My wife loves her some hard copy. I print a couple times a year. We bought a Canon 920MX or some such, nice unit, but the ink cartridges are about the size of a thimble and as expensive as Kristal (I think that’s a high end Champagne? not the meth kind, ahem)
I have to say the product placement stuff on BB is getting me down…
well the social stack store stuff is kinda annoying but not sure what their contract is… the rest actually are reviews from the staff cause they actually like the product vs. product placement. i think @jlw posted about land of the lost a bit ago actually.
Brother B&W Laserjet. Worth the money and desk space. I’m a student and turning shit in hardcopy is still required by most of my professors. Then there’s reading and proofreading, which I find is more difficult on screen. I print out labels for lab stuff, and I always keep physical SDS (Safety data sheets) for chemicals. I also may have a project coming up that requires pamphlet production. So there are a lot of uses for a printer, it just depends on the user.
I don’t like Canon for precisely this reason. I’d recommend an Epson Workforce over this model. Text quality isn’t the best, but it’s not bad, and it’s pretty solid all around otherwise, especially when you’re thinking about ink value. A 252 high capacity black cartridge from Epson gives ~1,100 pages at 5% coverage. That’s pretty good for $30-$40.
Are you going to start paying to read BoingBoing? I mean this is a reality in web-based publishing. I don’t get disappointed when my favorite podcasts push Audible’s free trial on me. I don’t see how they’re going to keep the lights on without ads. The thing says, “sponsored by…” rather than pretending to be something else. That being said, it’s a solid laser printer. It’s principal drawback is lower image quality than other printers of its class, but it makes up for it with speed and other factors. (I sell printers all day at work.)
I made a scan of my signature a few years ago, cut it out so it was on a transparent background, and never looked back. There are few things in the world easier than opening a PDF and stamping your signature on it.
No one has ever complained, even forms that say they have to be printed out and signed and scanned. YMMV if you’re dealing with stuff lawyers are involved with.
An added bonus is that I can always sign the pretty version of my signature, instead of my normal version that looks crappy.
seconded. thats what we settled on and I really like it. as said above the ink tanks are huge. and it honestly was not a lot more expensive than a standard consumer grade printer.
also keep an eye out on craigslist for used laser printers.
I’m a telecommuter and have a Brother laser monochrome printer/scanner. I probably use it more for scanning like when I have to sign expense reports and stuff. I print concert tix, too. 
It’s a relative bargain and the carts are not expensive.
http://m.brother-usa.com/Printer/ModelDetail/1/HL2280DW/Overview#.Vsk3IEU76nM
When my then significant other was in college we bought a HL-1440 for BW document printing. It was inexpensive and surprisingly durable.
I too am a fan of Brother printers. My MFC-7460DN has never let me down and the cost per page is IIRC the lowest of any multi function available in Japan. Works flawlessly with OSX, wireless, full duplex printing and scanner works over the network as well. Its not a color laser but that just what I have to live with in my budget.
As for desks, I built my own since nothing on the market in Japan fit my needs. 2Mx1.5 pine slab big enough for an iMac, Mackie MCU, 8 channel expander and C4 knob unit as well as some other gear and powered monitors. Slide out keyboard tray is 1M wide and has space for keyboard, trackpad, Wacom and a small ART 4 channel passive stereo mixer. Very flexible little device.
Immmm, I wasn’t bellyaching about the ads (nearly half the front page screen is ads, nbd)
Just this rather brazen product placement - ‘hey BB here’s (gizmo XYZ) can you write a review?’ wink! Even that seems kinda tame in comparison to the flood of USB charge bricks, odd Chinese gizmo junk and outright commercialism. I’ve been reading BB since it was a 'zine, and this article just left a funky taste in my eyeballs. I’ve bought stuff on their recommendation, with some good results and some bad. BB is a bit more counter culture than most tech sites (ymmv)
Just seems odd that BB is so set on selling me some HP kit. And HP? Meg Whitman’s Waterloo? She’ll go down in history as slightly better than Carly Fiorina (patoooi!) Maybe she’ll run for President! swoon (gag)
This is now my favorite phrase this week. Thank you.
My wife is a childrens speech therapist and she prints huge volumes of therapy materials. Several hundred pages a week would not be unusual as she does a lot of group therapy and has to hand out booklets to each participant.
This also means that she churns through printers at a frighteningly fast rate - about one a year She has to print on card and acetate and this wears out printers pretty fast.
We went from cheapo inkjets to more expensive inkjets and now we’ve moved on to laser printers. The laser seems to be holding up after two years, but we have noticed that it is starting to squeak a bit.
We really should buy a big office grade printer, but cost and space constraints prevents that.
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