I just installed our new laser printer. I got tired of the high cost of consumables for our HP 5550 inkjet. I bought that model in the first place because the reviews said it had a low cost of consumables. I got a rude shock when I went to buy replacement cartridges: HP has patents that prevent the development of generic knockoffs. So, if you are calculating the cost of conumables based on OEM refills, maybe it is the lowest. But I have long since discovered that the key to making inkjets affordable is getting el-cheapo generic refills, often 75% cheaper than the OEM ones (I know, color-fidelity is probably much less, but mostly I care about printing black test; when I do print color, it is usually simple colored text).
So I was in the market for a inexpensive, simple laser printer for simple black-text printing. This time, print quality was a non-consideration, and I directed my research primarily at cost of consumables. The Brother printers, which I have always considred very un-exciting, have been getting decent ratings, and appear to have very cheap consumables. So I found the Brother HL 1440 on sale for $120, after rebates, and it has a high-capacity toner cartridge, good for 6000 prints, available on the web for $40. So we are well under $0.01 per page for ink; add in paper, and we are still under $0.02 per page.
It will also be nice to have ancillary benefits of a laser: faster, bigger paper tray, output order same as page order, and non-smearing ink.
10:05:24 PM 
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