Do inexpensive color laser printers exist?

I don't know that they can be considered inexpensive, but does anyone have any opinions on the OkiData C5400 series of color laser printers for a home office? They have networking and duplexing and are reasonably sized but current prices are over $1000 (but still within my budget). It's time to replace my old HP 4ML which has been having trouble imaging some complex files lately (probably due to it's meager 4 MB RAM).

"David Ross" <drdavidrossconsultant.com> wrote:
> Uh, no. Most low consumer ink jets do not have separate color in cartridges
> but many of the higher end, higher volume units do.

Even some of the lower-priced inkjets now have separate color cartridges. We
recently purchased an Epson Stylus Photo R200, which even prints to CD/DVD,
for under $100. It has six separate cartridges.

Hi,
I bought some months ago a Xerox Phaser 6100 for about 500.
The printer comes with good hardware and also the features are really
interesting.
It has duplex, booklet, it is quite fast both in black & white and color
prints and can have Ethernet as an optional. Toner last quite long,
especially for normal prints liekm software manuals where 90% is black &
white and there are some color screenshots.
If you want to print large colored pages, than the cost per page
increases quite a lot.
Mac OS X drivers aren't yet fully functional but duplex is available and
also some other features.
I am really satisfied and think that is a good buy for the price. At
that time all other laser color printers with similar feautures were
much more expensive, but for a Samsung that was basically the same
printer :-/

Ciao,
Michael

--On Tuesday, September 7, 2004 4:42 PM -0700 Andrew Laurence
<atlaurenes.nacs.uci.edu> wrote:

> I've gotten sick (and tired!) of throwing money down the inkjet hole.
>
> Is there such a thing as an inexpensive color laser printer? (I've lost
> track of the differences between toner, dye-sub and other technologies.)
> I remember seeing that Samsung had a nice ~$150 black/white laser
> printer, but I think they've since pulled Mac support.
>
> Anything, say, around $300?

Glancing through Samsung's website it looks like they've dropped support
for Macs on their non-PostScript color devices. The CLP-500 doesn't list
Mac as a supported printer (although they do list a whole bunch of linux
distributions -- which makes me think GIMP print drivers may work on the
mac). But the CLP 550 does list the mac (OS 8.6-10.3)

<http://www.samsungusa.com/cgi-bin/nabc/product/b2c_product_detail.jsp?eUser=&prod_id=CLP-550%2fXAA>

PostScript support usually bumps the price (some reviews on the web list
the CLP-550 at $600)

Although PostScript doesn't seem to be involved, the cheapest Samsung B&W's
also do not list Mac as a supported OS, but the next bump up does (i.e.
ML-1740/50 don't list the mac, the larger ML-1450 does).

Kevin

On 9/21/04 at 7:44 AM, kevinvanhaaren.net (Kevin van Haaren) wrote:

> Although PostScript doesn't seem to be involved, the cheapest Samsung
> B&W's also do not list Mac as a supported OS, but the next bump up
> does (i.e. ML-1740/50 don't list the mac, the larger ML-1450 does).

The ML-1740 actually does have MacOS drivers listed for download:

<http://www.samsungusa.com/cgi-bin/nabc/support/b2c_support_product_results.jsp?eUser=&CatPath=%2fComputers+and+Related%2fPrinter%2fPrinters&_categorySearch:_ListLevel4=70894>

I've got a friend looking for an inexpensive personal laser printer
who's seriously considering the ML-1740; it's looking especially
attractive with a $50 rebate through 9/25/04. However, the reports of
intermittent/spotty Mac support from Samsung do concern me.

Travis Butler
tbutlermac.com

I have used inkjet color printers and they don't work well for my
pattern of use: I may go weeks without printing a page in color. So,
image quality suffers and occasionally I have to replace color ink
cartridges before they are empty.

How are color laser printers in this regard? If you print color
infrequently, does print quality suffer?

--On Tuesday, September 21, 2004 1:02 PM -0500 Travis Butler
<tbutlerbirch.net> wrote:

> The ML-1740 actually does have MacOS drivers listed for download:
>
> <http://www.samsungusa.com/cgi-bin/nabc/support/
> b2c_support_product_results.jsp?eUser=&CatPath=%2fComputers+and+Related%
> 2fPrinter%2fPrinters&_categorySearch:_ListLevel4=70894>
>
> I've got a friend looking for an inexpensive personal laser printer
> who's seriously considering the ML-1740; it's looking especially
> attractive with a $50 rebate through 9/25/04. However, the reports of
> intermittent/spotty Mac support from Samsung do concern me.

Whoops, I missed that. I do have an ML-1710 that I got last christmas for
$100 or so. I'm pretty happy with it and drivers are available for OS 8 to
OS X 10.3. The printer is considered discontinued now, so I'm worried
about how long consumables will be available.

At 7:02 AM -0700 9/22/04, Nick Pappas wrote:
>I have used inkjet color printers and they don't work well for
>my pattern of use: I may go weeks without printing a page in
>color. So, image quality suffers and occasionally I have to
>replace color ink cartridges before they are empty.

It's much worse than this, actually. I had an Epson inkjet printer
that I used in a similar pattern -- i.e., months between printing
any color -- and the nozzles clogged up completely. A knowledgeable
salesman at a Staples, where I was shopping for a replacement, con-
fided that this was a well-known drawback to ink-jet technology. I
just wish someone had told me before I bought that Epson printer!

