Laser Printer

I'm looking to upgrade to a network (3 computers wireless connection) laser printer for a small business.

Anybody got a good suggestion?

Wouldn't be a high volume user, but would need colour. Also it's for a home office so would need to fit reasonably on a shelf and not be the size of an airconditioner :)
 
We use a Brother MFC-9840CDW on a 3 PC network - highly recommend it.

Had a Dell before that but Dell consumables are more costly and only available from Dell whereas Brother stuff you can get from just about anywhere.
 
We use a Brother MFC-9840CDW on a 3 PC network - highly recommend it.

Had a Dell before that but Dell consumables are more costly and only available from Dell whereas Brother stuff you can get from just about anywhere.
That's a piece of machinery!

Looks like $1600 and a bit larger than my small office could handle :) Might need to stretch the budget to get wireless networking I just realized, though would still like to squeeze something onto a bookcase shelf.
 

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I swore never to touch a Brother printer or fax ever again - dodgey drivers, poor support, generally rubbish machinery (in my opinion). This was 5+ years ago though, so they may have improved - I've stayed true to my word since (although they make great labelling machines!).

In general, avoid printers at all cost - they are electro-mechanical devices with many moving parts and as such are prone to failure and general misbehaviour.

I can't really recommend anything relating to printers - a high end HP is probably going to serve you well - they generally have good drivers, but will cost you a fortune to buy (I'm talking business models, not personal models which are cheap and nasty these days), and HP will gouge you on consumables.

I'm currently using a Samsung network colour laser, it's okay - has been reasonably good and consumables are reasonably priced, but it has already been replaced under warranty once and is partly broken again (one of the sheet feeding trays no longer works). It fails your "airconditioner" test too - but most decent printers will I think you'll find.

Did I mention that I hate printers?

I think my issues started during my first full-time job out of uni when I was doing tech support work for a government department in Adelaide ... 60%+ of our support calls were printer related. The bane of our lives.

I strongly recommend you don't look for something compact enough to fit on a bookcase shelf ... it's going to be a cheap personal printer and won't handle the workload I'm sure you're going to throw at it. If you will be printing a lot - spend the money on a good printer - small personal printers are not worth the effort and don't give you the same flexibility when it comes to paper-handling options.

I also prefer not to get all-in-one devices, but rather pick individual devices based on their own merits (eg Canon sheet-feed scanner, Epson flat-bed scanner, Nikon slide scanner, mbox virtual fax, epson photo printer, some other brand of laser printer, etc) ... but that's just my preference - an all-in-one device might suit you better. Just remember that it does become a single point of failure - if it breaks, you lose all your paper handling capabilities at once. You need to weigh up the loss of productivity if it breaks versus the cost and space taken up by separate devices.

Fortunately I rarely print anything in my day-to-day work ... but I did need to print a lot of reading material for the uni course I've just finished, so it's been getting a good workout. Hopefully now it can go back to being almost never used.
 
we run a couple HP 3000 Dn machines and an HP 2840 multi thing.

Cheapish torun because u can get 3rd party toners

Space wise quite huge.

Look at a wireless print server if you cant put the box where you want i, or a bt of cat 5 cable isnt hard either

ta
rolf
 
Despite Sim's hatred for Printers these days most of them are reliable.
At work I bought a cheap HP2600 a couple of years ago just for myself because I do a lot of printing and it's still going strong

Our IT dept will not touch the cheap ones but I don't need their support anyway so I buy whatever I need from officeworks and when it breaks I replace it.

Whatever you buy check out the cost of the consumables, but don't be scared by the prices in the stores. You can get similar tones from ebay for much less.
 
I buy whatever I need from officeworks and when it breaks I replace it.

Simple mono laser printers are so cheap now (you can get them around $100) ... they are practically disposable. The toner in them is often worth more than the printer itself :eek:

You can get small colour laser printers for around $300 ... so that's practically disposable too - although you'll pay more for network support.

The current equivalent of my Samsung printer would be the CLP-610ND which costs $454 from ht.com.au

To replace all consumables you're looking at:

Samsung CLP-Y660B - toner cartridge - Yellow $212
Samsung CLP-C660B - toner cartridge - Cyan $212
Samsung CLP-M660B - toner cartridge - Magenta $212
Samsung CLP-K660B - toner cartridge - Black $165
Samsung CLP-T660B - printer transfer belt $312

= $1113 ... nearly 3x as much as the printer cost!

... although in general use you'd mostly just use the $165 black cartridges.
 
So the cartridges for the laser printers are a lot more expensive than the inkjet ones.

How much more longer do they (laser) last?

Regards
Marty
 
So the cartridges for the laser printers are a lot more expensive than the inkjet ones.

How much more longer do they (laser) last?

For those Samsung toners I mentioned, the black toner is supposed to last 5500 pages and the colour toners 5000 pages (5% coverage).

Generally, laser printers are cheaper to run than inkjets. Toner is more expensive than ink, but you get far more printing out of them.
 
..
The current equivalent of my Samsung printer would be the CLP-610ND which costs $454 from ht.com.au

To replace all consumables you're looking at:

Samsung CLP-Y660B - toner cartridge - Yellow $212
Samsung CLP-C660B - toner cartridge - Cyan $212
Samsung CLP-M660B - toner cartridge - Magenta $212
Samsung CLP-K660B - toner cartridge - Black $165
Samsung CLP-T660B - printer transfer belt $312

= $1113 ... nearly 3x as much as the printer cost!

... although in general use you'd mostly just use the $165 black cartridges.
That's the one I have been looking at (CLP-610ND) Not sure it has wireless capability but otherwise looks very good.
 
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