One of the best advantages of the CLP-660 series is the increased production you get. Although some models may be rather loud when they print they all offer between 24 and 25 pages per minute, with the first page printed just 14 seconds after the print job is received by the printer. Each one of these printers can handle an astronomical 80,000 page monthly duty cycle, and advances in the CLP-660N and 660ND series have reduced the amount of paper wasted in jams and from poor print quality.

The Samsung CLP-660 toner cartridges themselves are another high point for this series of printers. Many alternative color laser printers require four different color cartridges, the drum and a waste toner box for operation. This complicated system is wasteful and results in more printer downtime as you replace the extra components. However, the Samsung CLP-660 toner cartridges include both the toner and drum head, and the waste toner box is integrated into the image transfer belt. This simplified system saves you time and keeps your printer running longer and more often than the alternative. Each Samsung CLP-660 toner cartridge has a capacity of between 2,000 pages (for color toner, 2,500 pages for black toner) to upward of 5,000 pages with high capacity toner cartridges. This helps make the Samsung CLP-660 series perfect for the home consumption or for small to medium sized businesses that need to print a high volume of text documents very quickly. The printer itself is quite affordable and built to cut down on the costs of consumables such as toner cartridges and paper.

The first step to replacing the Xerox toner cartridges is figuring out which cartridge is empty. The message window on the front of the printer should indicate which of the four toner cartridges needs a refill: cyan, magenta, yellow or black. Once you know which cartridge it is that needs to be replaced you need to set the printer to rotate the toner carousel so you can get at it.

This is accomplished by pressing the “Menu Select” button until “Printable Pages Menu” or “Proof/Print Menu” is displayed. Flip through the options until you see “Quality Menu”, then hit the menu select button again until “Toner Removal” shows up. Press the down key until you see “Black” in the message window, then use the right arrow key to select the appropriate toner color. Then just hit menu select once more and wait for the printer to rotate the toner carousel.

Now you need to get access to the Xerox toner cartridges, which you can do by opening the front panel of the printer. Assuming the proper cartridge is facing you simply pull the lever toward you and then upward to release the cartridge. Be sure to handle the empty cartridge carefully when removing it to avoid spilling toner on your clothing, and then set it aside. Remove the replacement cartridge from its wrapping and give it a few good shakes to evenly distribute the toner, then slide it into the empty cartridge slot in the machine until it snaps into place.

Toner cartridges refill products and services are something that the major brand names have been trying to stamp out for years, for the simple reason that they have discovered that they can earn vastly larger profits by forcing you to buy a brand new cartridge every time the old one runs out of ink. Never mind the fact that every year nearly a billion pounds of toner cartridges find their way into landfills, there are profits to be made!

The major brand names have invented a number of clever ways to discourage their customers from reusing old cartridges and keep buying their products. One of the most common ways is to include language that suggests using a re-manufactured or generic cartridge could void the printer warranty. This is actually true where the companies can get away with it, but many places have passed laws to prevent the corporations from restricting what kind of cartridge you can use.

Once the companies could no longer prevent consumers from reusing cartridges by legal means they turned to technology instead. In recent years toner cartridges have begin to be produced with little computer chips that are designed to prevent a printer from using the cartridge after it has been refilled. This is one of the most common methods that major companies use to keep you buying new cartridges today, and it is entirely unnecessary. Refilling your toner cartridge does not reduce the quality of your printing, or damage the internal workings of your printer. If it did you wouldn’t see so many companies offering toner cartridges refill kits. It just saves you money, pure and simple.

Although at first it might seem like it is hard to find a reliable toner cartridges review website or resource on the web, a closer look will reveal that both the shady looking websites and the most reliable non-manufacturer websites will offer you roughly the same advice. Purchasing ink and toner from the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) offers you a guarantee of quality for the product you purchase, but like all things in life you pay dearly for that quality assurance. On the other hand refill kits and generic compatible cartridges can save you a very large amount of money, yet may result in lower quality printing or even damage the printer itself. This is a risky trade-off capable of making even the most grizzled office manager hesitate.

