Monochrome Laser Printers |
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Last Updated: June 1, 2007
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Today's Best Choice With Ethernet - Under $300Brother HL-5250DN. It prints 30 pages per minute (ppm), has a 250 sheet paper tray, 1200×1200dpi (dots per inch), 32MB of internal memory, built in Ethernet jack for shared networked printing, duplex printing to automatically print on both sides of the page, and received good reviews from owners. Two owners said the paper comes out curled. The $70 Brother TN580-7000 black toner cartridge prints 7,000 pages ($0.01/page). Reviews from PC World (Aug 2006), PC Magazine (Dec 2005), owner reviews at NewEgg.com (70+ reviews, 5/5 stars). Buy it for $200. |
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Today's Best Choice With Ethernet - Under $200Brother HL-2070N. It prints 20 pages per minute (ppm), has a 250 sheet paper tray, 600×600dpi (dots per inch), 16MB of internal memory, built in Ethernet jack for shared networked printing, and received good reviews from owners. The $44 Brother TN-350 black toner cartridge prints 2,500 pages ($0.0176/page). Reviews from owners at NewEgg (80+ reviews, 5/5 stars). Buy it for $110. |
Other Good Printers Without Ethernet
$170 Samsung ML-2250 - 22ppm, 250 sheet tray, 1200×1200dpi, 16MB RAM, customer reviews at NewEgg.
$90 HP LaserJet 1020 - 15ppm, 150 sheet tray, 600×600dpi, 2MB RAM, customer reviews at NewEgg.
Why Buy a Laser Printer?
For home use, I think a color ink jet printer should be the first printer. However, a second printer should be a network capable laser printer. The printer is fast, it can be shared with multiple computers, the cost per page is cheap, and the toner won't bleed when the paper gets wet. It's also the workhorse in any office.
Color Laser Printers
I don't like color laser printers. They are gigantic, print 1/4 the speed of monochrome laser printers, and costs $300-$500 to replace the four toner cartridges.
Name Brand
Read the latest satisfaction survey of home printers from PC Magazine (Aug 2006) and PC World (Dec 2005) as reported by consumers that own and use them. The PC Magazine survey showed Brother, HP and Samsung as the best laser printers while they were average on the PC World survey. Both surveys agreed Lexmark was the worst and had conflicting impressions of the other printers.
It's comforting to know many companies sell these printers, many companies sell the toner cartridges, and there are few, if any, companies selling refurbished printers.
Memory
A printer with 8MB of internal memory should not have any problems printing a full page of graphics at its highest resolution. More memory and a faster processor will prevent a printer from pausing for several seconds between each page on a multipage job. See the Kingston Memory web site and the printer owners manual if you want more.
Network Printing
If you have a home network, there are three ways to connect your printer. The first is by connecting the printer to the USB port of a host computer. The host computer has to be turned on for any other computer to use the printer. This is known as peer-to-peer networking. Not all print drivers support peer-to-peer networking.
The second way is to connect the printer directly to the network via a $75 USB print server. This isn't guaranteed to work as the print servers include a list of compatible printers.
The third way and best way is to buy a printer with a built in ethernet jack and plug the printer directly to a network switch or router. This means you have to give the printer and each computer a static IP address. You can't use DHCP on the router. You won't have printer capability issues with this option.
Stop Network Printing Popup Notices
Network printers have a popup message stating it is done printing. To turn off this feature in Windows XP, click on Start, Control Panel, Printers and Faxes. On the menu, click on File, Server Properties. Click on the Advanced tab. Uncheck the box next to Notify When Remote Documents are Printed.