Hello again.

The printer that I have been using for the past five years or so is a H.P. CP1025nw.
I wont' call it the worst printer ever produced, I'm sure there is one even worse out there somewhere, it is just that I haven't yet come across it.

What I need is suggestions as to what to replace it with ?

My needs are : Colour laser printer.
Connections. Minimum, Ethernet. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth would be nice, but I can live without them.
Size, not too big.
Reliability, Reliability, Reliability !
A copier that does not constantly skew every second page, nor curl the edges of EVERY page up at the leading edges so that they are prone to jamming, skewing, or folding over in the machine.
Definitely not a H.P.

As one can not test drive a printer, I need recommendations from people who have found “A good one.”

The stories I could tell about this printer would not be believed. I swear that it is possessed by the Devil. The next time the toner cartridges go low, out it goes.

Wayne.

It will be interesting if anybody comes up with a quality printer.
The things for sale now are just balmy.
Printers for sale that cost less than the toner or cartridges!
I saw some things for $55 at the post office, they would be a bargain...not.

I have had a succession of Epson printers in the last 15 years, the first was about $300 and would do accurate double side printing and when it went crunch after printing about 300 of my books I bought the next model along.
You would not trust it to print 2 pages without jamming/missing, it also scans and talks to Uranus but is a piece of crap..no response when I complained to Epson Australia and wanted a replacment. I also bought an Epson colour printer at a lot of expense mainly to do CD labels and it will print 200gsm paper and do CD's without missing a beat good value.

I used Canon printers in the workshop the BJ series and they lasted for yonks until I retired the workshop and scrapped them out. Then I bought a Canon simple printer to just print b/w stuff off the internet, what a piece of junk an MG series. about 50% of genuine cartridges get refused by the machine!
Thank goodness I don't print my own books now I would have to buy a laser printer or a ink printer with bottles not cartridges.

So i'm at the same point as Labrat, I would not buy any crap from the Harvey Normans of this world or off the internet so where do you go to get a printer?

Fred.

I have a brother printer which I find VERY reliable. There ink cartridges are very cheap at cartridge world. I have been using mine for 5 years with few issue's

HP's biggest problem is that they make too many models and could easily cut the number of different models in half and then double their lifespan. HP have done two things in the past:-

1. They have made some very good printers.
2. They have also made some very bad ones.

I own one of each. The good one is a B&W laser that is quite small. It is a P1102W and it did not cost a lot of money. It prints very quickly and was one of the first domestic printers with WIFI built in. The wireless driver works very well and print quality isn't bad at all.

The second one is a coloured model. It is a CP1520 and whilst its print quality is very good, it is as slow as a wet month and the WIFI may as well have not been included because it is garbage and so is the supplied driver software. My main problem with it is that every time I reboot the computer, the driver has to be reinstalled for the printer to work with the WIFI link. To this day, HP has never released a patch despite knowing about the problem.

At work, we pretty much use HP for everything. Servers, network switches, desktop and laptop computers and yep... printers. HP seems to be one of those companies that doesn't understand that when they make something that does work they shouldn't stop making it but they do anyway. Unfortunately, they are not the only company that operates this way. They all do and they all make some good stuff and some not so good stuff.

A comment above is accurate - printers are so cheap now and this does reflect in the quality. The cheapest laser printer was worth more than $3,000 20 years ago. Both models above were $99 and $399 respectively when I purchased them around ten years ago. Both came from OfficeWorks. As far as I know, toners are still available for them but I do very little printing and don't have the machines turned on that much.

I agree with Brad. HP used to be the best many years ago (in my IT career days) but the quality dropped off to compete with other cheaper brands such as Brother. At home I have had good results with a couple of Brother units but they are B&W which doesn't address your requirement. The cost of colour cartridges is too high to justify a colour laser printer so now when I need to print in colour I have take my files on a USB stick and print them on a printer at Officeworks.

I have had a HP22700W monochrome laser printer for some years. No problems except for occasional paper jam (what printer doesn't), and occasional loss of wifi connection with the router attached to the NBN modem. Connection easily regained.

Printers have always been hit & miss. I had a HP and so did the factory: Both of them had the same Bi directional issue a Canon that did not like feeding in photo paper the clown that caused it, to have to do a "U" turn to feed in has a lot to answer for. I have had Epson ones, whilst the quality was good it was another that failed to last long & it along with several others around the neighbourhood had ink feed issues.

Current is a Canon TS 5060 & I do not think that the cartridges on many of these printers past & present, go the distance that they say they will. I buy more cartridges than reems of paper.

The oldest printer capable of running with the largest amount of drama is a 360 column Epson Dot Matrix. Its marked LQ 1050 (circa 1981) but the innards have been changed. They used the same case for several models. Its designed to run all day as it has cooling fins on the head & a pressurised inner. Its tractor feed is an absolute swine. Runs US standard form feed or smaller.

Mens Shed has a Laser Epson, it loves jamming paper, but then its another with the "U" turn.

Be aware that A4 copy paper is made with a slight curve and has a top and a bottom side. The top is indicated by the seam in the wrapper around the ream and it is this side that should go to the top in the feed tray. Putting the paper in the tray up-side-down is the cause of most paper jams. The sheet will straighten on the first pass through the printer which is why it is more likely to jam when the printer is set to duplex and is attempting to print on the back of the sheet. The other problem is glazing on the feed roller as the clay coating on the paper transfers to the rollers over time.

RelayAutomatic's comment brings me to another issue with paper. Do not use any paper that is imported. It is junk. I'd recommend Reflex paper for all printers - don't worry, I don't have shares in the company. All paper is reasonably inexpensive and the extra few cents a page spent on good quality paper is definitely worth it. Paper should also be flicked through at both ends before placing it in the tray to make sure none of it is stuck together.

I've had a Brother Inkjet printer/scanner for about 7 years and it's been superbly reliable.
I use generic cartridges which I buy from Ebay for a few dollars each and have never had a nozzle clog (yet).
It's wireless also which is very handy.
Cost me $45. A true bargain.
I'd buy a Brother again if/when it dies.
It owes me nothing.

I've also got a Canon IP4900 which I don't like much.
It clicks and clunks and farts away for ages before it prints the 1st page.
I only bought it cause it can print to CD's which I never do these days.

I have a Brother colour laser printer with ethernet and I've never had a problem with it.

Only gripe is you seem to have to change all colour cartridges together (even if you have flogged the Cyan one out for example) and the ones it came with were only partly loaded.

Also it's not great for photos, over-saturated.

But it's been 100% reliable and it was not expensive.