It happened again. I use my HP Deskjet only rarely, I mean months of disuse, but when I need to print, it’s usually urgent, like taxes are due! It seems that every time I go to use it lately, I have to rinse the cartridges under hot water and wait a day for them to be dry before I can get good printing. The hplip “clean” routine is not adequate.
I’m curious, are laser printers any better when only used rarely? Or do they just get blocked, too?
A niche problem, I know, but if anyone has info, thanks in advance!
I was in the same situation with printing that you are–I rarely need to print, but when I do, I really need to print–and I kept running into the dried up inkjet cartridge problem you describe. So I switched to the least-expensive HP black-and-white laser printer I could find in ~2008. It lasted until 2015, at which point it was still printing fine on the first and only cartridge I ever had for it, to give you an idea of how infrequently I printed, but the scanner broke. I replaced it with another HP black-and-white laser printer, and it has performed fine since then with no blockages. I last used the printer about two weeks ago, and it printed just fine without any drama. I’m still on the cartridge that came with it and never had a blockage.
In my experience, the laser printers are more expensive up front, but since I rarely print, and never have to replace dried-up ink cartridges like I did with an inkjet printer, it has been worth the extra expense to me.
I’ve had a Samsung ML2525W for about a decade, - used occasionally. Absolutely flawless performance. Lasers are amazing! For the cost of a £70 toner cartridge over a decade? Well and truly worth it.
Laser printers don’t have to be expensive. You can get a Brother laser fairly reasonable. I have had one for years and it always prints. I’ve only replaced the toner cartridge once but I don’t print that much. Usually ink cartridges and toner cartridges when new are not the same as a full new cartridge either. They usually only give you about half the ink if that to get you started.