Worked for HP as an R&D engineer in the LaserJet cartridge group. Was involved with printer development teams for decades.
Printers are not sold for a loss, as mentioned above. Some models are sold at a low, non-sustainable profit where the more feature rich products make up the needed profit to support the program. There is an enormous benefit to producing large volumes of product.
For low monthly printing users a Laserjet is more economical than an Inkjet - at least when I was calculating the total cost of ownership 8 years ago. The Inkjet regularly spits some ink through the orifices to keep them open. So it is a use it or loss it scenario. The LaserJets perform similar operations at a lower frequency and cost.
DON'T power cycle your printer daily. Each power cycle initiates a calibration cycle that consumes several pages of cartridge life. This is a legal requirement since the printer company is required to deliver error free print quality on the first page out.
B&W prints are about 1/4 the cost per page of a color page. BUT if you don't do any color printing the ink/toner will be consumed by the calibration and overhead processes.
LaserJet cartridges have a life determined by and tracked separately by toner consumption AND number of rotations. The photoconductor, aka print drum, is a polycarbonate coated aluminum sleeve that operates as a capacitor and the polycarbonate layer is abrated during rotation. Print quality is reduced to an unacceptable level when this layer becomes too thin.
We commonly tested LaserJet printers to 1 million and more pages and still delivered acceptable print quality.
When I needed wanted an additional printer after I retired I went on line and found a local seller of a used HP LaserJet that came with a complete set of toner cartridges. A set of toner cartridges cost more than a new printer. Only issue is print drivers but there is generally work arounds for this issue.
Excellent post and info.. Thank you..
In my little shop I've had an HP Officejet Pro 8600 for over 10 years now and it's been excellent ('course, now it'll probably take a dump in the next ten minutes
... ) For an "all-in-one" printer it's behaved well..
