What is more cost effective? Compare using an inkjet printer with compatible ink to using a laser printer.?

I take it your are heading towards lowest total cost of ownership/cost per page. For high volume black and white lasers definitely have it by miles, especially as you cant hardly find a black and white inkjet these days, and colour ones often won't even print black and white if one of the colours is empty. For low volume colour then back to ink jets. For high volume colour, then back to lasers. But there are huge differences between individual devices. On inkjets the only consumable is usually the ink carts, though some use ink tanks with the heads seperate, these tend to be good for between 500-2000 pages at 10% coverage. On laserjets you have three to or four consumables. (Toner rated at 10% coverage the rest just pages) Toner cart - 2000-20000 pages (4 of for colour) Transfer rollers 5000- 50,000 (Often combined with the toner cart) Transfer belt 20000-10000 pages (Colour printers) Fuser 50000 to 200000 pages Also look at the ease of clearing paper jams, some lexmarks are appalling, generally HP and OKI easier. On lasers you may also need to replace pickup rollers and seperation rollers or pads due to the high volume, long design lifes but these are only a couple of quid each and easy to click in and out. Also some lasers you need an engineer to change the fuser, on others, its press two levers, pull it out and clip in the new one. You should check out things like duty cycle which will give a pages per month (or week or day) type figure. Another advantage of lasers, because its melted in poweder, the printouts don't run when wet while inkjet prints generally do. A disadvantage of inkjets, if only used occasionally, the ink can dry out. Hope my rambling helps more than confuses. Peronally I have a couple of cheepo multifunction colour inkjets and a several year old second hand duplex (Double sided) b/w laserjet.

Inkjet printers have problems with printer heads becoming clogged if not used at least every few days. They use lots of ink, most of it wasted on start up and head cleaning. Laser printers do not have those problems. Turn it on after 6 months and it prints. I'm only guessing but toner is a lot cheaper than liquid ink. I use both, inkjet is a All in One [fax, copy, scan and print]. Laser is a Samsung CPL-300 was on sale $124 and I just love a bargain.