What is the best desk jet printer for our office to buy? -

We have went through 2 HP printers in the past four years. Is this normal?

It depends on how much you print with your printers. Most printers have a status sheet which will tell you how many pages have been printed in total. A professional printer manufacturer (including HP) will tell you what number of pages per month the printer has been designed to print. If you exceed that number then the printer will have a shorter life-span than if you print less. Generally speaking ink jet printers have a shorter life span than laser printers. This is because there are more moving parts in an inkjet printer. In our experience it pays to have a separate mono (black and white) laser printer for high volume print work. In the past we used a colour ink jet printer for colour work that we needed quickly and a colour laser printer for colour work which had to be of a high quality. Recent improvements in the speed of colour laser printers and in particular the speed with which the first sheet is printed (warm up time) will probably allow us to get rid of the (expensive) ink jet printers. When buying any printer the cost of ownership (ie the cost of ink or toner) is much more interesting than the cost of buying the equipment. Once you know how many pages you print per month, the cost of cartridges and the number of pages a cartridge can print it is simple to calculate the running costs. Don t forget to factor in the cost of buying the printer in order to make a realistic comparison. The comparison is clearest if you calculate the total costs over (say) a five year period. Good luck! In our experience OKI and Canon have the cheapest running costs, Epson printers produce the highest quality prints and HP printers are the most reliable. Take your pick!

You are probably not buying an expensive enough printer. If you are printing a lot, I would recommend an Office Jet Pro HP printer. The L7590 all in one has 4 individual ink cartridges along with separate print heads. Printers in the L7500 series have the lowest cost per page of any consumer and small business printers. Black prints are up to 50% cheaper than laser and 40% cheaper for color prints. 7500 series printers have duty cycles of 7500. Most likely, the printer you are using does not have a high enough monthly duty cycle for the load you are using for it.