Anyone know anything about color laser printers?

[Ben E Lou]

We're considering purchasing one to print what I would think would be considered relatively low-volume jobs, but with probably more color than average. For example, we might print 300 color single-page fliers (with pics) for each of our 8 main trips during the school year, and maybe another 400 4-page newsletters to donors 4 times per year. Because of the 4-page newsletter desire, it would be nice to have something that prints on 11x17 paper, but if that puts us in too high of a price bracket, we could continue to do those in black and white.

I haven't really started researching yet, but I figured I'd ask here as I begin that process. A few questions:

1. How much are typical cartridges for color laser printers? Just a quick search reveals $150-$250 for several different HP ones. Is that fairly standard for middle-of-the-road color laser printers?

2. What kind of volume can a cartridge handle? As I said, we'll be printing 200-400 fliers for each trip. I know they're all rated for the number of "color pages" that they can print, but my experience with B&W laser printers has been that the volume is *significantly* lower when pictures are on the pages, and our fliers will always have a decent bit of color, due to including pictures. Here are a some examples:

Example One (http://sites.younglife.org/sites/NorthlakeWyldlife/Shared%20Documents/awanita2k5flier.pdf) (This is probably more color than we'd use on a trip flier if we were printing it out ourselves. Currently, the color version is for downloaded-and-print-at-your-own-home and we mail out and hand out a black and white version.)

Example Two (http://sites.younglife.org/sites/NorthlakeWyldlife/Shared%20Documents/wyldlifenewsletter.pdf) (A four-page version of this, with pretty much the same number of pics per page would go out at a rate of 1600 per year.)

Example Three (http://sites.younglife.org/sites/TuckerYL/Shared%20Documents/sharptopmlk2006.pdf) (Most of our trip fliers would have about this much color, as we'd probably scale down from the amount of color in Example One.)

3. How does the quality compare to color inkjet and/or B&W laser? I'm assuming that it is better, but I thought I'd ask to make sure.

4. Anything I should be aware of, as in companies to avoid or gravitate toward, DPI/memory settings, or anything else?

Thanks in advance!

--Ben

[Airhog]

Since no-one has chimed in yet Skydog, I'll give you a bit of adivce. Try calling a business copier store. Some of these places sell color printers and stuff, and it might be worth your time just to pick a salesman's brain.

[JonInMiddleGA]

I'd go with Airhog's suggestion if I were in your shoes.

Let someone who is supposed to know all this stuff sell you moving in this direction, and then apply the appropriate grains of salt to what they tell you.

My own, albeit limited, experience is that color laser printers are overkill for most needs.

You might possibly find some food for thought in this article as well.
http://www.pcworld.com/howto/bguide/0,guid,16,page,1,00.asp
(or you might not, depending on how far along the I-know-printers curve you are).

[finkenst]

SkyDog,

don't forget that the B&W pages are rated at text only no rasterized garbage...

anywho, what's the cost to go to a Kinko's and get the flyers made up there?

just a thought. :)


--tim

ps. Why? is in my playlist and overplayed.. awesome job, SD.

[Ben E Lou]

SkyDog,

don't forget that the B&W pages are rated at text only no rasterized garbage...[quote]Right.

[quote]anywho, what's the cost to go to a Kinko's and get the flyers made up there?$0.89 per copy (single-sided, white paper), so if I'm running 2,500-ish camp fliers and 6,400 pages of newsletters per year, we're talking over $7,000 per year. Granted, we're not doign that much color *now*, but we'd like to, so it would seem like having our own printer to do it would come out much, much cheaper.

[Airhog]

Another thing you may consider skydog, is a network copier. We have those at work, they can be color, and they work just like a printer. I know there are places here that lease copiers like that at a much lower rate than if you went out and bought one. And even if they charge you for each copier, it still seems like a better deal.

[Glengoyne]

You can get a Free networkable Color Laser Printer at freecolorprinters.com...I thought it was freelaserprinters.com, but that URL doesn't return. You have to buy the cartridges from them, but I don't know if they charge more than the Office Max type stores.

[finkenst]

$0.89 per copy (single-sided, white paper), so if I'm running 2,500-ish camp fliers and 6,400 pages of newsletters per year, we're talking over $7,000 per year. Granted, we're not doign that much color *now*, but we'd like to, so it would seem like having our own printer to do it would come out much, much cheaper.
Get out of here!

that's just not right...

[Dutch]

I'm not a printer expert, but we have the HP 5550 at work and use it quite abit for printing out flight plans for our pilots. The 600 dpi is perfect for making maps, so that should be good enough. They are expensive, but you get what you pay for and you would save money the first year alone and even more the next couple of years for the life of the printer. You should be able to get at least a few years of good service out of the printer.