In the end toner cartridges review and other similar resources can only provide you with suggestions that have a varying degree of bias toward one option or another. It is up to you to navigate through the pitfalls and treasures that they offer to choose the best course of action.

Unfortunately recycling your Konica-Minolta toner cartridge does add a bit of extra time and effort to disposing of your printing waste. However the long term advantages of taking those extra steps are phenomenal: consider how long it takes each cartridge to decompose, then think about how many cartridges your office goes through in a year. Multiply that number by the millions of businesses in America and you begin to get a picture of how much damage is done to the environment each year.

With that in mind the advantages of recycling your Konica-Minolta toner cartridge should be much more clear. That is why Konica Minolta set up the Clean Planet Program as a resource to recycle your empty cartridges. To take advantage of this entirely free program you only need to follow a few easy steps and they take care of the rest–including postage!

To begin, check to see if you still have the return shipping label that came with your toner cartridge when you purchased it. If you do not still have the return shipping label simply use the return label that came with your new toner cartridge. Place the old cartridge into the packaging that the new one came in, including the bubble wrap, and repackage it for shipping in the new box. Once the box has been filled and resealed simply place the return shipping label on the top and send it back–Konica Minolta will take care of the rest of the process for you.

The reason why that customer service representative gave you such dire warnings is fairly simple: their company wants to be the sole provider of your replacement toner cartridges. Refill kits are a challenge to their dominance over the market and directly cut into their profits. They also represent a serious threat by cutting out the need for customers to pay high prices for goods that must be purchased on a regular basis.

Make no mistake, there is some basis for the high cost of a new replacement cartridge. Each three pound cartridge has only a few ounces of toner inside, the rest of the weight comes from the plastic reservoir and metal parts that connect the cartridge to the printing drum, thus increasing the manufacturing cost of toner cartridges. Refill kits, on the other hand, cut out those manufacturing expenses by reusing the original reservoir and drum a number of additional times. Despite the OEM warnings, each toner cartridge is capable of handling multiple refills before the wear and tear gets to the point of reduced print quality bad enough to require a new cartridge, saving you a great deal of money by significantly reducing the number of brand new cartridges you need to purchase.

To start with the most basic part of the toner cartridges review, these products are designed for use with many different brand name and generic laser printers. They are large cartridges that each weigh between 2-3 pounds and are composed of a combination of plastic, metal and other miscellaneous materials. In the end the ink is only a small fraction of the total product. In fact, it’s not really ink at all, toner is made up of carbon or tiny plastic materials and coloring agents.

One of the most striking bits of information is one far too many of us are already familiar with: the ink from a brand new cartridge produced by some of the most common brand names actually costs more per milliliter than a bottle of expensive vintage champagne. This is due in part to the composition of the ink, but much more so because of the large amount of resources expended in manufacturing the cartridge itself. It takes 5-9 pounds of virgin materials and three quarts of fuel to make each and every toner cartridge, leading to the high prices you see in office supply stores.

However, there is a way to avoid buying high priced toner. Cartridges are divided into three categories: Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) cartridges, which are the high priced packages lining store shelves across the US; “compatible” (or generic) cartridges produced by third parties, and re-manufactured cartridges recycled by the original manufacturer or local recycling company. Both compatible and re-manufactured cartridges are significantly less expensive than OEM counterparts, particularly re-manufactured cartridges. Although the manufacturing companies try to warn you away from these sorts of products, just look for a toner cartridges review to find a safe place to purchase them.

Those who have little or no experience with printing toner may be surprised to learn that toner is actually quite distinct from liquid ink–in fact, it is not even ink at all. Printing toner is actually a combination of small carbon particles that are held onto a piece of paper by static electricity, then melted and pressed onto the page by a heating and pressure roller. Using toner allows companies to experiment with their inks in a wide variety of ways; and this is a process that Canon toner has taken to a whole new level.

