I need a color laser printer

[Mercutio]

I'm dealing with a jewelry store right now that is being computerized for the very first time. A week ago, they were filling out sales slips by hand. All their records were on paper.

So I've wired the place up, installed four PCs, a couple inkjets for printing, whatever. The final part of the package was to be a laser printer for handling receipt printing, large office documents and certain output from their POS software.

Yesterday I tried to put in an HP 1160, an inexpensive monochrome model. I purchased it largely on the basis of the dimensions set aside for a printer under the counter of their service desk.

Except, whoops, the POS software needs to be able to print in color sometimes, and the store owner assumed ALL printers print in color.

So I had an HP2250 delivered (I paid for second day, got it in one, woot).
Took it over, set it up...

It uses a rotating cartridge mechanism to print with each color of toner. It sounds like bones being broken. Crack, Crack, Crack, Crack.

I printed out the test page when my client tells me "Box that up and send it back, it's too loud." I start to mention the $80 it cost to ship the stupid thing - there aren't many places that have a whole selection of Color Laser Printers sitting around; it's not like I can go audition different models.
And even worse, *I* think the HP is too loud, too.

So before I go ordering anything else, does anyone know of a physically small laser printer, that handles color, is fairly quiet, and has readily available replacement toner?

 

[sechs]

Have you considered a solid ink (i.e. Phaser) printer?

 

[Handruin]

You may throw up at this suggestion, but what about a Dell Laser 3000cn? My buddy has one and he's been happy with it so far. It's a modest size (16.7" x 16.5" x 17") that I would not call compact, but I don't recall it being noisy.

 

[Mercutio]

Have you considered a solid ink (i.e. Phaser) printer?

Actually, I love Phasers, but they are not quiet, nor are they particularly small.

My leading candidates at the moment are the Samsung CLP-550N and the C5150n from Oki. I can find evidence that both of these hit around 50db while printing, which isn't THAT loud.

The main issue with both of these is toner availability. HP stuff I know you can get anywhere. Oki... maybe. Samsung toner just isn't something the local office supply places carry, and this customer isn't technical enough to do anything but call me or the small, non-chain office supply shop that's two blocks from his business.

Lexmark (and Dell) scares me. Far too many bad experiences.

 

[Mercutio]

You may throw up at this suggestion,

I didn't throw up, but I could taste it in the back of my throat.

 

[Handruin]

Just out of curiosity, have you had personal bad experieinces with Dell printers, or has it been word of mouth?

 

[Pradeep]

Phaser solid-ink printers are nice, but have downsides such as the inability to mark up prints due to water repellency of the wax. Our one at work is quiet when printing, but it makes a rather large amount of noise as it ejects the page into the top tray. Also it can take quite a while to warm up, if you let it go to sleep.

 

[Mercutio]

It's more that Dell = Lexmark.

 

[sechs]

Actually, I love Phasers, but they are not quiet, nor are they particularly small.

Maybe I've been hanging around the expensive models....

 

[Mercutio]

Or maybe my sense of "small" is ruined by the extra paper trays n' crap.
There's very little difference between the 850, 860 and 8200, though.

 

[P5-133XL]

Why do you absolutely require a color small laser - What about small inkjets?

 

[Mercutio]

Yeah... believe me, I tried that one. Cost per page and frequency of refills are issues. More appropriately, one of the employees heard me talking about printers and started in on how much new ink costs.
Completely killed that idea...

 

[Pradeep]

Give them a breakdown of how much four laser toner carts plus a maintenance kit will cost once the minimum page "starter kit" runs out. Cheaper than inkjet but still not cheap.

 

[Santilli]

Mercutio:
Costco had a decent Dell network color printer, for some decent price, and it got great reviews. Don't know if it's quiet.

I thought Dell printers were HP's, underneath?

s

 

[mangyDOG]

I know it is an inkjet but what about one of these?

http://www.canon.com.au/products/printers/business_inkjet_printers/bij2300.html


quite, small foot print, as cheap (if not cheaper than colour laser) to run and has a built in NIC to make networking it nice and easy.


