4KookieKids Posted December 3, 2013 Share Posted December 3, 2013 I am wondering what people find most economical and practical: printing at home with your own printer, or using a printing service (office max, staples, something online?). It seems to me that based on "expected" number of pages per print cartridge and our current printer, we're likely to break even printing stuff ourselves. I've looked at some online options, but what we save in printing, we spend in shipping! What have you all found that works? ETA: separate answers for bw and color would be great if you do things differently for each of those cases! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kirstenhill Posted December 3, 2013 Share Posted December 3, 2013 Getting a laser printer has been a great homeschooling investment. Each toner cartridge may cost more, but I may only have to buy once every two years. It is far less per page than paying to get things printed (not to mention gas and trouble of driving to office supply/print shops...none are very close to my house). I have a Brother MFC-9460. This model is a bit pricy, but we actually started out with a less expensive Brother laser printer that we purchased "open box", so got an excellent price on it. Then we had a lightning strike a couple years ago that fried a lot of our electronic devices. We took the insurance money and shifted things around a bit differently to purchase the currently, somewhat nicer printer. It's fast, does b/w and color, scans and copies, and even duplexes (prints on both sides without you flipping the paper). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prairiewindmomma Posted December 3, 2013 Share Posted December 3, 2013 We have a brother hl-2270dw. We use a high volume toner cartridge and save a ton by printing ourselves. In our area, the best price for b/w copies is .03. I can purchase copies and put them on an account. The normal price is .07/copy. The best color deal is .29/page. What I love about the Brother copier is that I can use the toner save mode, put two copies per page, and then autoduplex it. We save a lot of money by printing ourselves.....and honestly, not having to drive to a copy store with four young children in tow to stand there and copy things (or wait in line to have them copied or to pay) makes it well worth the investment. I used to spend hours and hours and hours each summer photocopying things (that I had the legal right to copy)....no more! Yay technology! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanchy Posted December 3, 2013 Share Posted December 3, 2013 We have HP all in one printer and I buy ink at local Cartridge World store. I do not count how many pages I print, and I print every day. All our activities printed from online resources are in color. I bought ink in September, and still use same cartridges. Ink is way cheaper at CW than in Staples or Office Depot. Some people say that printer won't last long, but we use this ink for almost two years, and printer still works well. We saved enough money to buy two printers every year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrissySC Posted December 4, 2013 Share Posted December 4, 2013 I have an old HP 1022 laser, black and white only. I can say that get between 2,000 to 4,000 or more pages for a 75-dollar cartridge. I can sometimes push more if I use draft print. I only print Math in color, which is a reason that I like MM. I paid 100 dollars for it on clearance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boscopup Posted December 4, 2013 Share Posted December 4, 2013 I have a b/w laser. Absolutely it's a ton cheaper to print at home. With name brand toner, it runs about 2cents/page (I tend to get paper free, so I don't count that cost - Staples runs free after rebate deals on paper often enough... DH just got a whole case that way on Black Friday). My friend got generic toner for the same printer (Brother 2270), and she said it worked just as well as the name brand. I haven't calculated cost per page for that toner, but the toner itself is $14 vs. $44, I believe. My DH has an HP 8600 Pro. It's a color ink jet with inexpensive ink and cartridges that last a long time. He just replaced the starter cartridges recently. They lasted a year and a half. Now he doesn't print as much as I do, but the cost per color page is most definitely way cheaper than a place like Staples. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4KookieKids Posted December 4, 2013 Author Share Posted December 4, 2013 Hmmm... I was mainly looking at b/w stuff, and was amazed that the cartridges say that you should expect 180 sheets. At $17 per cartridge, and all the extra time involved, this didn't seem like such a great deal compared to 9c b/w printing at office max (and ours here, you just walk in and pick it up after emailing it, so there's no time wasted with little kids under foot). On big projects/workbooks at least -- I definitely see the value in printing the everyday stuff at home! But from the sound of it, the 180 sheets per cartridge may be a gross underestimate on their behalf, so we'll have to look into this more! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boscopup Posted December 4, 2013 Share Posted December 4, 2013 Hmmm... I was mainly looking at b/w stuff, and was amazed that the cartridges say that you should expect 180 sheets. At $17 per cartridge, and all the extra time involved, this didn't seem like such a great deal compared to 9c b/w printing at office max (and ours here, you just walk in and pick it up after emailing it, so there's no time wasted with little kids under foot). On big projects/workbooks at least -- I definitely see the value in printing the everyday stuff at home! But from the sound of it, the 180 sheets per cartridge may be a gross underestimate on their behalf, so we'll have to look into this more! Your current printer sounds like it has expensive ink. You might look at higher yield cartridges, generic cartridges, or even a new printer. My laser printer toner cartridge that cost $44 is supposed to give me 2600 sheets, though I get a lot more than that (about 50% more) because I always print on "toner save" mode. Even if it gave me 2600 sheets, that's LESS than 2 cents per page. I paid about $80 for my printer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jackie Posted December 4, 2013 Share Posted December 4, 2013 I'm pretty sure ours is a Lexmark color laser all-in-one. Toner cartridges are expensive, but we can go years without replacing them. We went through the toner a bit faster when I printed bunches of the color Letter of the Week program we used, but it was still about 2 cents a sheet for full color printing. It does take a lot of cheap printing to offset our original $600 price tag, though. If I were going to print an entire book, I would definitely have it bound at the office place, but would likely still print it at home because it works out so much cheaper. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4KookieKids Posted December 4, 2013 Author Share Posted December 4, 2013 Your current printer sounds like it has expensive ink. You might look at higher yield cartridges, generic cartridges, or even a new printer. Ok, so this may be an embarrassingly painful questions, but... how do you find "alternative" cartridges that fit a particular printer? I've looked online, and the only one "recommended" is the one I've been looking at. I have an HP printer PSC 1410, and when I look online, it just recommends the HP 21 for bw and the HP 22 for color. Would a store like cartridge world be able to hook me up with alternatives? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arboreal TJ Posted December 4, 2013 Share Posted December 4, 2013 I've been refilling my toner cartridge for ~$4 a refill, the cost is worth the mess. I have a Brother BW duplexing laser printer I picked up on sale for ~$100. It's definitely cheaper to print and bind ( love my proclick) at home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanchy Posted December 4, 2013 Share Posted December 4, 2013 Would a store like cartridge world be able to hook me up with alternatives? Our local Cartridge World store did not have cartridges for my printer when I visited their store for the first time. I asked them if they could refill cartridges I already had, and they did. Ask them if they could provide ink for your printer. Who knows... maybe they could. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prairiewindmomma Posted December 4, 2013 Share Posted December 4, 2013 If you anticipate homeschooling for a while....I would suggest ditching your current printer and upgrading. Even considering the cost of the printer, it saves us a lot to do our copies at home. This printer: http://www.amazon.com/Brother-HL-2270DW-Compact-Wireless-Networking/dp/B00450DVDY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386168717&sr=8-1&keywords=brother+2270dw is at the low end of its price cycle (it will swing up into the $130s, occasionally it'll go down to $70ish). It is a workhorse of a b&w printer, but does not have the photocopying screen. This one has the photocopying screen, and is still b&w. http://www.amazon.com/Brother-Printer-Wireless-Monochrome-HL2280DW/dp/B004QM8J8S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386168799&sr=8-1&keywords=brother+2280dw Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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