Colour Laser for general printing?

[DVEous]

... Obsolete ...

[Marvin]

We have an epson and an hp at work and they are fantastic for printing documents. They are terrible at photos of any kind, particularly making the green look awful and the whole thing dark. The cartridges are VERY expensive (I believe around $250 each) but they seem to get a lot of documents done (we are in a school so it gets a lot of use). Neither has broken down in 3 years or so.

[the foto fanatic]

There are HP and Konica Minolta laser printers for sale right now at Graysonline.

[DVEous]

... Obsolete ...

[SteveGriffin]

We have a Lexmark C720 (few years old) in the office and it is very expensive to run. ~ 25 cents per page. Quality is OK, reliability average. I have heard very mixed reports about Lexmark generally.

I used to only purchase HPwhen I worked as an IT Manager bcause they never broke.

We now have a HP B&W laser in our office for everyday printing and just use the colour machine when we need that splash of colour. When our stock of consumables for the Lexmark are gone I will be buying a HP colour machine.

[dviv]

I used to only purchase HPwhen I worked as an IT Manager bcause they never broke.

Yup. If you want reliable in Laser, go HP.

[DVEous]

... Obsolete ...

[Oz_Beachside]

HP2600, great value at about $500. Mine gets used daily, running for 12 months on the introductory cartridges.

Just updated the cartidges, cost about $350 (4 cartidges).

[TonyH]

If you're using the laser for letterheads only, you'll possibly find it much cheaper to Offset print the letterheads and continue using the B/W for the body of text.

If price per unit (usually 20-50cents depending on printer etc) for an A4 is no object then laser is a handy machine to have in the office.

[obzelite]

i have a c900 colour epson at work and on the decent colour laser paper the photos are pretty impressive. On normal reflex they suck, but colour documents look ok.
It cant touch a decent gloss paper output from an inkjet, but its a good output anyway.

[servaasproducts]

HP2600, great value at about $500. Mine gets used daily, running for 12 months on the introductory cartridges.

Just updated the cartidges, cost about $350 (4 cartidges).

We just picked up one of these on ebay for $255 about 2 months ago. It is good for printing colour stationery such as invoices. Not any good fr graphics/photos. We went with this model as it has networking funtionality. Note that it assumes a percentage of colour coverage even if only printing black, and thus all colour cartriges run out at once. I found this odd, and on Googling this, we found that this automatic calculation which is a "feature to ensure high quality printing on every page" is really a feature to sell more toner. Fortunately it can be changed in the menu. We did and have been printing for 3 more weeks with no sign of toner depletion! According to http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/forums/laser/44881 we may get another 20% -50%.

Note, this printer can currently be had for $399 after a $100 HP rebate from cworld.com.au. So at $350 for a set of cartridges, you can get a new printer thrown in and a new warranty to boot for an extra $50. Crazy.

[Oz_Beachside]

HP2600, great value at about $500. Mine gets used daily, running for 12 months on the introductory cartridges.

Just updated the cartidges, cost about $350 (4 cartidges).

We just picked up one of these on ebay for $255 about 2 months ago. It is good for printing colour stationery such as invoices. Not any good fr graphics/photos. We went with this model as it has networking funtionality. Note that it assumes a percentage of colour coverage even if only printing black, and thus all colour cartriges run out at once. I found this odd, and on Googling this, we found that this automatic calculation which is a "feature to ensure high quality printing on every page" is really a feature to sell more toner. Fortunately it can be changed in the menu. We did and have been printing for 3 more weeks with no sign of toner depletion! According to http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/forums/laser/44881 we may get another 20% -50%.

Note, this printer can currently be had for $399 after a $100 HP rebate from cworld.com.au. So at $350 for a set of cartridges, you can get a new printer thrown in and a new warranty to boot for an extra $50. Crazy.

useful feedback, thanks!!!

oh, and thanks for your charger and batteries deal at PMA, they work a treat!

[the foto fanatic]

Not wanting to sound like a broken record, and I have no affiliation with this site, but Hewlett Packard sell a lot of new and reconditioned printers, with warranties, at Graysonline. The 2600N and 1600 are both there now.

It is well worth checking there (and on eBay) before laying out the hard-earned at Harris Technology or Hardly Normal.

I will never buy a printer direct from a retail store again.

[who]

I will second the call NOT to buy Lexmark.

An office I worked at had 2 of these, big network models with multiple bins. Good thing there was a service plan over them, as a tech would be out at least once a month fixing one & checking the other......

When the service plan got too expensive, they were used until they died and replaced by a big Toshiba fax/copier setup (55ppm)

Genuine consumables were expensive too comparably.

Where I am now uses small network HP printers well beyond the duty cycle and they just don't want to die....... At the moment we would be pushing 1,000 pages a day though each of them (2).

At home I have a small B&W Canon Laser, no problems, 1 new toner in about 2.5 years and it does a bit of printing.