On Mar 2, 12:30 pm, Bill Spencer <[email protected]> wrote:
> So my question is, what do you folks recommend as a good-quality,
> basic b/w, no need for bells & whistles, laser printer that won't
> break the bank and will work well with either machine below?
In the used market, the HP Laserjet 4M and 4M Plus are highly
regarded. Similarly (but slightly less so) for the LaserJet 5M. I'm
a fan of the LaserJet 2100TN. In every case, the postscript module
is on a SIMM (or DIMM) and the ethernet port is on an expansion card,
so when buying in the used market, you need to make sure the needed
options are actually installed. The corollary is that the 4, 4 Plus,
5 and plain old 2100 might have the postscript module and ethernet
module installed.
The color laser printers have fallen in price a lot. So depending on
your budget ("won't break the bank" is so subjective) you might
consider a color laser printer. I picked up the Kyocera EPS C170N
(postscript and ethernet built in) for $200 shipped two holiday
seasons ago. The Xerox Phaser 6180 was about $50 more and there was
a Brother model in a similar price/feature point. However, the
Kyocera listed Appletalk as a supported protocol (as opposed to only
TCP/IP) so I chose it so I'd have support for older Macs which might
have trouble printing to TCP/IP.
While it's true that color laser printers have four toner cartridges
and it is expensive to replace all four, if you primarily print in
black, then you only need to replace the black cartridge frequently.
So, assuming similarly priced toner cartridges, the color laser is no
more expensive to operate for simple black printing.
Unless you need the very best image reproduction available, I think
color laser is far superior to inkjet. If you print a lot of color,
laser is better because the supplies are so much cheaper per page
printed. If you seldom print in color, laser is better because you
don't have to worry about print heads clogging up during long periods
of disuse.
Jeff Walther
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