Hi From SoCal

I've been looking for a forum like this to discuss ways to resolve printing issues and make home inkjet printing easy and economical. I'm am IT pro with more years in the industry than I care to admit to. Printers still frustrate the heck out of me mostly because I don't use them often so when problems do crop up I have to re-learn everything. I have an HP J4680 that my wife gave me. Again, I hardly print anything but lately she has been selling things on ebay and depends on the printer to print labels. When anything goes wrong, it becomes "my problem" quickly. I learned a long time ago that the home/small office inkjet printers operate on the "razor / blade" market model. I'd previously had an Epson inkjet printer with a dedicated print head but it was extremely troublesome because we used it so infrequently it would dry out and clog until the print head was no longer serviceable. Printers that used print head-bearing cartridges were more reliable but the cartridge cost was high. Still that seemed the way to go for us before my wife's ebay involvement since we'd often go months w/o printing anything. Now though, she prints labels most every day so I'm looking to gain as much knowledge as I can to keep costs down and the ink flowing smoothly. I'm hoping this forum will be a good tool in addition to the compiled knowledge I've found at http://inkjet411.com.

If the labels are BW get yourself a laserjet, if they are color, get Brother MFC inkjet printer (do not buy the cheapest one), they are very fast and easy to refill. You will need refillable carts (ebay search by model number you choose).

Concur with @Smile... If it's just for black and white or shipping labels then go with an old model HP Laserjet. Often businesses are tossing them out to eBay or similar so there's bargains to be had.

That said, do your homework on what consumables are available, costs compatibility, etc... It'll pay dividends in the end.

Another option to consider for shipping labels is a thermal printer... Zebra units are pretty good and we now have two of them for shipping labels and stock barcode stuff as well. More expensive though so probably overkill.

Welcome to the forum btw...

I assume that the labels will be outside the packages and will need to be waterproof. That leaves out dye-based inks. If you go to inkjets you will need to buy one that either uses all pigment based inks for full color printed labels or one of the printers (i know the Canon line) that has a large black pigment-based cartridge specifically for text printing. Someone on the forum can tell you which series has the pigment-based inks and has cartridges that can be refilled. Frankly, if you only want B/w printing I'd go with an inexpensive mono laser, new or used. Label printing will be less demanding than printing lots pages of text so cost of consumables will be less critical than if you were doing lots of full page text printing. Lasers are less finicky as they can be left idle for long periods of time without risking the clogged printhead problem. most are also faster as they are page printers as opposed to inkjets which are essentially line printers.