Apart from contemplating that new workstation... my laser printer has been giving decidedly poor print quality lately. Well, for maybe a year or something.
I figured it was probably the drum, which was an off-brand replacement, so I just replaced it with a different off brand (the OEM drum costing nearly as much as a whole new printer). It looks like very nearly the same trouble.
So... could be, something inside the printer has gotten dirty? I suppose I could have a go at disassembling the thing, but nowadays they seem to be built in a non-repairable fashion.
Or, I could be shopping for a replacement. Doesn't need a lot of speed; does need a built-in duplexer. And I don't want a doggone all-in-one; I want a printer, dagnabbit! Oh, and it has to fit in the available space... unless I find one that can do 11x17 and handle dual trays, and I don't think that fits my budget. (I remember those from the days in Corporateland; they were handy, though kind of big and not at all affordable for home-office use.)
Maybe I should just remove the drum unit, give everything accessible a blast of compressed air, and see what effect that has.
Correction: The OEM drum unit costs more than a whole new printer. This isn't like toner cartridges, where the one that comes with a new printer may contain only a token amount of toner; the new printer comes with a new standard drum, doesn't it? It's like the manufacturers want you to buy a new printer every year or so. OK, so maybe they do.
Update: The window under the drum - which seems like it might be important! - had accumulated a considerable amount of toner. I cleaned it pretty much the same way I clean my eyeglasses, which helped somewhat, but it's nowhere near back to new. Fixing it properly presumably involves (if it's possible at all, which it ought to be) a significant amount of disassembly, which is not worth my time nowadays. So, pondering something new. Maybe one of those fancy (but not all that expensive) color laser printers - making sure to get one that takes a toner cartridge for each color, not one cartridge for everything; I expect to use mostly black toner.
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