Laser printer recommendations

[#1]

Quote from: HPsauce

Quote from: Hairy +1 on a 2nd hand laser. +2   It's a very long time since I bought a laser printer, I just pick them up on a Freecycle. Usually a quick clean of the insides and rollers and a new toner cartridge (often given away too!) and they're up and working. My current collection is a LaserJet 6P (bombproof and my main everyday printer on W7x64, shared across my network), Brother HL-1250, Samsung ML-1510 and HP Laserjet1300.

+3
I nabbed a dead Konica-Minolta 3100 QMS from freecycle. The bloke said he'd got it and another laser printer from someone who said he could have the working one if he took the dud with it. Needless to say I got lucky and got the dud. Got it home, replaced the memory someone had pinched out of it and it fired up and started printing off test pages with beautiful graphics. The poor bloke that gave it to me was gutted when i told him lol.. his was a B&W and the print quality was nothing like that of the one he gave me.
I've probably had it 4 years.. maybe even 5 and in that time only had one glitch with it where I had to half dismantle it - turned out to be a gear out of sync. I realigned it and it just continued to rumble. This printer isn't second hand either, when I rang konica up about the sync glitch they'd got two or three previously registered owners on their system! I've still not replaced any of the toners either and it's done something crazy like 112k pages.
It really will be a sad day when it dies as it's done me so well. To think.. my missus nearly hit the roof when i brought it in as it's huge lol. She didn't want a dead printer in the living room at all.. until i fixed it! Now she loves the thing to bits too. No ink costs, double sided printing, no smudging, virtually no cost, photo quality... How women change their minds eh?

[#2]

I bought a Brother laser off a chap from eBay - he'd listed it for weeks before and dropped the price each week.
I bid at a tenner and won it. Unfortunately it didn't work so I dropped him a message and he told me to bring it back which I did.
He then told me to pick another printer - he had a room full of 9 Brother Laser printers. He then changed his mind, told me he'd had enough of them and said I could take them all at no extra cost 
Out of the 9 printers, two were duff (including the one I'd bought) and I managed to get 7 working printers out of the others with very little effort. As a bonus, the printer I ended up keeping was a high end model with nothing wrong with it at all. The other printers (including the non working one) were given to various people in need of printers and then the remainder given away through Freegle.

[#3]

Yeah it really has to be said, second hand laser printers (or 4th / 5th hand in my case lol) really are wonderful machines when you grab a good one. I'd never touch a second hand inkjet again. i did have a second hand lexmark once which was actually very good (the cartridges lasted a long time too) but I only bought that to get the laptop that came with it. In a strange twist of fate the laptop was junk and the printer was solid lol.

[#4]

Lexmark was created in 1995, after IBM sold off its printer manufacturing arm.
So Lexmark started out with a reputation for reliability.

Quote

In August 2012, Lexmark announced that it would stop production of its inkjet printer line.

Say no more. 

[#5]

Yeah they did have a bad reputation but I have to say I never had any real hassle with lexmark printers plus the cartridges would last an age compared to other brands.

[#6]

I've settled for the Brother HL-2250DN Compact Network Mono Laser Printer with Auto Duplex.
It's had lots of good reviews. The toners are a bit expensive but I don't think I'll be using it enough to worry about that for a while and will investigate compatibles at the relevant time. I've also got a spare HomePlug to connect with the two already in use.
I think at £63 I've got a bargain!
Thanks for all the advice. I did look into 2nd-hand but I'm just not that comfortable about being able to sort any potential issue at this time.

[#7]

That's a very good price !
If it is as good as the other Brother printers I've owned and run, you'll get many years of service out of it.

[#8]

It gets better...
Placed the order yesterday around 14:30 with free delivery and it just arrived 5 minutes ago by DPD even though the confirmation email said expected delivery to be between 16th and 21st July.

[#9]

Refill kits are around a tenner
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-x-BROTHER-HL-2250DN-HL-2250DN-100g-Toner-refill-with-easy-refill-instruc...

[#10]

Refill kits for lasers aren't worth bothering with.

[#11]

Never investigated the refill avenue.
But I'd be interested in the pros and cons of going that way.

[#12]

Pro's = cheaper, quite often as good as the manufacturer toner.
Cons = can be a bit messy depending on the kit. Technically could invalidate warranty but to be honest, on a printer that cheap it doesn't really matter.

[#13]

Installed and set up printer this evening. All went quite smoothly except a small issue with the IP address which I have detailed here if anyone is able to help.
Very pleased with it so far. Doesn't feel particularly sturdy, though but, so far, happy with the print quality even at 300dpi. It seems fast and not very loud.

[#14]

Your router should allow you to allocate a unique ip address for the burned in MAC address on the printer ethernet card.

[#15]

Thanks fox.
Rather than have two threads covering the IP problem I'll address any replies back to the thread in Broadband and Routers.