…as long as it isn’t an HP[sup]*[/sup].
I want it for documents mostly but sometimes I need to print something in color. How do the color prints compare with those from a typical inkjet printer? Are they of similar quality or worse?
[sup]*[/sup] I had several HP printers in the past and they all were sturdy, long lasting machines. But the software was always a nightmare.
I’ve seen some Xerox printers. Are they any good?
Ask yourself if you REALLY need a color laser printer…if it’s just for the occasional picture, go to Wallgreens/Walmart/Costco for that…if it’s for the occasional blue hyperlink in a page of text, make sure you justify it…I say this because I own a killer Boat Anchor HP Color Laserjet office class printer. bought it for $400 (a great deal, I thought), put a 6000 page Black toner cart in it ($150), then 6 months later am on the hook for ANOTHER $300-420 for toner cartridges because it WON’T PRINT AT ALL if one of the cartridges is empty…So I can’t print in black and white because I’m out of Magenta.
ETA: I bought a Cannon All in One B&W printer/scanner/copier/fax for $150 at costco (online), and a replacement toner for $40…I’m not really missing color.
I have an Oki C6100.
It produces excellent prints (I just self-published 50 calendars with it, and they looked great). It does duplexing, which is important to me. I think this particular model has been replaced with a newer one, but it’s still available inexpensively from some distributors.
How do color laser printers compare to inkjets quality-wise?
We have two workhorses in our office, a B&W HP Laserjet 6mp and an Epson wide-carriage inkjet photo printer. The HP is about ten years old and though it’s been amazingly reliable, it’s having a few troubles here and there.
We are asked to submit design proofs a few times a year, and for that we use the Epson inkjet. Conventional wisdom said that inkjets beat laserjets for color printing. But the conventional wisdom is older than the HP.
So – can a modern laser printer print photographs (for our walls and keepsakes) and proofs as well as a six-cartridge inkjet?
Color lasers are getting pretty good (my 6100 will produce passable output), but inkjets are still the photo-quality output standard. I would go to OfficeMax or some such and see if they will let you print some of your photos on different printers. Use quality paper.
Also avoid DELL printers like the plague. We have one color laser printer, and it happens to be a DELL, I’m sure the printer itself was a great deal, but the laser cartridges are over $300 a set, and I’ve only been able to get them from DELL, which is a nightmare. I had even been considering a DELL computer for myself at hope at one point, but not after dealing with their customer service.
DELL’s customer service is a nightmare! I won’t buy any more products from them for that reason alone. I work for a non-profit, we don’t pay sales tax, but DELL’s sales people apparently can’t deal with that, and I’ve been working on them crediting my tax back since December 14th, I’ve faxed my tax letter to them 4 times and they still haven’t figured it out. Talk about a company that needs to downsize!
Color laser is gorgeous, the jet printers can’t compare IMO, but unless you’re doing a lot of color printing it’s not worth it. As stated upthread, sending the pics to Walgreens is a cinch. The laser toner costs more than the printer.
Supposedly Kodak printers have the lowest operating cost when you consider the price of the ink:
I came in to recommend an HP, even in light of your request that I not do so… at least if you’re going to use them on a network, rather than directly connected to your PC. And if we’re discussing business class printers, rather than personal (home) class printers.
I manage the printing environment at the very large company where I work. This environment consists of 5000+ HP devices, and 500+ Xerox devices. The Xerox devices are nothing but trouble, but the HP devices, along with the latest driver from HP, The HP Universal Driver (UPD), have been fantastic to work with.
In fact, I’d like to think that I was at least partially responsible for getting Xerox support kicked out of our support system, and the whole lot transferred over to HP. I’ve never liked Xerox devices in any workplace that I’ve had the opportunity to use them, and always preferred HP devices. The HP devices are reliable, quick, easy to configure, and have great output quality.
I have an HP all-in-one device at home, and that is an inkjet. IMO, the print quality on the inkjet is inferior to the color laser printers I have access to at work, both on an image quality level, and the fact that laser prints don’t smudge, and inkjets do.
We have an HP 2606dn that we’ve had good luck with. Before that we had an Oki 6100 but we’ve found the print quality is better on the HP, the Oki didn’t reproduce skin tones or oranges very well.
And the Oki printer had 4 toner cartridges (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) and also corresponding drums. The HP toner cartridges include drums and aren’t much if any more expensive than the Oki toner was.
I agree that recently HP printer software is junk. Overly big, slow, tries to install junk, install auto-starting stuff, and sell you more HP products.
But the default drivers that come with Windows works fine for all the basic functions that I’ve used, so just don’t bother to install the HP junkware. The printers themselves are indeed good, so use them without the HP software.
Yeah, I didn’t install all the software that comes with our HP color laser. Just the drivers are all you need.
We have a dell color laser where I work, and you can order the replacement cartridges from Staples since they now also distribute Dell products.
We also have a sample replacement cart (haven’t needed it yet) from MediaSciences so they make “generic” replacement cartridges for Dell color lasers… might be worth investigating.
I’ve noticed that HP is starting to hide some of the drivers-only packages as “IT professional use only” so don’t let that scare you.
I’ve had excellent luck with Brother. I don’t use color laser for accurate color, but for color web pages and business color, I’ve had very good luck with them.
HP may still make decent hardware, but their software has destroyed any residual good will I might have had towards them years ago. Their latest trick is to warn you that your ink is getting old.