It’s been two years since our old Canon inkjet printer died. Look, I am not here to make a tribute to it although he had done a fantastic job in the first a couple of years when we came to Australia.

But the history has to move forwards. The old one completed his missions and has to pass on the torch to the new. But things are just this funny. If you don’t have it, you wouldn’t think you will need it. So in the past two years, we seldom used a printer. If we had to, my husband would take the documents to his office and get them printed off.

However recently we often felt not very convenient without a printer available at home, so after a reasonable discussion, my husband and I decided to welcome the new generation back home. We checked out different retailers for a couple of days, and finally went for Samsung SCX-4200 series laser printer.

We did think a bit before the decision made. I was the weak one, being attracted by the photo printing function. I was imagining all the beautiful photos hanging on the wall and those photos would be generated by our own printer. But the imagination has to go quickly. My husband reminded me that actually the cost to print photos at home is much more expensive than you take them to the professional photo printing service. And there is no point to keep 4-6 cartridges in a printer and just to let them dry out at the end. Actually he made it very clear that he hates the idea of photo and colour printing (at home) promoted by those foxy manufacturers very much and his reason, which sounds very rational, beat my desire and put out the illusion in my mind.

Okay. Let’s go for the B&W. I love LaserJet printing anyway. I wouldn’t mind as most of my stuff will be knitting patterns and music notes. B&W will do the job perfectly. And it turned out the new printer does do a perfect job. It has compact shape, very small but lovely design. The speed is okay, and the paper feeding is very impressive. And the cost, let’s do the math, $120 for 3000 sheets, how long would you go with one toner?