I need advice on a color laser printer?

[Rich]

Hi,
I own a small business and need to buy a
laser color printer. Our inkjet is getting
tired and costly.

Our volume is about 800 color and 500
black and white per wk.

I checked out the HP 4600 and the Minolta
3500 and they seem pretty comparable.

Any advice would appreciated,
Rich

 

[nev]

Hi,
I own a small business and need to buy a
laser color printer. Our inkjet is getting
tired and costly.

Our volume is about 800 color and 500
black and white per wk.

I checked out the HP 4600 and the Minolta
3500 and they seem pretty comparable.

Any advice would appreciated,
Rich

ive always like the hp's but id make sure to have the extended next
business day warranty upto 3 years on them, well worth it when the
inevitable problems arise with much regular use

 

[Elmo P. Shagnasty]

I own a small business and need to buy a
laser color printer. Our inkjet is getting
tired and costly.

Our volume is about 800 color and 500
black and white per wk.

http://www.freecolorprinters.com

Not affiliated with them, but 4000/month color should get you in the
door from what I've heard.

 

[Rich]

Thank's for your help.
The search goes on.

Rich

 

[Driftwood]

I couldn't find any information on the minolta 3500 on minolta's website.
Do you mean the 3300?

I see that the HP 4600 is only 600dpi. A color laser doesn't have the
photographic quality of an inkjet so I really recommend higher DPI to make
up for that.

 

[H bomb 2k]

the okidata 9300n is quality..

please email me at (e-mail address removed) for a quote

 

[Chas.]

Hi,
I own a small business and need to buy a
laser color printer. Our inkjet is getting
tired and costly.

Our volume is about 800 color and 500
black and white per wk.

I checked out the HP 4600 and the Minolta
3500 and they seem pretty comparable.

Any advice would appreciated,
Rich

Be prepared for some initial sticker shock over the cost of printer
supplies but a color laserjet is faster and probably cheaper than an
inkjet for business use over a 3 year period.

I've been using an HP 4500 Color LaserJet for about 2 1/2 years. I
print double sided 8 1/2 x 11 flyers with 20% to 35% coverage. I
figured out that my amortized cost per sheet is about $.33 for double
sided printing. The costs include the original total purchase price of
the printer plus costs of consumables such as toner cartridges, Drum
Kits, Transfer Kits and a Fuser Kit.

The 4500 prints single sided at 4 pages per minute color and about 18
per minute B&W. The general opinion is to use a less expensive printer
for black and white printing. I have an older HP LaserJet 6P that
spits out B&W at 8 PPM and several Ink Jets that are pretty fast - an
HP 970 and an HP 2160.

The 6p gets about 6000 to 8000 prints per $80 toner cartridge. The Ink
Jets get about 500+ per expensive cartridges. Refiling is for
cheapskates! I don't have time to mess around to save a few bucks nor
would I want an employee wasting company time either!

The HP 4600 uses toner cartridges that are almost twice the price of
the ones for the CLJ 4500. They are supposed to produce 25% to 50%
more prints than the 4500 cartridges.

The 4600 prints are supposed to be much better quality and it can
crank out 16 PPM in color and B&W.

The HP CLJ 4600 has been selling for ~ $1999 USD but the price is
dropping because HP is bringing out a new model soon. The newer model
will problaby sell for about $3000 for the first 6 months or so, if HP
follows the pattern they used for the past 5-6 years.

The real advantage of the HP over other brands is that I can get toner
catrriges from Office Depot, Office Max, Stapples, CompUSA and other
stores that are open until 9 PM Mon-Fri and have normal business hours
on the weekends. Try finding color toner cartridges for most of the
other brands at any of these stores!

As for print quality, I've printed 8 x 10 prints from a 2.1 megapixel
digital camera that have looked great. Years ago I worked in
advertising as a professional photographer. I also taught photography
at a university and I used to show in international photo salons. A
300 DPI print is more that satisfactory for most business uses, 600
DPI quality is overkill.

I just missed a deal on a display model 4600 at my local Office Depot.
They sold it on Weds. for $1499!

Chas.

 

[SleeperMan]

If you look out for costs, then Canon i860 is cheaper. according to this
site:
http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20031124/printer_heavyweights-11.html

if you print 1500 color, 1500 b/w pages and 360 photos, then all costs
incl.printer and ink are about 500$ which gives about 0,15$ per page. And
even lower if you refill.. But quality, fading etc ---that is
questionable...since i didn't have any color laser yet, i can't tell.

