When buying a recertified printer, many customers seem very concerned with the age of the machine. However, this should be the absolute last consideration a potential buyer should make. Or maybe it should be the first? Here's why ... A properly recertified printer sold by a respectable company should look and perform as any new printer should. And long as the company can still strongly support the model with parts, toner and communication drivers for at least the next 5 years, you should be more than fine. If they can't, they shouldn't be selling it in the first place. All consumable parts such as rollers, gears and fusers/PM kits as well as any other parts that look or perform in even a remotely questionable fashion should have been replaced. Boards, lasers, power supplies, motors and most other parts of a printer not only don't usually break, but are normally made to last the life of the printer many times over. These same parts in a brand new printer are generally just as prone to failure as in any recertified printer. There are no telltale signs of imminent failure for these parts - they just fail. Remember, printers are machines and machines sometimes break. That's what warranties are for. Additionally, most recertified machines are usually selected for recertification because they not only look almost perfect, but are only slightly used with very few original pages on them. When you buy a recertified machine from SkylineDirect, more than 90% of the time you're buying a machine that has so few pages on it that it could almost be considered new. Most customers would be extremely surprised how few original pages are actually on most of our professionally recertified machines!

The older the printer, the less the parts cost to fix it, toner cartridges cost less and the less it costs to run and maintain the machine. Parts and supplies for newer models are very expensive for the first 3 or 4 years.

Manufacturers are continuing to try to cut costs - good for the manufacturer, bad for the poor unknowing consumer on the other end. This usually means cheaper parts and questionably built machines that just don't last. As with anything else - the older the printer, usually the better the build quality.