i would like to have a few

No soup for you.

Got this for $25 last year, seems to bottom out later in the year, so I'll wait. I need another small laser, though.

i needs me an all in one.

I already have one and I'm tempted to buy another since it's cheaper than the replacement cartridge.

#5: I'd recommend looking at the remanufactured cartridges for this printer. Most printer manufacturers lose money on their printers, and then make that money back on the cartridges.

If you buy cartridges from a different source, you can get them for far lower prices.

I took a quick look on Froogle, and you can get remanufactered cartridges for this printer for under $30.

Or, if you don't mind doing a little work, you can buy a refill kit made specifically for this printer for around $7.

Just as a note, for this printer you do need to buy a full refill kit, not just additional toner. The fuse in this cartridge needs to be replaced, or you'll have problems. Refill kits made for this printer(like this one: http://www.tonerkits.com/scx4521-2a.html ) include a replacement fuse and illustrated instructions.

With a cost of under $0.02 per page for a remanufactered toner cartridge, or well under 1 cent per page with the refill kit, you are getting amazingly low printing costs by going that route.

Thanks for the info #6.

1. It is not cheaper in the long run to buy a new printer when this runs out, it ships with a 1000 page cart and the replacement is 3K pages.

3. You can buy bulk toner on ebay and elsewhere, but IIRC these don't have a toner refill port so you have to take off a screw at each end that holds a panel down.

27. If you want to bother refilling them yourself I recommend buying at least one new original/OEM Samsung cartridge to get a better drum, and because the starter cart isn't just 1/3rd full, it has a smaller toner chamber so if you refill the starter cart you'll have to do it 3 times as often as a new retail cart or may end up overfilling it if you did not realize this while trying to refill a starter cart, which if you aren't lucky can make quite a mess.

8. Remanufactured cartridges can be a good deal, but they are a gamble. Often I have bought one for various printers only to find they reused the old drum and it had bad spots on it, or at the very least it was quite worn and wasn't suitable for as many manual toner refillings. Better to get a 3rd party new (generic branded) cartridge if you can find one at a reasonable price, remanufactured carts that use a new drum, seals, etc, don't usually cost much less than the entire new generic cart because of the disassembly, cleaning and reassembly costs plus a remanufactured cart usually uses a generic brand drum anyway.

9. You do not want a 2000 page refill, you want a 3000 page refill, 90g toner per refill. Cheezwiz math is wrong, a 2K page refill kit as linked @ $7 + $3.85 S/H = ~ 0.5 cents/page, but that is not your actual cost per page to keep using the printer because you'll only get roughly 2 to 4 refills before the drum needs replaced, which practically speaking means buying a... [Truncated]

I've refilled the toner cart on this a few times, it's pretty easy, only cost me 6 bucks or whatever.

i'm not a big fan of toner refill because it can get messy. now i realize this stuff isn't harmful unless you get a lot of it on you skin but needless to say it isn't entirely green either.

Thanks for all the info everyone. I'm going to try one of the refill kits.

i think i read something awhile back about the toner getting into your lungs. make sure you are well protected and the area is well ventilated.

Ive had very bad luck installing this driver on windows xp 64 bit

#14 good point. if you you do go the refill route (which i don't like) - then do it outside on the lawn and use something to cover your nose and mouth. gloves for your hands won't hurt either. finally, make sure to wipe the printer plastic surfaces of any excess toner powder.

dave_c,

since your'e taking the trouble to be helpful i have 2 questions for you. (1) people ask if the toner contains the drum. does this printer have a toner that contains the drum? (2) is that an advantage or a disadvantage?

thanks.

The drum is built into the cartridge, the cartridge is all integrated containing the drum, toner hopper, and waste toner collection bin. Normally (if it's not malfunctional), the drum will wear out long before the waste toner compartment becomes full so it won't need emptied unless you're swapping out drums but personally I would not go to that amount of trouble on such a small capacity cartridge as a drum delivered plus toner won't cost much less than an entire new cartridge.

I don't recall if there are only screws or there are melted plastic studs holding an end-plate on which keeps the drum in place.

If there are screws it is a simple process to swap a drum. If there are melted studs the traditional solution is to grind down the head of the stud, then drill out the center of it with a drill bit barely smaller than the screws you supply yourself to screw it back on after the drum is swapped.

As for advantages and disadvantages, whether the drum is integrated in a cartridge doesn't in itself change print quality or durability, it is usually done to reduce the size of the printer and eliminate maintenance costs for cheaper printers, although some cheaper lasers use a transfer belt that is separate from the cartridges.

Since a drum usually lasts at least 2 to 3 times as long as the amount of toner in a cartridge when the drum is integral to the cartridge, it might be seen as a disadvantage to someone who has no interest in refilling the cartridges themselves, because buying a new drum with each cartridge when the old isn't worn out yet means higher cost per page, and yet the smaller printers with drum integrated in the cartridge start out costing less.

If you go with some higher end lasers they are large enough that once again they start putting drums in the cartridge, as it is more reliable than a transfer belt but B&W lasers don't have this kind of transfer belt at all.

Basically it's a matter of what volume you're printing. If you invest in a high yield printer then don't use it much, your investment is offset by lost interest over years on the money spent and it'll probably dry rot the rollers before it's expected total # of pages are seen. IOW, a good upper-midrange laser printer can be expected to print a million pages if parts like the drums, fuser, are replaced on the suggested interval.

For a student or someone already owning a better printer, this one is a good value but I would not want it as my only printer as it's duty cycle is pretty low and the paper path tight enough it can't handle anything heavy. A tight paper path is inherent in small (short) printers that use a cartridge with integrated drum so that is another related factor.