Vivid Toner (V Toner) is a standard toner intended for use with Canon color digital presses. A clear toner has also been developed to supplement the V Toner to create watermarks or to enhance glossy images. Spherical and Synergy Toner (S Toner) are chemically produced toner particles of uniform size and shape, which helps to make clean lines and sharp images. These particles actually have a tiny ball of wax in the center to create a better gloss. The Pure Quality (pQ) Canon toner was designed with office environments in mind, and also includes a wax core for oil-less fusing. In fact, this toner was entirely designed for better fusing, and the wax core and resin formula of this toner actually saves on the energy costs of the printer. High Reliability toner is a nifty design for high speed photocopiers that uses binder resin technology to ensure that the last page printed by the cartridge is just as high quality as the first, and Quick Fixing toner is similar but designed to use less energy and pressure in the printing, thus saving some extra money.

According to the printer companies the toner cartridges refill kits are a hazard to the printers themselves, suggesting that modifying the toner cartridges to accept new ink not only reduces the quality of the print jobs they produce but also endangers the printer by leaking toner or having loose parts that can get caught in the inner workings of the machine. However the companies manufacturing the kits have rebuffed these claims by stating that their kits result in equal quality print jobs for a fraction of the cost of a new cartridge, leaving it up to the individual consumer to decide who is telling the truth. Like many other disputes of this nature the truth lies somewhere in between: refill kits do produce similar quality print jobs, but only for a limited number of runs. Eventually the plastic reservoir and other parts of the toner cartridges get worn out and need to be replaced, but using a refill kit can extend the life of the cartridge for an additional few cycles.

Despite whatever warnings your original equipment manufacturer gives you there are alternatives to paying the high costs for new replacement toner cartridges. Refill kits are perhaps the cheapest option, but there are also refurbished cartridges or generic “compatible” cartridges produced by third parties to match OEM printing specifications. Whichever option you choose is up to you, each one has advantages and disadvantages that roughly balance each product out.

A toner cartridges review will help you to differentiate between the three main types of cartridges. The first and probably most common type of cartridge you will find is called an OEM cartridge, which stands for original equipment manufacturer. These are the cartridges produced by the big brand names and sold in office supply stores, relying on quality assurance and brand loyalty to offset high prices. Once OEM cartridges have been used they are often recycled and sold as re-manufactured cartridges for significantly less money than the original product, since the company saves money by reusing materials. Lastly many third party companies produce generic products called “compatible” cartridges for after market retail, sometimes also composed from recycled cartridges.

This is why toner cartridges review websites are great: simply knowing that there are other types of cartridges beyond what you find at the local office supply store can save you buckets of money. Another useful tidbit of toner info to know is that the life of a cartridge does not end once it is empty. Each toner cartridge is about three pounds of pollution that lasts for centuries, so rather than throwing them away many companies have found innovative ways to recycle the cartridge and sell them again. These companies will pay you for your old cartridges, or you can choose to donate them to one of the surprising number of charitable causes that recycle them. Always make sure to sell your old toner cartridge or recycle it before you purchase a new one, just like you would if you were changing cars.

Laser printers are interesting products that use static electricity and lasers to print a page instead of the traditional method of squirting ink on the paper. The printer functions by using static electricity to charge a photosensitive drum with the image to be printed, sticking the ink to the paper as it passes through the machine. The paper then rolls between a pressure and heat roller that melts the toner onto the page for the final product. On average a Brother toner cartridge can print about 1,500 or more pages before needing to be replaced.

Replacing a Brother toner cartridge is a fairly simple process once you have done it in the past. To begin open the front panel on the printer and pull out the drum unit, placing it on the table in front of you. This is the unit that places the charged toner particles on the paper before it passes through the heat roller. Removing the toner cartridge is as simple as pressing the locking lever and pulling out the black plastic reservoir. Then take the replacement cartridge, shake it side-to-side a few times to make sure the toner is evenly distributed, slide it into the drum and put the unit back in the machine to finish the process. Now that you have gone through your first cartridge replacement the next attempt will be easy as pie. And remember, always recycle your cartridges when they are empty!

