Website and printer for maps

Forget monochrome.  What size sheets do you want?  If letter/legal is sufficient, go with the color laser–a lot less fiddly and more reliable for occasional use.  If you want 11×17 or larger, probably better (more affordable) to go with inkjet, but you’ll fight clogs and dried-out ink if you don’t print very often.  That’s my experience anyway.

Printing on 11×17 paper is really, really nice for maps, especially if you can print double-sided. However, all printers are expensive to feed and a pain to keep running.

If you need just a dozen or so maps per year, consider printing in color at FedEx Office or someplace similar. Not much more hassle, and much cheaper than buying a printer for that volume.

If you are dead-set on a printer: ink jets are a much bigger pain (as Todd mentioned) than laser. Also, inkjet ink tends to run when it gets wet, maybe not if you print on expensive waterproof paper (never tried). Last year I bought a color laser after swearing at inkjets for 15 years, and I’ll never go back.

I have an HP LaserJet Pro M281cdw color letter-sized printer/copier/scanner/fax from Costco, same as the M281fdw from everyone else with different colored plastic pieces; the printer-only version is the M254dw recommended by Wirecutter. Still not cheap to run – a new set of high-cap toner cartridges cost more than the printer, but I’m only buying them twice per year vs every month for my old inkjet. It still disconnects from the WiFi network every few weeks for no apparent reason, but a power-cycle always brings it back. This ~$350 printer is faster than printers at work that cost 5x more.

If forced to buy an 11×17 inkjet printer, I’d get the inexpensive but well-reviewed Epson WorkForce WF-7210 at $150. I had previous generations of the Epson WorkForce series in 8.5×11 – and they mostly worked fine for about 18-24 months before I broke down and bought a new one because the old one was so cranky.

HTH.

— Rex

1. i agree with Laser +5
2. Use Caltopo, it is great, especially for creating and downloading GPX tracks, as well as printing maps.  Just make the PDF and print it. Or if you eyes are good enough, put the pdf on your phone.  Caltopo even as a beta phone app now. I don’t use my phone in the back country, but for those who do.
3. I use Rite in the Rain waterproof paper except in the desert.  About $0,30 per page, print both sides. Up to 11×17 inch paper
4. Traveling, or no access to color printer, or want larger than 8×10, go to Fed X (Kinkos) or the like and ask them to use my waterproof paper.  About $1/page.  Still cheaper and i think better than a $15 topo.

HP offers an automatic ink delivery service with newer network printer models that is FREE if you regularly print less than 15 pages per month.

HP Instant Ink

I also bought a subscription to CalTopo.  Seems pretty neat.

Huh. Not too happy with the responsiveness of this website on the other hand! It lost my brilliantly-worded prior response! What I tried to say there was:

The Fedex option is a good one … except my family has a need to print from time to time and our inkjet ran out of ink last night. For that and other reasons I’m leaning towards purchasing a laser printer, such as https://www.officedepot.com/catalog/catalogSku.do?id=362397&pr=&customerEnteredSku=362397&cm_cat=644955.

Regarding toner … OfficeDepot sells HP-branded black, cyan, yellow and magenta cartridges for a combined price of $420. Alternatively, I see “guaranteed-compatible” cartridges sold for a combined price of $140: https://www.suppliesoutlet.com/hp-410x-compatible-toner-cartridge-color-set/. I’d be paying by credit card and so would be protected, at least for 60 days.  On the other hand, sounds too good to be true. Anyone with experience with the off-brand?

Printer toner …
Sound a bit like the Gillette marketing strategy: give away the shaver and sell the blades.
The issue is rather well-known.

Cheers

I bought a Brother 8350CDW color laser to replace an HP inkjet printer two years ago and I haven’t regretted it at all.  It works well.  I also use SuppliesOutlet for much cheaper toner and have generally been happy with the product.

Sometimes I find that printing the Caltopo USGS map layer at 1:24000 yields contour lines that are good, but not great.  Even if I print with printer settings set at “1200 dpi class”, the high-end printer at FedEx Kinko’s looks nicer.  The lines are crisper and easier to see.

With this in mind, I print 90% of my “throw away” maps at home, but I still send important maps to Fedex/Kinko’s for printing on 11×17 paper.

If you use the Fedex online tool to upload PDF maps for printing and pick-up, the local Fedex office will probably call you and say they can’t print your map due to copyright issues. You will have to send them information from Caltopo that states you have the right to print their maps.  It can be a hassle.

If, on the other hand, you carry a USB Flash drive into Fedex and print yourself, you won’t get hassled about copyright issues.  My local Fedex store has 2 printer/copiers that accept USB Flash drives and have a menu driven system for making your own prints.

I just visited my local “UPS Store” and I see that they have printing and copying too, and they quoted me a cheaper price for color prints.  I may try printing my next set of trip maps through them and see how it goes.

Thank you again, everyone.  Order placed, delivery next week.

Printer came, no power cord.  Office Depot expressed their deepest sympathies.  No report until next week.

After another phone call to Office Depot I was promised a power cord “next-day delivery”.  I found out later that “next-day” means next-day only if today is June 9.  I will report back sometime after June 10.

Well, 3-day delivery turned into 2-day delivery. I asked UPS to deliver to their store. They delivered to my house instead. Luckily I was home.

The printing is beautiful! Model is HP M452nw. Thanks to everyone for their advice.

Won’t help you now, but that printer (and almost all printers) takes a generic computer power cord.

If you didn’t want to wait, you could borrow from another device or purchase locally for a few dollars. I’ve disposed of boxes full of them at work when we mass-replaced computers, printers, network switches, etc.

— Rex

Yeah, I should have mentioned that when the power cord did arrive it looked like every other computer power cord I own.

If OfficeDepot the brick-and-mortar store and OfficeDepot the online store could act like they were the same company then I would have been willing to walk over to the nearest location and gotten one.

The mounds of packaging the power cord came in was shameful.  If I were an anti-plastic-straw person I would have had a heart-attack.