Abd possibly reliable.

Does it even exist? Our dell 1235 (Samsung) is ghosting badly, I can't seem to clean the drum, I don't have time to do it, actually, and, we need to print A3, which is actually the main reason why I am in for a new printer. But I am afraid I am asking too much... ?

Thank you for any recommendation you may have!

As far as reliability goes, and the A3 part, I would suggest that you look into a second hand HP8500DN or something similar. They're large and clunky, and the consumables aren't the cheapest, but they're quite fast and last forever. They'll do duplex as well, and you can pick them up for fairly small amounts of money. Multi-sheet feeder bins are available, and all sort of accessories.

Most of the older HP industrial lasers are a much better buy if you're going to print more than a small amount. They're designed for pretty much continuous use. I have an 8000DN which is the mono version of the same one, and it has given me 3 paper jams in the last eight years, and gone through at least 15k sheets in that time. Which is a small fraction of the usage it's rated for per month. With the 2000 sheet feeder it cost me less than £100 GBP, and toner cartridges are cheap.

pca

Thanks PCA. I did not think about used ones... I'll give it a thought. It does seem quite a good idea given the cost!

Has anyone tested the new Offic class Inkjets? HP, Brother, and Epson have them. I've kept away from Ikjets since the 90s, but maybe technology has really improved?

I am not too concerned about slightly higher cost per page, as we do not print high volume at home. I do care about reliability, and value reasonably good print quality.

Inkjets give amazing quality, but every one I have ever used, except very expensive professional photo printers, suffer from the same problem. Unless they're used regularly (in some cases, every day) the heads WILL clog sooner or later. This gets really annoying at best, and expensive at worst.

Laser printers don't have quite the same quality, especially for photos, but you can at least leave them off for months, turn them on, and print. If you do a lot of printing they become much cheaper per page as well.

The thing to be careful is to be sure that the paper is dry. The only trouble I normally have is if the paper has been stored in such a way that it can get a little damp, such is in a cupboard on a concrete floor. Then it tends to stick together, and you get paper feed problems. The same thing can happen if the printer is in an area with high humidity.

Keep them dry and warm and they work for a very long time, particularly the heavy-duty industrial class ones.

pca

I've never had an HP that didn't have feed problems. Even the "legendary" Laserjet III was problematic. I have no idea how they ever got a good rep...

I went with Okidata a few years ago. I've got a C5500N color laser that's never given me a second of grief.

I've always owned inkjets and always HP ones. I've never had a head clog, even though I typically print half a dozen times a year.

Admittedly I don't have a great sample size, as over the last 15 years I've only needed to own 3 HP inkjet printers because they just kept going and going.

That said, my latest HP now has print heads in the printer rather than in the cartridge, so maybe this one will be different. No clogs though two years in.

I used to have a cheap Samsung laser printer, with "Xerox" branded around it. In addition to useless copy protection technology applied to the toner cartridges (the physically compatible and cheaper "Samsung"-branded toner didn't work, but the "Xerox"-branded toner, for more money, worked fine), one of the plastic bits deep in the paper path died and that was its end.

Our current printer at home is a workgroup-grade Samsung CLP-620ND. This monster runs double-sided color and cost only $310 in 2010. (The newest CLP-680ND is a similar price. Samsung offers one with a scanner and such built-in that's double that price.)

This time around, when the toner ran out, I bought third-party toner. One of the colors had some issues (more copy protection?) and they promptly sent me a replacement.

Three years in, it's still working fine for our light-duty use. I'd recommend one for anything short of photo printing, at which it would presumably suck. My only caveat is that the Samsung print drivers on my Mac have a check-box for "black optimization" which basically takes RGB values of (0,0,0) and maps them to no color and all black toner. If you don't check that box, then black text will have undesirable color halos around it. Why on earth this isn't the default setting for the printer, and why on earth there's no way to check that box once and have the Mac remember the setting... I'll never know.

For the same reason that "Toner Out Override" isn't the default setting on my HP CP2025DN color printer. Samsung wants you to burn more color toner so that (Doh!) you'll buy more Samsung toner.

Setting the Toner Out Override on my HP has cut my toner costs by about 30% by letting me use toner cartridges until they are actually empty, rather than replacing them when HP says they are empty. If the Override isn't turned on, the printer flat stops working until I put in a new toner cartridge even though the old cartridge has many pages of printing left in it.

tanstaafl.

No A3 suggestion? A3 multifunction seems harder to find.