Color laser printer: A good investment?

[ClickHere2Surf.com]

I need a new printer as you might have read in my other post and was going to get a $200 business inkjet but just found the unprintable margins are too big for what I print and it would leave white bands each side of the print.

The color laserjets seem to be the only high-volume printers with small unprintable margins. I would keep my current photo quality inkjet for when I need good quality and will use the laser for everything else. The thing is Im used to the automatic double sided printing of the hp inkjets and the color laserjets with duplex start at $2000. This made me wonder if I should get a loan to get a really good $2000 laserjet that will most likely last me many years since I will print nowhere near what a small business would print. Its just that the fews prints I make have 100% ink coverage so I need high ink capacity. I could pay $300/month for 7-8 months or a bit less for a year.

Would this be a good investment? I tend to upgrade my inkjet every year, which I will probably keep doing, but I'm pretty sure I won't want to upgrade the laser quite as often, I'd try to keep it at least 3-5 years.

Thanks

[imaeditedbysowulo]

Jump on one of these quick.

http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...026&pfp=BROWSE

They are discontinued and are selling out quick. You'd have to buy a duplexor seperate, but they are only a few hundred dollars. These printers are rock solid, I've seen one with 90,000 prints out of it and nothing but consumables replaced in it.

Most trouble free laser printer model I've seen from HP by far.

[3fingersalute]

J
Most trouble free laser printer model I've seen from HP by far.

The 4600 is a very nice little printer, and color for under $2,000 is just amazing!

[hudsonsmith]

We had an HP 4000 or 4100 at my last job. It was a shared printer in a production environment and it was used fairly heavily. A good share of the usage was full page photo/graphics for consulting reports. Each run would have 50 or so color pages, and we would do 1-2 per week. At that usage, we were really eating through consumables at a good pace, and not just the 4 toner cartridges - fixer, drum, etc.

Take a look at the page capacity for the consumables relative to your usage and price out your annual cost for those as well. BTW, the capacities are usually based on 50% coverage or less, so adjust accordingly.

[3fingersalute]

Take a look at the page capacity for the consumables relative to your usage and price out your annual cost for those as well. BTW, the capacities are usually based on 50% coverage or less, so adjust accordingly.

Acutally, almost all printer and copier consumable reports are based on the slyrix letter (sp?) which is only 5% coverage. And in reality, 5% is next to nothing, so most people need to cut usage counts way down!

[imaeditedbysowulo]

We had an HP 4000 or 4100 at my last job. It was a shared printer in a production environment and it was used fairly heavily. A good share of the usage was full page photo/graphics for consulting reports. Each run would have 50 or so color pages, and we would do 1-2 per week. At that usage, we were really eating through consumables at a good pace, and not just the 4 toner cartridges - fixer, drum, etc.

Take a look at the page capacity for the consumables relative to your usage and price out your annual cost for those as well. BTW, the capacities are usually based on 50% coverage or less, so adjust accordingly.

Those are both black & white models, maybe you're thinking of the 4500? The 4500's went through drum kits every 4-6K prints and transfer kits every 25-35K and would need a fuser after about 60K. Thro in the occsaional carousel motor and the poorly functioning ITB drawers and yea they were expensive printers to maintain.

The 4600's don't have a drum kit, each individual toner cartridge has it's own drum, so everytime you replace a color it's drum is also brand new. I see 4600's pretty often that are used heavily and the only thing I've ever had to replace on one was the transfer kit. Best color laser printer I've run into by far. They are also cool because it tells you how many pages you have left of each individual color and are fairly accurate with those readings.

[hudsonsmith]

Those are both black & white models, maybe you're thinking of the 4500? The 4500's went through drum kits every 4-6K prints and transfer kits every 25-35K and would need a fuser after about 60K. Thro in the occsaional carousel motor and the poorly functioning ITB drawers and yea they were expensive printers to maintain.

