Is a colour laser printer the answer?

Question

I have two excellent Canon inkjet printers but I print so infrequently that all the ink is used up in lengthy nozzle cleaning and sooner or later the print head clogs up. Is a colour laser printer the answer? Do the toner or the mechanism suffer from being left unused for long periods? How do printing costs compare? Is the quality adequate for high quality office use (barring pro photo printing)? If so what printer or printer makes can users recommend? thank you.

Answer 1

Bernard Stay wrote:
I assume that I can set up a  laser printer to operate wirelessly. This is important as I often print directly from my iPad which requires wifi.
If the printer has built-in WiFi then it would just be a matter of adding it to your wireless router. If the printer only has Ethernet, then you will need to connect its Ethernet port to your wireless router via an Ethernet cable. This may not be ideal depending on the location of your router.
As for printing from the iPad, the printer does not need to have WiFi. In the scenario above, of having the printer connected to the wireless router via Ethernet, you would still be able to print from iOS devices. But to be able to print from all applications on the iPad, the printer should support AirPrint. There are many companies that don't have a AirPrint capable printer but do provide an iOS application for printing. These applications generally limit what other iOS applications you can print from. So the advice is to ensure the printer supports AirPrint.
Note also that you could connect the printer directly to the Mac. This would avoid the issue above with having to locate the printer near the wireless router. And if you install an application like Printopia on the Mac, it will make the printer available to the iPad (providing the Mac is turned on).
Bernard Stay wrote:
By infrequently I meant once or twice a week, no less.
This would be fine for any laser printer, but this time frame should also be okay for the Canon inkjet. In order to prevent printing problems due to bubbles, dust, or ink clogging, print head cleaning is performed before the start of printing. For your reference, with a Canon MP990, the amount used is about 0.24ml for black and 0.26ml for colour. If you power off/on the printer or replace the ink tank (without replacing the print head), 0.44ml of black and 2.45ml of colour (total) is used. If you perform a deep clean or replace the print head, then 1.98ml of black and 2.45ml of colour (total) is used. These figures vary slightly from difference models, but it gives you an estimate of how much ink is used when cleaning is performed.