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Printing, Copying and More Printing - How do you make it cheap


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So, now that we are officially homeschooling I am finding that our inkjet printer is working overtime and I am not even employing it to print all the many things I would really like to (all of the e-books). Have you found a cheap and effective way for all of this copying and printing? Is there a magic printer I should know about? A great place to buy ink? A printing service that is cheaper than at home?

 

FWIW, we only have been printing black ink.

 

Thanks!

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I don't know what type of printer you have, but I ended up eventually buying a Canon MX870 printer and a continuous ink system. I bought these from Amazon and found everything to be very low cost. Hope that helps some. If you can't buy new, you could always print in grayscale.

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0032AN4M6/ref=ord_cart_shr?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00426X55A/ref=ord_cart_shr?ie=UTF8&m=A3852DXE6WPKWN

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003JTZ6XU/ref=ord_cart_shr?ie=UTF8&m=A3852DXE6WPKWN

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Hi,

I don't know if you are particular about your copies being in color....I purchased a brother DCP 7040 laser printer several years back and I am very happy with it. I refill my toner for dirt cheap. 3 refill bottles from ebay cost me $23.00(and that was shipping included)Each bottle gives me around 1400 pages so I have toner that will last a while. I no longer have to pick and choose what pages are more important!:001_smile:

 

I highly recommend a laser printer.

 

Penny

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Our (color) laser printer/copier is the best homeschool purchase we've ever made. Well worth the money, and we're saving on the cost of ink.

 

Which one did you get and how did you choose? We are have been searching for a color laser printer, but I can't seem to figure out how to compare models. I feel as if I am swimming in water over my head - and I refuse to spend that much money until I have a reasonable system for making a choice.

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I agree with the laser if you are going to print. We bought a used laser printer for $25. It came with enough ink to print at least 2 reams of paper.

 

Just recently, though, we bought a Kindle, as this would save time and space, not to mention paper and ink, and the Kindle is working well so far. :)

 

Take care,

Suzanne

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I set our printer to default to "fast print" or "draft print". It seems to use significantly less ink, and only rarely is the darkness a problem.

 

If you're doing this, it also helps to set the default to "black-and-white" or "greyscale" or whatever your printer's setting is for "this thing might have color in it but I only am using the black ink".

 

My printer takes color ink but I just don't refill it.

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I used to spend about $45 for one black cartridge for our inkjet printer. I discovered that Office Depot refills/recycles cartridges, so I gave it a try. To my surprise, the recycled cartridges work beautifully. I can tell absolutely no difference between a brand new cartridge and the refilled cartridge. Best of all, the refill is only $11!

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My printer is a DELL V305 and it has been a nightmare as far as ink cost. I would definitely say we are low-volume users. A cartridge lasts less than a month. Now, I don't buy through Dell's website, so I don't know if that would last longer, but the ones I purchase at Walmart last NO time. I'm in the market for a different printer for the same reason.

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I love to print. We've been using Epson inkjet printers for 10 - 12 years. I buy generic ink from online sources.

 

I generally print in black and white only. I do (if I remember) try to print in color once in awhile so the printheads don't dry up.

 

Right now I can buy a 14 pk (3 of each color and 5 black) of generic cartridges for $23 shipped.

 

I used to kill a printer a year but I have one that has lasted 3 years now. I have a 2 year old all-in-one that isn't printing well enough to print coupons but is still fine for everyday printing.

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I agree with the laser printer option. I have two of them both HP. Our older one is a model 2600n, which they no longer make, but they have very similar ones. Our new one is a CP2025 it cost us $350 upfront, but we got it on a great sale, we would have paid the regular cost but just got lucky when we bought it. The ink is about $100 per toner cartridge but the black usually lasts us 9 months to a year (about 5-6 reams of paper) and the colors usually last us 18-24 months. I print in color quite often and we use the printer for more than just school. The older one is now for the kids fun printing. I also love that each color is a separate cartridge, unlike many low cost inkjets where you have to buy the tri-color cartridges. Another plus is they are fast (mine prints about 20 pages/minute) and if you're printing a lot of copies you don't have to worry about smudging, or if someone drips something on the paper (say for science lab sheets etc) their isn't running ink.

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Thank you for all the tips! I think I am going to go with a laser printer. There are a few good ones on our local craigslist for $50. I was drooling over a $300 one that is about $800 new but I think at this point that is pushing our real needs. LOL.

