[Misha]

Anyone have any recommendations? Price is somewhat of a concern.

I recenly purchased a Phaser 740P right after the 750 came out. The only difference is in processor speed and ethernet speed as the 750 has 10/100 and the 740 only has 10. The printer has been GREAT! And the acquistion cost at the time I bought it could not be beat. I ended up, after rebates, paying $1,750 for the printer. Again, the printer has been exceeding my expectations. The low acquisition cost pays for a few toner cartridges and other supplies.

[denim]

We picked up the Phaser 750N a month or so ago. It was easy to set up, and I've had no complaints from users. Then again, it's not being accessed from any Macintoshes...

After feeding it the basic IP information from its control panel, the rest of the printer administration can be done via a built-in web server. Nice.

[ddiokno]

What is it you are looking to print with the color laser? What are your concerns, speed, warm up time, consumables? There are a lot of variables that play into a recommendation/decision... is this for the home, or will it be a workgroup printer...
dave

[Paul S]

Another thing you need to be careful of is software. HP uses PostScript emulation. Tektronix uses true PostScript. This is why they dominate the pre-press market. In my experience, Tektronix is really hard to beat, in quality and price.

Originally posted by Misha:
Anyone have any recommendations? Price is somewhat of a concern.

I have looked at the offerings from Tektronix, HP and Lexmark. We are trying to find something suitable to place in K-5 level elementary computer labs at this time (as an alternative to dozens of slow networked inkjet printers). I am concerned that the Tektronix ink will melt when teachers try to laminate student work (a favorite thing to do at the elementary level). The ongoing maintenance contract costs also worry me a bit- I was seeing numbers around $1000/year (25%+ of the cost of the printer) for the Tektronix. Is that typical?

Materials are the other issue: everyone has these supposed "cost per page" with x% coverage and "free black ink for life" schemes. Where can I find REAL lifetime cost comparisons? Has anyone found an independant web site or perhaps magazine reviews that compare this without bias?

Speed is clearly an issue (with 25 students sharing one color printer) and software compatibility is also a concern: we will be printing from lots of OS9 iMacs working under Foolproof.

Peter Thompson
Princeton Regional Schools

[denim]

Okay, now you're asking the serious questions.

Maintenance: The Phaser 750 I recommended for my job came with a one year warranty. We added on-site maintenance for the kind of price you mentioned. The printer it replaced cost us twice that for maintenance, and well over $225/month to run (color film roll, required special paper), so this was a major improvement. It's generally better to look at maintenance costs from the point-of-view of what the effect of down time is. If you can afford the down time to send the printer away for repairs, that will be cheaper. Most of us can't do that, and will pay a reasonable amount for on-site service. Note that 3rd party support is cheaper, but you get what you pay for... at best.

I recommended the Phaser 750 for the application it's in for the following reasons, in descending order of importance: (1) it's color, (2) it fits in the bay we had for it, (3) it's inexpensive to run, (4) it's easy to maintain, (5) it's MUCH faster than the previous printer, (6) it's compatible with the previous printer (a Phaser 200, relabeled as a DEC printer). All the printers I looked at were directly networkable using IP and ethernet.

Note that there is a newer printer, announced in the last week or so, which sounds even faster than the P750. And you probably don't have the size constraints I did.

Laminating: I can't speak to the temperature issue. You'll need to know the temperature of your laminating equipment vs the temperature of the laser printers you look at. I assume you realize the possible smearing problem if the laser ink melts at a lower temperature than the laminating equipment uses, but it might not be a problem if the laminating equipment can hold the printed media steady during the laminating process.

Cost to run: if the printer can use the media you want to run through it, and the toner/ink/whatever is not "too expensive" (what ever that means to you), and the quality is sufficient, then it's not too expensive to run. The special paper I had to use with the old printer cost on the close order of $80/100 sheets. Now we just use normal Xerographic paper from the Supplier of the Month. In a school, you might be using a card stock, or some kind of glossy paper, but it's not as much of an issue if you have to use that stock anyway, as long as the printer can handle it. After all, if you have to use it no matter what, it's the same for any printer you can put it through.

The standard issues are maintenance, toner/ink/whatever, and speed. Ease-of-maintenance is another issue. The HP Color LaserJet 5, which I used in a previous life, uses a kind of loose toner. It's a bit of a pain because it leaks a little. I would look out for the ink type because I, for one, can do with out mess and difficulty of toner replacement.

The P750 uses sealed toner cartridges, one for each of the four colors. The black cartridge is half the price of the other colors, which I find good since it'll tend to get used more.

Only you can really answer these questions for your application. It'll take a certain amount of research, which we can't really do for you. Good luck.


[This message has been edited by denim (edited 11-03-2000).]