The 4600's don't have a drum kit, each individual toner cartridge has it's own drum, so everytime you replace a color it's drum is also brand new. I see 4600's pretty often that are used heavily and the only thing I've ever had to replace on one was the transfer kit. Best color laser printer I've run into by far. They are also cool because it tells you how many pages you have left of each individual color and are fairly accurate with those readings.

Sounds right. I think maybe one was a 4500 and one was a 4550.

[Hippie_Tech]

You might also take a look at the Xerox Phaser 8400 line of color printers. Very nice print quality and fairly cheap to operate (for a color laser printer). I have several clients that use these printers and they are very impressed. You can get one with a duplexer and ethernet for around $1600.00 plus S&H.

http://www.office.xerox.com/perl-bin...l?product=8400

[MobilePCPhysician]

Jump on one of these quick.

http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...026&pfp=BROWSE

They are discontinued and are selling out quick. You'd have to buy a duplexor seperate, but they are only a few hundred dollars. These printers are rock solid, I've seen one with 90,000 prints out of it and nothing but consumables replaced in it.

Most trouble free laser printer model I've seen from HP by far.

Got three customers with these. No problems whatsoever. Upgraded the memory in one of them to 512. Takes pc 100. Colors are separate. It's a good price, too.

[ClickHere2Surf.com]

Would this one be good? Its not HP but it has duplex and is only $450. HPs with duplex start at $2000. Its only 5PPM in color but im sure in best mode it will still be faster than my inkjet on best quality, which is rated at 21ppm (17 in color).

Does anyone know if the cartridges are chipped in anyway to prevent toner refilling? I always refill my inkjet it saves me thousands of dollars per year.

Thanks

[ClickHere2Surf.com]

Oops forgot the link

http://samsung.com/Products/Printer/...er_CLP_500.htm

[imaeditedbysowulo]

I've never worked on or even seen a Samsung printer. What I've learned in my many years of repairing things is that you will get exactly what you pay for.

If that samsung were to break in any way you would be looking at a huge repair bill, assuming you could find someone that is competent to work on it.

I've worked for a number of different repair places and they all have one thing in common. When a tech orders the wrong part, even if the tech was a complete moron for ordering the part, the customer gets stuck paying for it. If you get a good tech working on it or just a tech that is lucky and orders the correct part the first time, then you will get a reasonable bill.

There are a lot more competent HP printer repair people than any of the other brands. Some other brands I've worked on IBM Lexmark cough cough build their printers as tho nothing on them will ever break and noone will ever have to disassemble the printer. They are a real pain in the butt and it is reflected in the repair bill.

Just in case none of this makes sense to you, there is no way in h4ll I would ever recommend a samsung printer of any kind unless you are cool with just throwing it away when it breaks.

[ClickHere2Surf.com]

Well considering its made for fairly large columes compared to a home printer and I will be printing probably at most 500 pages per month, are there really chances that it breaks within 2-3 years, I would probably replace it for an HP after 2-3 years.

I would definately get an HP LJ 2550 thats the same price but the HP is slower (I dont really mind) but doesnt do double sided printing which all HP inkjets support and I couldnt live without it even though I am keeping my HP inkjet with the dupelxer for when I want photo quality prints.

[3fingersalute]

I agree with Iamedited, HP's are the easiest to work on from a tech standpoint, parts are easy to get, and are very reliable.

I did work on one b&w Samsung laser once - it was a royal pain, and all I was trying to replace were feed tires!

One other note - if you happen to look at the Oki Color series, be careful! They make a beautiful print, but they can be a very problematic printer. I hold Oki certification and do many Oki warranty calls, and I cannot believe how poorly made these printers are. They bust transfer belts all the time, and god help you if you ever need to replace anything below the paper path. I had to replace a fan on one once, and it was a 4 hour job, and that's with factory training and using the factory service manual!

I still say nothing beats an HP. Spend a little more now or a lot more later!

[Kenteth420]

I agree with everyone here but at the sametime, I would never take out a loan on a printer, If that were the case I would go with the cheap one, if it breaks buy a new one, or if it breaks maybe at that time you wouldnt have to take out a loan to buy an HP.