HP Color LaserJet 5550dtn ($4,999.99 from CDW.com)
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=680821

With each color cartridge being $315.99 and b/w being $225.99. And we print out high resolution maps for flight plans on those. 600 dpi. It prints in 11x17.

HP Color LaserJet 5550n ($3,549.99 from CDW.com)
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/specs.aspx?EDC=680823

This one is a $1,400 cheaper (for some reason, too tired to check all the specs, that uses the same cartdridges).

HP is pretty safe as far as quality of product and reliability in my experience (and I've used a lot of different style printers).

Also, I don't know about ink jet printers these days but back in the day it just looked like the printer spit all over the page and you got this wet sloppy wrinkled page in the end. Laser Jet is probably the better way to go.

[cubboyroy1826]

I went thru this same search about 6 months ago. We wound up settling on an OKI C5150. It cost me $399 because they were upgrading the model. Quite honestly the new model really doesnt have much of anything the old one had. We do a lot of legal sized color printing as well as post card printing. I have broken out the toner cost to about 9-10 cents per page. We get about 1500 pages per cartridge with the regular capacity cartridges. The high capacity will squeeze even more out and we just found a new source that will get us these cartridges for $94 per. This will probably lower the cost per print but then we have to factor in the drum cost. With the volume that you do their is no reason you will need to spend $3-4k on a printer. The HPs were decent but the supply cost was higher. Hope this help feel free to PM me with any questions.

[MizzouRah]

What is your price range?

The company I work for is an authorized HP service partner and although I don't work on printers as much as I used to, the HP Laserjet 4600 is one of the best color printers out there.

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=50209026&pfp=BROWSE

Again, I don't know your budget.. but customers who have one of these are VERY happy with their purchase. Just stay away from the 2500, 3500, and the 4500 series. Heck, throw in the 8500 series as well. The 3500 printer is very attractive at $600, but go somewhere and open and close one of those, you'll see what I mean.

The 4600 is around $2100, but it's a printer that will last.. at least in my experience.

Xerox is a option you might want to look at, my best friend works for them. I know they have some decent color printers, specifically the Phaser line of printers such as the 6200 series or 8500.

[Ben E Lou]

Todd:

My price range depends primarily on the "bang for the buck" of upgrading from a $600 printer to a $2100 one. Tell me the difference.

[MizzouRah]

Well, a $600 printer is just that. :)

You probably should look at the solid ink Xerox printer (8500), that might be a good choice for you and does NOT have those messy toner cartridges. I'd look up the price for the ink sticks first though just to be sure.

http://www.office.xerox.com/perl-bin/product.pl?product=8500_8550

Looks like it's $88.99 for packs of three ink sticks - per color.

http://www.office.xerox.com/perl-bin/product.pl?product=8500_8550&page=supl

[rkmsuf]

pc load letter? what the f*ck does that mean?

[MizzouRah]

pc load letter? what the f*ck does that mean?
Usually means you are out of paper. ;)

[Ben E Lou]

Well, a $600 printer is just that. :)I guess I'm asking what makes one a $600 printer and another a $2100 printer. Is it quality, speed, volume, other factors or a combination?

[Ben E Lou]

Also, is there a way to determine % coverage on a page? Specifically what % coverage would this page be: http://sites.younglife.org/sites/NorthlakeWyldlife/Shared%20Documents/wyldlifenewsletter.pdf

[MizzouRah]

I guess I'm asking what makes one a $600 printer and another a $2100 printer. Is it quality, speed, volume, other factors or a combination?
Lots of factors to consider. A $600 printer is usually:

1. Home office or small business
2. Less memory and or features like resolution, duplexing, amount of paper that can be loaded into the trays, etc..
3. Lower duty cycle - you wouldn't want to print out 1000's of prints at a time.
4. Not as durable.
5. Not as fast page per min.

vs a $2100 printer that is for a normal business or someone who is going to print a lot of color pages. (Heavy duty printer(s))

To me it sounds like a $600 printer should be what you are looking for - I would just go the Xerox route vs HP for that price range.


This is a great article to read: http://www.pcworld.com/howto/bguide/0,guid,16,page,1,00.asp

Don't read the Top 10 article though... it rates the HP 3500 as good. HA! It's like a death wish of moving parts. We get calls on these all the time!!

[MizzouRah]

Also, is there a way to determine % coverage on a page? Specifically what % coverage would this page be: http://sites.younglife.org/sites/NorthlakeWyldlife/Shared%20Documents/wyldlifenewsletter.pdf
Not sure how they tell the fill %. You could call HP.