Help - Need to buy a New Printer

[cornishmaid1961]

I have a Brother LC985 which would you believe I won years ago on an eBid buddy points auction ! Touch wood, it's been brilliant and scans and photocopies well and the ink cartridges are easy to change.
If I had to buy another printer I would go for a Brother again.

[cambrensis]

Use prepared logic! If you are thinking "HP is best" do bear in mind that the print engine will be either Epson or Canon. HP do not do their own. What they have is their own cartridge and that can be a devil of a job to refill or to find 3rd party for.
What spare cartridges do you have most of? What did you pay for them? That might well influence your choice.

I used to do thousands of brochures for Church at one time, but gave up last year as I was finding it too tiring. I used Canon Pixma printers. If doing the Christmas bazaar brochure (8pp each A5) then I'd have two different Canons on the go, so that one pass on each printer would produce the complete brochure.

A friend of mine, now deceased, used to crash his laptop three times a year at least and I could always get it going again. However, every printer he bought died when just out of warranty and I could never figure out what he did to cause this. My main one, an aging Pixma 720 type, is permanently on and on wifi as well. No problems with it whatsoever - but it is an office machine, designed to be in perpetual use. It is treated accordingly.

I suspect that many of the problems experienced with printers are due to turning them on and off repeatedly. I've known a "hard reset" solve the problem on the odd occasion, but not every time. Leave it on; you are not using much current as it goes into sleep mode. When you tell it to print it will then spend about one minute sorting itself out (head check, etc) and you should find it takes off quite smoothly after that. Good luck!