The first, and probably most dependable option available to the stingy shopper is to purchase a third party “compatible” toner cartridge. These replacement cartridges are designed and built to match the original manufacturer specifications of the model they emulate. This option provides you with a fully functional refurbished cartridge for significantly less than you would pay to buy brand new toner cartridges. Refill kits, on the other hand, are slightly less dependable due to making your own modifications to the original cartridge, but can allow you to use the same cartridges over and over multiple times by filling the reservoir with more toner whenever it runs out. This works out to be a phenomenal deal when considering how little the toner inside actually effects the price of a new cartridge compared to the plastic and metal housing of the toner cartridges. Refill kits can result in decreased printing quality if done wrong, however, so be extremely careful when using this option.

The last way to save money on toner is a trick that the printing companies really do not want you to know. Many toner cartridges have little plastic windows on the side to allow the printer to read the level of toner left inside; but most printers are set to tell you the cartridge is empty before you run out of toner. To fix this issue just cover the window with a small piece of electrical tape, this will trick the printer into thinking the cartridge is always full and allow you to squeeze up to several hundred more pages out of your cartridge before the end.

Take, for example, visiting the website of one of the major brand name companies to find toner cartridges review and info. Nobody knows more about a given product than its manufacturer, and as such they can be an excellent source of information about specifications and options. However, the information the manufacturer gives you will be biased towards inspiring you to purchase one of their products, and thus may leave out important details.

If one can’t trust what the manufacturer says about their products, going to an independent third party for more information seems like a natural step, right? Third party sources for toner cartridges review are free from the need to make a sale with their communications, but even they can be biased–often in ways that aren’t immediately apparent. Perhaps the blog post you are reading was written by a competing company, or was designed to quietly market a totally different product. The anonymity of the internet can make it very difficult or totally impossible to ascertain what the authors’ stake is in the discussion at hand, and whether or not he or she may have ulterior motives to their post.

So if you can’t trust the manufacturer because they need to make a profit, or the blogger because of their anonymity, who can you trust? The simple answer is that you have to look to both of these sources and then make your own judgment. If you recognize that neither side of the spectrum is empirical or unbiased, but both also genuinely want to share information, then you will be better prepared to figure out what the truth is for yourself by using both sources to inform you.

Q: How can I save money on toner? A: One bit of toner cartridge info that we should all know is that it is possible to save money on ink toner. The high priced cartridges you buy at office supply stores are called Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) cartridges, and these cost more due to the resources expended in making them (see above). However many companies, particularly on the internet, offer what are called compatible cartridges produced by generic third party companies, or even recycled ink toner cartridges. These products offer you low cost alternatives built to OEM standards.

Q: Is it true that using a re-manufactured or compatible cartridge could void my printer warranty? A: Depending on where you live, yes. Many major brand name companies inserted language that would void their warranty if a third party or refurbished cartridge is used in their product. This was ostensibly done to protect consumers from faulty products that could damage their printers, but in reality it forces the consumer to spend extra money and buy a brand new toner cartridge. Info on this scandalous issue can be found on blogs and newspapers across the globe, but it is worth noting that many countries, including the United States, have set up legal restrictions preventing manufacturers from voiding your warranty for using less expensive toner cartridges.

Toner cartridges review blogs may not be particularly neutral or have the journalistic integrity of the Better Business Bureau, but by reading a wide spread of different blogs and reviews a consumer can get a good sampling of public opinion surrounding a particular product and use that information to guide their decision. Sometimes buying the replacement cartridge from the original manufacturer is an overly expensive and wasteful route to take; other times all of the generic “compatible” cartridges are produced by shady companies or are known for being sub-par products. Since you can never trust the selling company to present unbiased information about their toner cartridges, review multiple sources during your search to try and get a wide variety of opinions for the next best thing. You may never come across the objective truth about the issue, but at least you will be better informed before you make your decision.