Ultimate compact household printer/scanner?

[TopHatFox]

I think a printer/scanner is worth owning, going to the a copy place or library in the middle of the night is inconvenient--if it's not closed.

I'm looking for something that's easy to carry, prints in black & colors, scans 8x11" pages, has ink that goes a long way, doesn't break, and uses minimal electricity.

If you own one, would you recommend it? I have a nice but slightly big printer I scavenged from dorm raiding at the end of the year, like most of the things I own actually. (:

[tonyedgecombe]

I'm looking for something that's easy to carry, prints in black & colors, scans 8x11" pages, has ink that goes a long way, doesn't break, and uses minimal electricity.

I don't think you will find all this, certainly not in a cheap device.

My solution was to buy a Fujitsu scanner (S1300) which I can also use for copying when needed. For printing I stuck with a cheap mono laser (Brother HL2270). If I need to print colour photos I use an online service.

I've worked in the printer industry for a long time and I've never come across a multi-function device that was any good, even at the high end they are flawed.

[jacob]

The ultimate printer is NO PRINTER! During my years as a sysadmin I came to hate printers. They were always the biggest source of problems. And so I consider dealing with printer ownership to be way more inconvenient than walking over to the library or planning a bit ahead in order to print things out when I'm there anyway. Let them deal with ink and strange error codes.

As for scanners ... couldn't say... never owned one. I can't even recall ever having used one either?!

(Why would I need to scan something when everything is already on my computer anyway... I can simply 'print to pdf' if I want a "hardcopy")

Presently, I only need to print out something a couple of times a year; usually a government form that still requires mailing it in. Fortunately, those are getting very rare. (Usually the state level.)

[henrik]

Everything Jacob said x 2.
I work in a government office and I've probably used a printer < 10 times in my life. Usually when I need to graduate from some place or other:)

[Peanut]

I agree that you should either stick with what you scavenged or go to the library, Kinko's, etc. But if you're not keen on late-night runs, Craigslist should have plenty of printers available. I have a 10 year-old HP printer that I have been contemplating ditching. Was a $100 wedding gift IIRC. It prints ok, scans and copies ok, can't seem to fax. Don't think it can do color. Would maybe get $15 if that on Clist?

Scanners are really useful for things that aren't online, such as handwritten docs (yes these exist), printed copies of archival docs, etc. The cheap ones are unbelievably slow, however, as you have to go page by page. I remember my school library had a PDF maker that you could feed a stack of paper to--that thing was awesome and probably cost 10k.

[jacob]

OTOH, if you're one of those "wah-wah I can't read pdfs on the screen, so I must cut down an entire forest in order to read my articles"-types ... you'll want a B/W laser printer (laser ink is much cheaper than bubble ink) with a duplexer (prints both sides) like this Brother I looked at several years ago for DIY'ing the ERE book printing.

In that case, good luck with the error codes and the @%&$^&#$%@# duplexer

[slsdly]

If you only need a scanner, just walk around your neighbourhood. I see at least a half dozen printer/scanner combos put out to pasture each year. Presumably at least one of them has a working scanner .

[steveo73]

The ultimate printer is NO PRINTER!

I have a printer that my wife and kids said we had to get. I hate it and would happily get rid of it. I don't see the point of a printer. There are so few things that you need a printer for.

[Tyler9000]

Based on your description, I'd be partial to something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/HP-Envy-4500-Wire ... B00CIDQ470

[Scrubby]

Your specification makes it pretty expensive. I bought a $40 printer including shipping. It comes in handy for printing gift certificates I get for B&M stores, and also my resignation. Hopefully it won't break down before it's out of toner, which will take many years. Maybe you could cover what you need by buying dirt cheap separate devices?

[fiby41]

Make sure you know how much ink cartridges costs and how many pages they'll last, calculate per page cost and compare with alternatives. Have a printer/scanner but trips to the copy machine place cost less per paper so I don't use the printer part.

[Jenie]

The convenience is a big deal for me, so I own one. Now it is not as cheap, but the old canon I had for almost 10 yr had a $1 cartridges, so it was worth it. The current one does not print as cheap.
One of my friends runs a business and he uses a very old laser printer that use very cheap toner, so it makes sense.

[billc]

I use my camera phone as a "scanner".

If you set up the lighting right it works reasonably well.

I mostly use it for tax paper work, receipts, etc.

For signing documents I generally use a PNG image of my signature and place it into the PDF document and then print to PDF. No printing needed.

Adobe has an actual e-signature function but I don't usually bother with that.

Only other use I would have for printing would be printing out templates for woodworking. This is pretty rare, but when I need to do it I go to my in-laws and print.

[McTrex]

I have an HP multi-purpose printer/scanner at home, but I've started to use my Iphone with Genius Scan for scanning. Much faster than using the printer and actually very useful. I'm digitizing my entire administration with it. (Although I'll be glad when that's finished ).

[Ydobon]

I was considering the same question of late, but came to realise that I could just use one of the giant MFDs at work for free