Same here. Purchased a workgroup color laser almost 7 years ago. My printing volume is fairly low (around 500 pages / year) and I'm still on the original set of cartridges. The amortized cost of this printer has been amazing-- under $75 / year. It uses the PCL protocol and has an Ethernet connection, so it's a long way off from practical obsolescence, too. I'll likely be using this printer in another 7 years.

I tried to do the same thing but bought a cheap <$100 mono laser. I pretty much never print, maybe a page a month, if that.

It's only a year old and now it won't suck up the paper properly. I have to literally stick my hands into it and feed the paper in page-by-page.

The thing has successfully printed less than 20 pages and it's already not working.

It's 2016 and Samsung can't make a rubber roller that works. And I don't want to buy another just to have the same thing happen.

I spent about $400 -- I figure a sub $100 laser printer is much the same thing as buying a cheap inkjet.

I wrongfully assumed that an appliance manufactured and sold to perform a single task would be able to perform that task.

That was a mistake.

I think this whole thread is about how that's a mistake! You get what you pay for and cheap printers are crap; they're so cheap they're virtually useless.

Don't new color laser printers use cartridges? They just have toner instead of ink.

Yeah they do. But they don't dry out which is one of the big reasons every time I had to print I needed a new cartridge.