Colour Laser Printers

[BlueDiamond]

Hi peeps. Currently looking at colour laser printers and have narrowed the choice to three ...

Lexmark C510
Epson Aculaser C1100
Hewlett Packard Colour LaserJet 2600n

Does anyone have any comments to make on any of these that might be helpful in the decision-making process? :cool:

[newswatcher]

What is your major selection criteria? Does cost of consumables enter into it? What type of printing will you be doing?

Sorry it's not one of your short list, but worth mentioning is a Canon Pixma IP4000. It has also got 5 ink cartridges, 4 small - yellow, magenta, cyan and black, plus one additional large black one for letters etc. Replacement cost about 5GBP each.

Model may have been replaced now, but I have been very happy with it, particularly for photos.
:ok: :ok:

[dwlpl]

newswatcher, isn't BlueDiamond needing info on Laser Printers.

Things I look out for is the replacement of consumables, in this case toner cartridges.

Toner cartridges will come in different sizes for the different make of printer, you will have to get more info on this to help guage how many pages at a set coverage the printer can print. You will then need to get prices for the replacement toner cartridge then weigh up what is the cheapest.

One other thing to ask is how old is the printer. Companies tend to sell off printers when new models come onto the market. Old printers will tend to have more 'limited tech support life' than a new model. So it may be false economy buying a cheap printer only to find that in the near future you cannot get help if things go wrong.

[newswatcher]

dwlpl agreed, I wasn't sure whether he was using that as a generic. If he needs a laser printer, then obviously my suggestion is irrelevant.

[P.Pilcher]

DWLPL I can't agree more with your comments about old technology items. About four years ago I bought a brand new conventional photocopier for about £300 which I thought was a steal although I was familiar with the model and aware that it had been in production for many years. The following year the manufacturer brought out a new model - same innards but restyled case for £700, so I grinned. The following year the manufacturers withdrew their maintenance contract as they could not guarantee spares supply. A month ago my machine packed up - simple repair, but the approximate cost of spares (if they were still available) and the one off call out fee for an engineer was more than the cost of a brand new Epson three in one printer. This does colour photocopies as well if I want and my wife also now has a scanner attached to her computer.

How times change: I nearly wept when dumping my four year old photocopier at the tip!

P.P.

[BlueDiamond]

As far as I can tell, they're all current or new models. Speed of printing is not an issue, I need things like borderless printing and good colour replication as well as good resolution. Two of them have both high and low yield toner cartridges, one has a standard size only . (I do have all that info and have done the workings out on that.)

All are compatible with Windows 98 but only the Epson has both parallel and USB ports ... not that that is an issue. None of them will do A3 which is a shame and the Lexmark has some extra "consumables" issues in the form of items to be replaced ... but since we're talking about somewhere in the region of 250,000 prints, it won't be a problem.

What I'm really looking for, I suppose is any experience with reliability of colour laser printers. I realise they're not in common use but now that the price has come down from around $14,000 to about $800, that's not much more than a top class ink jet printer and I expect more of them to be around in the future.

The Epson is a new model with no track record to go by, the others are current products.

Thanks folks.

[seacue]

Naive questions:

Why laser?

Do they really have better archival performance than [some] inkjets?

Likely not more-accurate colors since AFAIK lasers are three-color while photo inkjets are 5 (or so) color.

I hope this doesn't highjack you thread BD.

seacue

[BlueDiamond]

No worries, seacue. One of the main issues with inkjet printers has always been the cost of consumables and the instability of the resulting print. If a raindrop gets onto something printed by a bubblejet, it will make the ink run and smear. With my own bubblejet, the print heads need to be replaced every 10 cartridges ... that's according to specs but the reality is that they have needed to be replaced every seven or eight reloads. When I work out what I have spent on ink and heads over the last eight years, it's a considerable amount and the laser printers appear, on the research, to actually be a cheaper option.

All the printers I've looked at so far are CMYK, four cartridge critters.

[newswatcher]

blue, have a look at this (http://www.itreviews.co.uk/hardware/hard4.htm)

[bladewashout]

I bought an OKI 5100 (I believe there is a newer model now). Fairly inexpensive, probably even cheaper now.

It is ethernet ready and I use it off a 100baseT hub. Quality is really good and it doesn't generally require much attention, just sits there churning out prints from desktop and 2 laptops.

Whatever you buy, check the specified content of your initial supplied toner cartridges carefully - most colour lasers come with only 30% full cartridges - it's a complete scam to force you into buying a new set of toner cartridges soon after you get the printer. Oki full 'rainbow' set of toner cartridges (100% full!) is about 225+VAT but lasts a long time even with kids using it.

BW

[pilotwolf]

Bit off topic and not much use to Bluey but the local Staples (UK) are doing a colour laser printer for about £175.00 - seemed very good value...

PW

[shuttlebus]

All,

Best to check out some reviews first....

Try: -

www.pcpro.co.uk

www.pcw.co.uk

www.computerbuyer.co.uk

Most magazines run comparions labs and these can give a good indication of which one to buy based on speed, usage, consumable costs etc.

I think one of the above magazines was running a group test this month. Wouldn't do any harm to drop into your local WHS and browse the PC mags...

Regards,

Shuttlebus

[BlueDiamond]

Thanks everyone ... lots of useful info to be had on those sites. One thing that is clear as bladewashout says, is that they all come with minimally filled toner cartridges. "Starter Packs" is the reference of choice. :rolleyes: Cheeky sods ... and they ALL do that!

They all seem a bit limited in paper sizes and finishes ... no A3, no A5, no "proper" photo paper or anything coated (I'm not worried about envelope sizes) and I won't be able to do T shirts any more but I'll get around that one way or another.

They all seem to have what I want which is good colour reproduction and borderless printing so it will come down now to cost of toner replacement. All of them are reliable brands so not much difference there.

Thanks for your help everyone ... much appreciated.