ArtisticallyChill

This past Saturday, Serena sent me out to get some blank ink for her Epson Stylus CX4800 printer/scanner. I went out to Staples and decided on the 4 pack with the black and three color cartridges was a much better deal. I walked around for a bit and was stopped in my tracks when I found a whole bunch of laser printers on sale because they were floor models and discontinued.

We had contemplated the idea of a color laser printer to save money on inkjet cartridges and the upgrade in print quality would be a bonus for Serena. She could definitely scale some of her projects down to 8 x 10 size, color, print, and sell them online or at the convention. Considering how much we do NOT print, the toner should last us quite some time. But the downside was always the price. Color laser printers were expensive, ranging between $300 – 600 for an office style printer and then in the thousands for professional style printers.

The printers I looked over were in decent shape. I called up Jason to help me decide which printer to go for, talking about the Pros and Cons of the purchase. Before long I decided that the HP Color Laser Jet 1600, priced at $160, was the one to ask an employee about.

After spotting the manager walking around, I asked a few simple questions. The printer was definitely a display model, was discontinued, and the toner was still fairly full. This meant that hardly anyone pressed the “Print Demo Page” option. My main concern was just ‘how full’ was the toner. There was no way to see because it wasn’t plugged in. I asked him about a return policy and he said 14 days. That was good enough for me since Staples wasn’t too far from my apartment. So I told him I’d take it and he left to find the papers, manual and driver CD.

He came back 10 minutes later. Very apologetic he said that the materials were lost. I said, “No problem, just take another 10% off the lowered price.” The manager said that was fair and we proceeded to checkout. They tried to sell me a $25 7ft. USB cable since the printer didn’t come with one. I said no. Why? I’ll give 25 reasons. LOL I could easily find a USB 2.0 cable, 10ft long, at a cheaper price. As I checked out, the total spent on the printer was $145. The printer retails for, at most, $400 online. Amazon has it on sale for $287. So yeah, this purchase was a definite ‘SCORE!’ in my book.

So I got home quickly powered it up and the toner status indicators were FULL! I printed out a demo page and there were no visible imperfections and the colors were nice! Satisfied with the toner levels and demo page, I went to TigerDirect and picked up one of their printer starter kits which included a 10ft. USB 2.0 cable, 250 sheets of ultra bright multipurpose paper, and some velcro cable ties for $15. ‘SCORE!’ again!

After rearranging a few things, I put GONK (that’s what I name it) next to Serena’s desk where the Epson was and moved the Epson to my desk since she’ll still need to make use of the scanner. Sweet Deals FTW!

~ LoneWolf