[muglo] Re: Colour laser printers?
- From: "Eric D." <hideme666@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <muglo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 06 May 2003 09:33:43 -0400
on 5/5/03 9:08 PM, Kathryn-Jane Hazel at k.j.hazel@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Are there reliable colour laser printers suitable for home office use
> that are less than that?
I think I saw a colour laser for $1500 recently. Refurbished lasers are
quite a bit less than that and you can get Apple Colour Lasers for $600-900
IIRC (don't know if that would be good enough for your purposes... it's
quite old by now since Apple hasn't been selling printers for years).
Do you really plan to do *that* much colour printing?
Also, do you plan to keep your current laser printer? If you can keep the
current laser, then I would say investigate a high-end colour inkjet
instead, unless you plan to do a lot of printing. Consumables for colour
lasers are pretty expensive (not as $$/page than inkjets I think).
The Canon i-series is quite respectable. They sell 4 and 6 colour models.
Each colour is sold as a separate cartridge (CMYK vs. CMYK++ (can't remember
what the two extra colours are in the six colour models)) so if you run out
of one colour you don't end up running out and buying a whole new cartridge
and wasting the other colours. Each cartridge is around $20 (15 ml for
colours, 30 ml for B&W IIRC).
One other consideration that might lead you to spend the big bucks on a
laser is the paper -- inkjets need special paper that costs $0.50-$1.00 to
print photographs that look good. Lasers can usually print good colour on
plain photocopier paper. However, if you're using the colour prints for
archival purposes you're going to want to do it on good paper anyway.
What you should do is do some web search and research on the cost of colour
lasers/good inkjets (remembering that the US misspells colour as color ;),
the colour laser/inkjet consumables, paper requirements, and, most
importantly, how much mileage you get out of the consumables.
You may find that you'd have to have your colour laser for a decade before
you off-set the initial cost advantage of the inkjet. Furthermore, in four
or five years inkjets will have improved that much more, and colour lasers
will have come down in price that much more.
Until the technology settles down -- unless you plan to print lots of colour
-- I am guessing that you will be better off with two separate printers. One
laser for text, and one inkjet for colour work (& inkjets look pretty good
now).
There have been some huge strides in printer (notably inkjet) quality in the
past few years so you may find printers have improved that much more in a
few years and find yourself regretting spending oodles of money on a colour
laser.
That said, I'd love to be able to print colour photos on plain paper -- it
would cost quite a bit more on ink but I'd get more use out of our Canon
i550.
Eric
PS Check out the pricing on businessdepot on futureslop's websites.
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