Canon LBP 660 : Read product information and read reviews

Author's product rating:

Picture quality	Satisfactory
Printing speed	Average
Colour sensitivity	Satisfactory
Ease of use	Easy
Value For Money	Good

Advantages:	Low running cost per page of print - not fussy about paper, and toner approx . £35 p . a .
Disadvantages:	Slightly dearer to buy and only monochrome .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

NOTE: THIS IS A COMPLETE OVERHAUL OF A MUCH SHORTER OP I WROTE ABOUT A YEAR AGO.

I have been using my Canon LBP-660 in a home office environment for over three years so don’t expect this to be a current model any more. However, much of what I am about to say could apply to any entry-level laser printer, Canon or not.

A lot of people will think that, because they need a printer including a colour capability, that they must stick to an inkjet of some kind. Well, of course in the case of the colour requirement, they’d be right, since the cost of a colour laser doesn’t bear thinking about, unless it’s for corporate use, and the cost of not just competent but excellent colour inkjets is now very low.

What concerns me, however, is the running cost. I don’t think anyone who has an inkjet as their sole printer will argue with the fact the cost of the official ink cartridges comes as an unpleasant shock, and leads to a lot of people looking around for alternatives, like “other” cartridges, and even re-inking kits.

This is where an entry-level B&W laser comes into its own. Take my Canon. It cost me around £300 at the time, although an equivalent is cheaper still today.

During this period, it had been utterly reliable, despite heavy use by Mrs Billynibbles at weekends – another teacher who spends her Sundays cloistered away doing “planning” for her team, which always seems to involve six copies of everything.

It is not fussy over what paper it uses, any old photocopy stuff will do, and it runs all year on one toner cartridge, costing about £35 if you shop around. This particular cartridge also houses the selenium drum, so you always get a new one as the toner runs out. My previous Oki-Laser had separate toner and drum cartridges, the latter of which was supposed to last for four lots of toner, but cost an extra £160 when knackered. Ouch!

A print quality of 600 dpi is perfectly adequate for text, which is its main use. Even the economy toner-saving modes look fine. If I have any monochrome graphical work I want printed, I use my Epson 600, but I shudder to think what why wife’s weekend work would have cost me in black ink on the Epson – more than the initial outlay on the Canon by now, I should think.

Therein lies my argument – horses for courses. A laser is a higher outlay but cheap to run. An inkjet is cheap to buy and dear to run. You pays yer money……….

Having both is great. Modern printers will no doubt be USB ported, so connection will be no problem. Both of mine are still steam-powered parallel connected.

At first I used a switch box for this, but it is one other thing you have to remember to do, and I got fed up with wasting paper on Epson format stuff coming out as nonsense on the Canon and vice versa. Then I discovered the wonder of having two/three LPT ports, thanks to a card costing, strangely enough, less than the switch box! (£12 I think it was)

Since then, I’ve not looked back. Happy in the knowledge that my text is being printed as cheaply as possible, and that my colour printer is used mostly for exactly that, I have to say, that like Kryten, “I’m in smug mode, Sir”.

So where do you start? Well, my preference would be for a colour inkjet first, since at a pinch (of your wallet) it will do everything, but once the novelty of paying God-knows how much for a sheet of B&W printing starts to pall, the urge to buy an entry-level laser will get stronger.

Of course, you do need desk-space for both……………………..