 

I found one that is a combo printer, fax, scanner and copier but the only downfall is that it doesn't have a flatbed scanner. :( Luckily, most of the things I scan are single sheets of paper but it is nice to scan from a book. I think we'll keep our inkjet around for scanning from books.

 

I was having the same problem as others. We replaced the black ink cartridge in late August and it is all ready at 20% and I've hardly used it at all to the point of being ridiculous. Up until now we hardly used our printer so I had no idea how bad it was. We have a nice 3 in one HP photosmart.

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We were spending way to much on ink for the inkjet printer too. I finally broke down and purchased a Brother MFC-9840CDW Color Laser Multifunction and it is one of the best purchases I've ever made for our educational needs.

 

I really don't think you'll be sorry with your decision to get a laser printer. It has saved me so much in ink costs already and I've only had mine for 6 months. :)

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I agree with everyone about the laser printer. Really search the big box office supply store ads. I recently got a Brother laser printer which came with one toner and the store deal threw in two more for free. Our walk out cost for all of that was about $65. (It was a back to school special.)

 

If you can wait until the Black Friday ads come out, I'm sure there will be some super great deals then.

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I've also been told that you can send document files to an office store and get them printed and bound, if that's an option for you.

 

That said, I'd LOVE to have a laser printer. I print a lot, but also do most of my printing in draft. I've also found that having a multi cartridge printer is a bit cheaper too since you can buy individuals.

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I don't know if it's been suggested already, as I only read the first page of the thread, but we've been buying our ink from Lasermonks.com. Following the tradition in the Middle Ages, these modern day monks refill ink nowadays in ink cartridges. Much of their proceeds go to charities as well. You are able to pick which ones you fancy.

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I vote laser printer as well. We just bought a B&W one for $70. With all the back to school sales, I got several reams of paper for free or under a dollar. We got toner for under $20, so with all those combined, our cost per page is under a penny. Best purchase ever.

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I've also been told that you can send document files to an office store and get them printed and bound, if that's an option for you.

 

 

Although, this is exactly how I justified the purchase of our laser printer. ;) When I priced printing the large quantities I needed before the beginning of the year, their price was more than the cost of the printer.

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There's online / downloadable curricula and older books. I also print curriculum suggestions (obviously not necessary if you exclusively use WTM as written). Additionally I print activity type things for my (younger) kids. I have Startwrite for copywork and handwriting. Just downloaded a few books from Scholastic today!

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Not counting e-books (which weren't invented when I was hsing, lol), what is it y'all print??? I hardly ever needed to photocopy anything when I was hsing.

 

:confused:

 

Well, we have printed a few e-book based curriculums. But besides that, we photocopy many consumable items so that they can be reused for multiple children. We have things like ancient history maps on CD so that it can be used multiple times that I print out. We print out color pages, handwriting pages and all sorts of other miscellaneous items that my daughter wants to do from free websites. I photocopy my daughter's letters before we send them in the mail so that I have copies of her progress. We are part of a parent partnership program so we copy invoices, receipts, student progress reports, etc.

 

There have been many things that I haven't printed or copied because the cost outweighed the benefit. There have been some ebooks and some consumables that I wanted to copy rather than buy/use for convenience and reuse but the cost per page didn't make sense.

 

I'm thinking a laser printer and eventually something like a Kindle will be a good fit for us. The kindle I can do without so that will be a perk for later down the road.

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I purchased this online and on sale. It came with a decent sized cartridge. SO it only took us 6 months to re-coop the cost v. what we were spending on ink.

 

I usually duplex print 2 "smaller" sheets per side. This means I get four pages of text per sheet of paper so my notebooks aren't as stuffed OR as heavy. Marvelous!

 

WELL worth the investment! Like most things, I don't know WHY it took me so long to figure this one out. :001_smile:

 

Peace,

Janice

 

Enjoy your little people

Enjoy your journey

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To anwer a PP's question, I print out Math Mammoth pages, copy SOTW AG pages for the other two kids (future planning), print out Enchanted Learning's activity and coloring pages for my kids. My yearly planner is also a PDF file, and notebooking pages.

 

Dh bought a printer with reasonable price cartridge. We're very pleased with it. It's an Epson Workforce.

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