Cheers,
mangyDOG

 

[mangyDOG]

quite, small foot print

sorry the printer is quite quiet :wink:

 

[Mercutio]

Give them a breakdown of how much four laser toner carts plus a maintenance kit will cost once the minimum page "starter kit" runs out. Cheaper than inkjet but still not cheap.

Cost per page on any decent laser printer is about 1/4 - 1/3 of what it is on an inkjet. That's something I explained originally, when I thought a mono laser printer would be sufficient for their needs. Of course, my customer has just seized on that fact.

Inkjets are out, believe me.

Greg, here's an article about the Dell/Lexmark connection. In a nutshell, when Dell announced it was going into the printer business, HP (the other candidate for "biggest PC vendor") stopped selling printers through Dell. Dell printers use Lexmark cartridges.

 

[Tannin]

You didn't (quite) throw up at the thought of a Dell/Lexmark printer, but you are using Hewlett-Packards?

Oh well, each to his own.

Laser printers I have had good experiences with (most of them not colour, not in any particular order).

* Canon
* Epson
* Kyocera/Mita
* Xerox

I'd feel OK about an Oki. Maybe a Samsung. Never HP. Or Lexmark, for that matter. HP is the PC-Chips of printers. Lexmark is the Symantec.

 

[Mercutio]

I've never had serious problems with an HP Laser printer, Tannin. Granted, I'm used to 4500s, which are a different animal than what we're talking about here.

Basically, 75% of all the printers I see, ANYWHERE, are HP. HP Ink/Toner is what's readily available, and what can be repaired by local printer service techs.

That's why I'm having a REALLY hard time recommending a Samsung or Oki, and they're the only other players in this space (well, and Lexmark, but Lexmark counts for printers about as much as Western Digital counts for printers).

 

[Fushigi]

Dunno if your clients would ever make it to the 'burbs, but Microcenter in Westmont has the Oki and, I think Samsung color lasers in stock. The ad also mentioned a Brother. I was just there this afternoon to pick up a Maxtor OneTouch 250GB ($140 after rebate).

Speaking of Oki, they also carry the ML-320. Pretty much the last non-industrial dot matrix printer you'll ever see.

 

[mubs]

I know it's fun to diss HP, but laser printers are something they do really well. Apart from the points Merc makes about them, I've sen them run and run and run in corporate environments. The HP LaserJet 4 is an all time classic, widely acknowledged to be the best laser printer ever designed and built. They were so reliable and cheap to run, HP lost money in lost sales of upgrades and spare parts.

 

[Tannin]

Laser printers are something HP used to do really well. The LaserJet 4 was an all time classic. The Carly got hold of the company. I am led to believe that their laser products are not the ultimate in crapsville that their systems and inket printers are these days, but I wouldn't trust an HP-branded bootlace manufactured after about 2000.

 

[Santilli]

Mercutio:
HP still has great support. I called em up, and spent about an hour trying to figure out my 4000N networking settings. Why not call up and ask them which of their color printers is quiet?

The 2250 is too far down the food chain for me to really buy. HP's lower end stuff is usually terrible, but, get into the 800-1200 dollar range, and you get what you pay for.

Sounds like this guy can afford a quality printer, so get him one.

s

 

[Santilli]

http://breakingnewsblog.com/printer/archives/colour_laserjet_2840_review/

That ones noisy...

s

 

[Tannin]

In Australia, HP has support the way a dog has lunar-orbit calculus.

 

[Santilli]

From looking at reviews of HP's, it looks like you have to spend about 1600 bucks, or more, to get a decent printer.

I paid 2 g's for the 4000N, with 72 mb of ram, and duplex unit. Is it worth it?
Still going.

If I bought another printer for school, it would likely be the 4000 series, refurbished.

