Turn Off Printer at Night?

[forced89]

Bought a new laser printer. Have never owned one before. Print about every 3rd day. Should I turn power off when I am finished printing for the day?

[DeltaLover]

Bought a new laser printer. Have never owned one before. Print about every 3rd day. Should I turn power off when I am finished printing for the day?

I never turn off printers or computers.... No reason...

[JustRalph]

Only turn off if you have power failures often etc. a line conditioning surge protector should be used if you have brown outs etc.

If not......leave it on

[wilderness]

Don't use my printer daily, thus its always turned off.

FWIW, Printers, scanners, laptops and other external hardware use those external power packs (AC/DC) that stay plugged in constantly. Put your hand on one (even with the device turned off; laptops are the worst) and feel how hot they get.

I had two on a scanner go bad, and the OE replacement cost nearly as much as what I paid for the scanner (new laptop power supplies are absurd). With the correct specs I found aftermarket replacements quite cheap.
If I don't use my scanner (s) for extended periods, than they are unplugged also.

[DJofSD]

I have many computers and peripherals. They all get turned off when not in use except for the various headless servers which have a reduced power/sleep mode. My experience has been that with perhaps, just maybe, one exception, I have never had any problems with powering down my equipment. The one exception was an HP Slimline which had the integrated video fail on me -- no signal to the monitor. It could have been related to cycling the power but I'm doubtful.

My every day PC is plugged into a surge protector/UPS with a master/slave configuration of a subset of outlets. The PC is the master and the HP-6P (still running after all of those years) is the slave. Power up the PC at the start of the day and the printer is started. Turn off the PC, the printer is powered off.

Oh, and, yes, we do occasionally experience electrical storms. At the first notice of any strikes in the area, all, and I mean ALL of my electronics are unplugged from the wall sockets. Yes, it means, no TV, stereo, etc., but I'd rather be safe than sorry, and, I learned that lesson once a long time ago with a newly purchased high-end piece of stereo equipment. Two weeks for a repair along with the expense and hassle -- never again.

[Longshot6977]

Bought a new laser printer. Have never owned one before. Print about every 3rd day. Should I turn power off when I am finished printing for the day?


I used to work as a product specialist for Brother on their mono laser line, so I'll write it laymen terms. It's a common question. Simply check the manual and enable 'sleep' mode or whatever the feature is called on your model. Basically, the fuser will turn off or drop to a lower temp to save power and will cycle on and off less often. But since you only use the printer once every 3 days, just turn it off when not in use. It will use less power than if in sleep mode.

Also, to save toner, you can use toner save mode feature. It will basically print in a lower DPI mode and the print may get slightly lighter. If it is too light, just turn toner save mode back off.

[forced89]

Simply check the manual and enable 'sleep' mode or whatever the feature is called on your model. Basically, the fuser will turn off or drop to a lower temp to save power and will cycle on and off less often.

I pulled up a copy of the manual on the Internet. It says the factory setting is to switch into sleep mode after 1 minute of non use. Does this make sense? I am pretty much computer illiterate and hesitant to try to make any changes that aren't absolutely necessary.

[DJofSD]

I pulled up a copy of the manual on the Internet. It says the factory setting is to switch into sleep mode after 1 minute of non use. Does this make sense? I am pretty much computer illiterate and hesitant to try to make any changes that aren't absolutely necessary.
First question: can you even change that 1 minute value or not? If not, then nothing to worry about, they're just letting you know a salient detail so you understand that after a minute, there'll be a bit of a delay printing new documents while the fuser warms up.