If your office paper has a lot of shredded envelopes with plastic windows or shredded plastic cards - I would not use it. Other than that, recently there have been threads about using everything from beer boxes to junk mail. Search for "ink metals" in the soil forum - search linked below. Here is a link that might be useful: http://search.gardenweb.com/search/nph-ind.cgi?term=ink+metals&forum=soil&forum_name=Soil

I always used HP inkjets but this time I went with a Brother laser that is both black and color, it is fantastic and it is a multi function does it all, scan, copy fax print and so much more, I got it when it went on sale at office max for a little over $300. But with what I will save on not buying the expensive ink it will be worth it. I would really suggest looking at this same one it would be perfect for a small office. My husbands company uses these Brother lasers and they rarely ever have any problems other than changing the toner occasionally. Brother MFC-9120CN Digital Color All-in-One Printer OH MY GOSH it is on sale for $299 man I would jump on that deal asap! that is less than I paid for it, but their sales do not last long. They do fast delivery too. I am not kidding this thing will do stuff I will never need to do but for an office it would be great. I checked on several sites for reviews and this model had a lot of positive reviews.

Gee, I sorry if I was feeling "too good" about my purchase. But, I say if you haven't put your hands on one your experience with his machine is less than mine. At least you have spared me from someone buying one of these because "Jerry said" is worth $400. My reference to that number is what I recall reading in the add, recalling how much these machines costs just a couple of years ago. This machine came without any reference to Windows 8, has the good old fashioned glossy documentation makes me think it was "designed for" sale in a higher priced market.. If one has a home network and want to share a printer, they might be happier (at an additional cost of at least $50) if the printer is accessed off of Ethernet or WiFi. On the W8, I moved forward first on my W8 notebook to access that printer. With the great help from this site I used the information to set the printer as "shared" on the XP host computer. I then followed the directions to use the W8 Control Panel to open the network (hey, this was all looking familiar) and bingo there I found my XP machine and thus the Printer. I doubled clicked the Canon printer and W8 started to look for a driver.... I'll estimate 3 or 4 minutes later I got a failure to find a driver. The next step upon this type failure indicated to try to install the printer in W8 (W7 really specified) and that failed too. I went to the Canon web site and downloaded a driver for W8. Now ready I went back to the W8 Control Panel and opened the network and this time I couldn't find even the XP machine, never mind the printer. It was after 11 PM by that time so I decided to try again in the morning -yet to be accomplished. But, before bed I decided to look at the DVD that came with the printer. it has no indication of what OS systems it supported, but I put it in the W8 and loaded both the driver and the software to operate the scanner (which by the way is a low resolution color scanner.. low resolution for B&W too, not a picture quality scanner which is the case for all home machines I have owned). I'm yet to try again to gain access from the W8 and W7 computers. Now on my second cup of coffee, and will try to access the XP machine when I get energetic enough to go to the other room and turn it on.

I had my CR2015 buying guide beside my computer. i see you are looking for the regular printers rather than all in one. CR likes three Brothers. I imagine the hl3170 replaces the 3140 at $280. i see that the big difference between ink jet and lazers are the doubled ink/month costs based on some average of pages printed. Perhaps your child is above that. There are three higher rated printers but the first two are 3x and 2x more expensive for ink. The samsung color xpress c1810w is in 3rd place with similar ink and machine cost to the Brother. BTW, the only laser check rated model was the ink hog Dell C1660w. I see that you could get an inkjet with half the Brother ink costs (HP officeJet Pro 251dw. I also see that my own Canon inkjet probably uses ink costing like the Brother, so I should probably get another machine if I wanted to save ink costs.