 

[Pete Premock]

I owned a HP 4500 for two years and got a great deal on a Xerox Phaser 790.
I sold the 4500 and am now using the Phaser 790. The 790 does perfect photos
on cheap paper. (.10/sheet) I have photos in my show room window for 2 years
printed on the 790 and they are still as nice as they were when I printed
them. It is much faster than the 4500 and the quality for photos is much
better. I can buy generic toner for the 790 for 39.00 which reduces the cost
considerably. My problem now is I need an upper fuser roller for the 790 and
can't find one. If anyone knows where I can get one, please let me know.
Pete

 

[Elmo P. Shagnasty]

My problem now is I need an upper fuser roller for the 790 and
can't find one. If anyone knows where I can get one, please let me know.

http://www.xerox.com

;-)

 

[Zermut]

I owned a HP 4500 for two years and got a great deal on a Xerox Phaser 790.
I sold the 4500 and am now using the Phaser 790. The 790 does perfect photos
on cheap paper. (.10/sheet) I have photos in my show room window for 2 years
printed on the 790 and they are still as nice as they were when I printed
them. It is much faster than the 4500 and the quality for photos is much
better. I can buy generic toner for the 790 for 39.00 which reduces the cost
considerably. My problem now is I need an upper fuser roller for the 790 and
can't find one. If anyone knows where I can get one, please let me know.
Pete

Good luck Pete. You will have trouble finding the parts. They are only
available at a Xerox dealer. Do you have a service contract on this
printer?

Zermut

 

[Chas.]

The original poster was inquiring about color laserjets not ink jets.
My costs amortized over 2 1/2 years have been about $.33 per double
sided sheet on premium quality color laser jet paper. That comes out
to $.0165 per sheet.

The HP 4500 was designed for up to 35,000 prints per months versus
most color ink jets which are made to last 2-3 years of light use and
then thrown away. As I mentioned before, the few bucks saved refilling
ink jet cartridges are not worth the hassels for a PROFITABLE
business.

 

[Chas.]

I owned a HP 4500 for two years and got a great deal on a Xerox Phaser 790.
I sold the 4500 and am now using the Phaser 790. The 790 does perfect photos
on cheap paper. (.10/sheet) I have photos in my show room window for 2 years
printed on the 790 and they are still as nice as they were when I printed
them. It is much faster than the 4500 and the quality for photos is much
better. I can buy generic toner for the 790 for 39.00 which reduces the cost
considerably. My problem now is I need an upper fuser roller for the 790 and
can't find one. If anyone knows where I can get one, please let me know.
Pete

My point exactly for justifying the HP printers. I looked at a number
of other brands before I bought my printer. Some of the others were
less expensive or had better features but I can pick up the 4
different color toner cartridges locally at a number of stores 7 days
a week. I can get the 3 other consumable parts in a day or so: Drum
Kit, Transfer Kit and Fuser Kit.

Chas.

 

[Rich]

Thank's for all of your input!

I found that Staples is selling out the hp 4600
for $1399.00. Thats about 500 cheaper than
anywhere else i have looked. This is the model
without the network card which leads me to another
question. We only have 3 workstations here and
placement of the printer is not much of an issue.
Do i drop $350 for a network card or hook it up
to one of the computers?
Thank's
Rich

 

[Stanley Krute]

Hi Rich

Do i drop $350 for a network card

Save some money, and just buy a wired or wireless
print server -- I like the Linksys stuff,
it just works -- for $80 to $150, and
then run it off that. The print server
connects to your net in the usual
nettish way, and then connects to
the printer via parallel or USB connection.

Stan

 

[J. A. Mc.]

I'd first hook it up to a computer and then set it to 'share'. You
should be able to 'ship' files over to the printer via that machine
when it's running and on the LAN.

 

[Chas.]

Thanks for the heads up on Staples. I've been on the road for 2 weeks
and I need to pick one up as soon as I get home. Most places are
clearing out their 4600s and their floor models or sending them back
to HP.

I run my printers off of an "old" 400Mhz PC that I use as a print
server. I have a HP network card for my 4500 but it doesn't really
give me any features worth using.

I print a lot of large Word, Excel and PowerPont documents with
embeded graphics. I use HP's Post Script emulation driver for the best
graphics with Word and Acrobat. The HP PS driver really drags with
Excel and PowerPoint files so I use the HP CPL5 driver for those.

I print 100 sheet at a time and then print the second side. I found
the it's less time consuming this way in case there is a paper jam.

The large files can take quite a bit of time to spool up and/or
process so it can tie up the PC up for 3-10 minutes before it starts
to print. I have 128MBs of memory in the 4500. I had several HP Tech
Support people tell me that additional RAM would just slow down the
4500???

I have the latest Adobe PS driver on my graphics PC. I have a lot of
Adobe apps on it plus ATM and PS fonts. I print from it through my
print server and it frees up fast.

Regards,

Chas.