The scary part about the HP's is the 600 bucks to replace the color cartridges.
THAT SUCKS.

s

 

[Santilli]

In Australia, HP has support the way a dog has lunar-orbit calculus.

Tannin: Between appl support, HP support, etc. one might think you are on an island, almost off the edge of the world, near antartica.... :mrgrn:

s

 

[Tannin]

Bloody near Antarctica tonight, my friend. Freeze the monkey off a brass ball. No, I mean monkey the freeze off a .... Hell, you know what I mean.

 

[i]

In Australia, HP has support the way a dog has lunar-orbit calculus.

Do you mean calculus? Or calculus?

 

[Mercutio]

Ended up going with the Samsung. The deciding factor ended up being the fact that it has a built-in Duplexer... and the fact that Samsung puts noise specs in a conspicuous place in its product literature.

If I have a good experience with this thing, I think the next thing to say is "Is there anything Samsung can't do well?"

 

[Santilli]

Which model, and what did it cost? Keep me posted. I'm looking for one down the road, and the HP's cost of ink cartridges scares the heck out of me...

s

 

[Tannin]

I think the next thing to say is "Is there anything Samsung can't do well?"

No need. I'm telling you now that their entry-level monitors are appalling. The worst reliability of any monitor we have sold in the last ten years. In this market they are sold under the "Samtron" brandname. Possibly in your part of the world too.

I have, at last count, three (or is it four/) of them sitting around faulty because they have failed and been repaired a minimum of three times each and I'm not prepared to give them back to customers. Our customers got brand new Acer monitors as replacements paid for out of my own pocket - there was nothing else I could do as I knew damn well that the Samsungs would fail yet again. Sure enough, they have failed once more. It's not worth having them fixed under warranty yet again. They always fail.

Out of about 10 monitors before we spotted what was going on and switched brands, about 7 or 8 failed at least once.

Utter and complete crap products. Never, ever again.

 

[Buck]

Utter and complete crap products. Never, ever again.

What was the problem?

 

[Tannin]

To clarify, we used the three-time-offender Samsungs in our workshop after they came back the third time, seeing as they wern't trustworthy enough to give to a customer. Then, one by one, they failed a 4th time. (Is one of them still going OK at the moment? I'd have to check.)

 

[Tannin]

Unreadable displays, Buck. They start by going a funny colour, then get worse and worse. Next time I'm at the office I'll switch one of them on an remind myself exactly what they do - it's been a year or so.

BTW, they all failed within a couple of months or so, typically after only a few weeks of service. They they keep on failing after being "fixed" every couple of months until you get sick of carting the damn things around and give up.

 

[Santilli]

Tannin:
For some reason I thought Margarat River was just up the road from you, near Adelaide(sp) or Bells Beach, not near Perth.

Guess that would be a bit of a drive.

Hope to stop by David's place this week, or next.

That's a bit closer...
s

 

[Santilli]

Ended up going with the Samsung. The deciding factor ended up being the fact that it has a built-in Duplexer... and the fact that Samsung puts noise specs in a conspicuous place in its product literature.

If I have a good experience with this thing, I think the next thing to say is "Is there anything Samsung can't do well?"

Which model?

s

 

[Buck]

To clarify, we used the three-time-offender Samsungs in our workshop after they came back the third time, seeing as they wern't trustworthy enough to give to a customer. Then, one by one, they failed a 4th time. (Is one of them still going OK at the moment? I'd have to check.)

I saw this many years ago with Radius monitors (I forget the model, but they were portrait style) for Mac systems. We took the monitors to a television repariman and he said the soldering joints were a joke. He resoldered most of them and the monitor worked beautifully for years.

 

[Santilli]

Mercutio:
Follow up?
What model, etc.?

s

 

[Mercutio]

It's the something-550N-something or other. I haven't had it out to install it yet. It's been sitting in its enormous box taking up about 80% of the free floor space in my tiny office for about two weeks now.