Laser Printers

What to buy / What to avoid

[fashezee]

Ok folks, we moving forward in the printing world and decided to buy a laser printer. Our bubble jet printer is broken into many pieces at the moment, therefore time is of an essence. We have not suspects at the moment, but everyone in the office had a motive.

We resorted back to sneaker net with the office next door. So your comments will have some weight on what we buy, so:

What brand should we be seeking: is color worth it?

Let me know ASAP

[TheDoctor]

I got a magicolor 2300DL last year - a cheap but definitely not nasty colour laser printer - and I'm well satisfied with it.

You should note that, with a laser printer, you save a lot by not having to buy new ink (called "toner" in this case, of course) so often. You pay more up front, thefeore, but running costs are lower.

[lawman]

Don't know anything about the quality, but you can get a Konica Minolta PagePro 1350W Laser Printer for $99.99 after mail in rebate. I'm sure shipping is extra. Link [officemax.com]

Or you can get a Brother HL-1440 for $124.99 and free shipping Here [amazon.com]

I've got two of the Brothers. Nothing fancy. Just good basic transportation. :)

lawman

[Sunshyn]

For color, we have a magicolor in an earlier version of the 2300. We've had it a few years now, and our experiences with it are the same as TheDoctor's. Toner (and paper) run us far less than an inkjet. It's a stable printer with graphics print quality which, while not exceptional, aren't bad at all.

For basic office work, we just picked up the exact same deal on the HL-1440 as lawman pointed out. No complaints so far, and Brother printers have always treated us well.

[Robert Charlton]

A lot depends on how much you print and what you print. I print a lot of black and white text. For black and white, I'm partial to HP laser printers, and most reviews and people I've spoken with tend to support this. LexMarks, I should mention, have really bad reputations.

After my old HP5L crapped out, I looked at the choices out there. The home and home office laser printers were simply not well built, even worse than the 5L. Good print quality when new, but destined to fall apart quickly.

I also decided I did not want another gravity-fed printer (they're cheaper but far inferior to the horizontal tray, mechanically fed printers).

Ultimately, I found a discontinued HP LaserJet 2200D, much more printer than I needed, for about $600, and decided it was the best investment. Can't tell you how happy I am to have such a substantial machine cranking out my pages. Discontinued printers in this price range are a good deal.

As for color, you've got to decide whether it's worth the cost to you, depending on what you want to print. I can't speak about the quality of color lasers, but I can say about the cheap ink cartridge printers I've seen that if you print a lot of pages, the cost per page is going to kill you. In general, on the cheap printers, the manufacturers make their profit on the ink.