparison Chart

> It's rated at 10,000 copies per month.

But does "Lexmark: Recommended Monthly Page Volume 250 - 2,000 pages" leave me at some sort of risk if I print no more than one page most months?

The sound level and on/off aspects are important because the printer and my bed are not far apart.

Thanks, Jon.

I can't imagine how it might. Non-use doesn't equal misuse or abuse. Sometimes I don't use mine more than once a week.

What comes to mind is my Dust Buster's battery that was designed to be discharged and recharged frequently and died from disuse atrophy...not necessarily analogous, but in the realm thereof.

The most likely harm a printer might suffer from so little use would be stopped up ink nozzles. Depending on the printer manufacturer those might be on the ink cartridge (HP) which may result in needing a new cartridge, built into the printer itself (Epson) which may result in having to replace the printer, or a separate user installable part (Canon) which may result in having to replace the print head. In any of the three cases it might be cheaper and/or easier to replace the entire printer given the price of low end inject printers these days.

Ten or more years ago I would have suggested a thermal printer as your cheapest and best option for no more than you use a printer, but I don't even know if anyone makes anything other than a label or receipt thermal printer these days. For one page a month or less, you might consider burning a CD and taking it to the nearest copy center to print it. It might be cheaper in the long run, would take zero space on your desktop, and present no possibility of any noise issues.

My Brother printer makes no sound at all when it's not being used, so unless you're printing while you sleep...

but I guess this is all a moot (mute!) point, eh?

Sorry, but I'm confused... The Lexmark printer that specifies "Recommended Monthly Page Volume 250 - 2,000 pages" is a laser printer, not an inkjet printer, so stopped up ink nozzles wouldn't be a potential problem...I think?

A thermal printer has never even crossed my mind because of the low quality and high cost of paper, and the nearest copy center obstinately insists on keeping its own hours, not mine ( ), and, at any rate, I'm a bit too disorganized to be able to count on having everything up to snuff even if I do manage to get there during store hours.

Thanks for the thoughts, though.

Bottom line still looks like booting into Leopard to run my Lexmark is my best option, but I'll keep on shopping for a laser printer...presumably my best option.

Thanks for adding to my info arsenal, roger.

As I said, I'm still in the market.

I had a thermal printing word processor / typewriter in highschool and it worked pretty well for for time. Yes, paper was expensive. The special cartridges you could put in it to print on normal paper were very expensive. Eventually elements in the head started going out and I got horizontal blank lines in my printing so I had to scrap it. Nothing is foolproof. But at the time, (1984-1989) it was awesome to be able to type up papers with that, my hand cramped quickly with pen.

I think a lot of the "problems" with refilled cartridges is simple FUD stirred up by the ink cart manufacturers. Ink in those carts is incredibly high per ounce. They sell their printers at very low margin (some say at below cost) and expect to make it up by selling overpriced ink. I'm surprised wikipedia doesn't have an article on The Razor Blade Game .

I've also heard someone quip that "you get more ink when you buy a ballpoint pen" when referring to the small amount of ink that can come in a $25 ink cartridge.

I've also seen laser printers doing the same thing recently They'll sell their laser printer without any toner, or with "sample" size toner carts. The last one I looked up, a full reload of toner (for FULL toner carts) cost more than they were selling the printer for, and that one didn't come with ANY toner. Suckers. I bet there were a LOT of them with sticker shock to realize that their printer arrived with NO toner, and it was going to cost more than they paid for the printer, to buy toner before they could even use it. heh. Always read the fine print, and ALWAYS re-read the fine print when the price appears too good to be true.

> I've also heard someone quip that "you get more ink when you buy a ballpoint pen" when referring to the small amount of ink that can come in a $25 ink cartridge.

Maybe not that far off the mark.

My Lexmark cartridges used to specify 205 pages when printing on 20% of the page (which I've never figured out how to measure), but now specify "Regular Yield" whatever that may be.

And your comments about toner cost and inclusion echo many complaints I've read about many different printers.

Thanks for kicking in.

I'd be interesting to know how many cartridges it would take to make a gallon. The cost per gallon would sure make gas look like a bargain.

It would make liquor look like a bargain!

check out PC World's take on it. Then read HP's response too.

Someone's already done the measuring and the math, and concludes that printer ink (in new carts) is currently going for around $5000/gal- wow. I knew it was bad but that still surprises me.

I see a comparison between printers/ink and cars/gas, suggesting printers that will only use their carts is like buying a Ford and then having to buy gas from Ford at some huge price. Bug then I realized, I'd be expecting to pay more at the pump if I could drive for three months between fill-ups.

And if you only had to pay a couple of grand for the car.

Well, it's taken a while, but after looking at the printers offered by Brother, Canon, Epson, HP, and Lexmark I've bought a Canon imageCLASS LBP6000 laser printer (Reviewed here ). Talk about minimal, but so are my needs!

The only other printer I found that fit my parameters is the HP LaserJet Pro P1102w (Reviewed here ), but it would have cost $141 as opposed to the $78 I paid for the Canon, and it isn't reviewed all that much more favorably; further, it doesn't offer any additional functionality that I can foresee needing, its greatest attraction being its color.

Apropos of joemike's concerns about drivers, the Canon's got a well-documented installation issue, an equally well-documented less-than-knowledgeable tech support staff issue, and an also equally well-documented workaround, so I'm assuming that I'll be OK with it.

Edit: Forgot to mention that the Canon and HP have roughly equal per page costs.

Well done.

Well...done, anyhow.

Actually, I'm happy with my decision.

My Canon laser printer prints significantly better and faster (even with its 8-9 second warmup) than my (ancient) Lexmark inkjet printer did, and it's not at all noisy in the bargain.

Its down-side, a big disappointment, is its inability to print via AirPort Express as I assumed (naively, perhaps) it would based on its easily available specs: "Standard Interface - USB Device 2.0 Hi-Speed" Digging deeper into its documentation, though, I found: "Interface: When connecting with USB (The USB port on Macintosh)"

But balancing that out is the fact that even if the HP can print as I'd like it would take me more than 30 years to average its higher price down to (an extra) $0.01/copy…not particularly cost effective, and not a price I'd care to pay to save having to move my MBP about 3 feet and cable it up every once in a rare while when I need to print.

Canon may keep their drivers updated, but judging from the documentation they provide both in the box and on-line, they're not particularly Mac friendly.

The installation problem I mentioned earlier is really an example of their forcing Mac users to dig for instructions that are readily available to PC users in the form of a quick-start guide; Mac users, on the other hand, are merely directed to the users guide buried in the driver download, and without even a heads-up that the installation process is unintuitive and needs to be researched before it's attempted.

Further, the PC users guide (which, for some reason, is more than twice as big as the Mac users guide) has been updated twice since the Mac users guide was last updated.

I hope this helps others with their shopping.