Unlike laser printers, ink-jets are essentially throwaways, according
to this guy. Some ink-jets now, such as those from HP, are constructed
so that the entire ink path is replaceable, not just the ink supply.
Of course the consumables would cost more if this were the case, but
probably less than replacing the whole darn printer when its nozzles
solidify.
--
_______________________________________________________________
Keith Dawson Layer of ash separates morning and evening milk.
kadawson "at" mac(dot)com http://technologyfront.com/

Just today I got a letter from Dell advertising new low-cost color laser printers.

http://www.dell.com

The 3100cn model is listed with Mac/PostScript support and prices start at EUR469 / $549 with (I just looked that up) a limited time special offer of $479.

Of course, I will be waiting for some serious review of that new products, before even considering it an option.

________________________________________________________________
Michael Müller-Hillebrand, Dipl.-Ing. <http://cap-studio.de/>
    FrameMaker, FrameScript, XML/XSL,... Publishing-Lösungen

For years I have used a standard Apple Stylewriter II plain old B&W at home.  My activities there only required printing maybe once or twice a week with some times a month of inactivity.  The old Canon cartridge almost always came through.  When it was empty, I would recharge it from a (pint) bottle of ink I had purchased at a home show.  I have used the same cartridge at least 20 times!
Once I was gone for close to two months and I did run into some of the clogging problems.  But I was able to clear them up with the use of distilled water and clean, denatured alcohol.  Denatured alcohol and cotton swabs to -carefully- clean the nozzles of the print head. 
Because the black ink was cheap (~ $ 15.- for the pint sized bottle) I could afford to suck the cartridge empty with my hypo and then fill it with alcohol/water mix.  Leave it alone for a while and run a cleaning cycle on the printer. 
Since the colored print cartridges are now typically purchased filled, rather than using the bottle/hypo path, this may be of no help. However, try patting the print nozzles (tenderly!) with a cotton swab filled with denatured alcohol.  Perhaps that will soften the ink sufficiently to get it going again. 


==========================================================
                W.A. (Wim)  Wijnberg    
      S.E.T.C. Principal,  Cable Design
Schlumberger Integrated Productivity and Conveyance Center
Rm. #901, 555 Industrial Blvd, Sugar Land, TX  77872, USA

email:  wijnbergsugar-land.oilfield.slb.com            
phone:    1-281-285-7715
mobile:  1-281-352-8168
fax:     1-281-285-4343
http://www.vectorcable.com/

I do need an inkjet for printing images of my paintings as colour laserjets cannot produce results of the same high standard required.

To solve the problem of inkjet cartridges clogging up with infrequent use, I have found that, by using my Epson Utility software, I can regularly print out a small test pattern on plain paper and that seems to keep the inklines from clogging up. I do that once every couple of weeks and it seems to solve that problem. This test pattern does use up a little ink but not that much. It seems to be a fairly cheap form of regular maintenance for inkjets.

I am thinking of buying a cheapish B&W laser for my word processing needs as laserjets are certainly cheaper to operate at that level. If only my old Apple B&W Laser printer were compatable with OSX... it was a great machine... noisy and productive!

Paul Atroshenko

On Sep 27, 2004, at 7:28 PM, patrosh wrote:

> I am thinking of buying a cheapish B&W laser for my word processing
> needs as laserjets are certainly cheaper to operate at that level. If
> only my old Apple B&W Laser printer were compatable with OSX... it was
> a great machine... noisy and productive!

Most any Apple laser printer should be compatible with OS X. I use a LW
16/600PS in my mixed WinXP/MacOS 7/MacOS X.3 household, and my brother
has a 4/600 PS (with an Asante Localtalk-Ethernet bridge) hooked up to
his G4.

Currently I'm looking around for a cheapish duplexing B&W laser.
Brother seems to have the corner on that market.

--Nik

Just to get back to the original question . . .

My sage in the printer market informed me yesterday that there is zero growth in the B&W printer market whereas all the growth is in the colour market. As a consequence, manufacturers are prepared to price their printers way below cost in order to ensure that they gain sufficient market share to churn a profit on the consumables.

So caveat emptor -- you still have to project your longterm running costs as the most important factor in the equation.

Cheers,

John Wolff <dtopcompwave.co.nz> Hamilton, New Zealand

On Thursday, September 30, 2004, at 01:14 PM, dtopcomp wrote:
> My sage in the printer market informed me yesterday that there is zero
> growth in the B&W printer market whereas all the growth is in the
> colour market. As a consequence, manufacturers are prepared to price
> their printers way below cost in order to ensure that they gain
> sufficient market share to churn a profit on the consumables.

Along with this fact is the "give away the razor to sell the blades"
principle; safety razors were considered a dead product until Mr.
Gilette changed his marketing plan at the turn of the 20th century and
started selling them this way. Printer companies make more money on
selling high margin, multiple color cartridges than they do on a single
black & white one. A solid revenue stream by pricing color printers
advantageously.

It wasn't until Bic started marketing disposable razors in the 1960's
that anyone was able to make a significant dent in the safety razor's
market share. I hope we won't have to wait that long for a new
innovation in the market for desktop printers.

Marilyn

This came in from the SmallDog "Tech Tails" newsletter. Considering
recent discussion on the topic, I thought I'd share it with the list.

-----

Epson print head purging
By Russ White (Russsmalldog.com)

The Epson printers have some of the best print quality in the industry,
the photo quality output is truly impressive. However that quality
output does bring with it some unusual idiosyncracies.

Epson's print heads are incorporated into the print carriage, instead
of on the ink cartridge itself, like Hewlett Packard printers. The
"Micro Piezo" printhead technology that Epson uses is more advanced
than the older "Thermal Ink Jet" technology used by HP.

If you have an Epson printer and you leave it turned off for more than
a couple of weeks, you run the risk of ink clogging in the printhead
nozzles. Normally, a couple (1 to 5) cleaning cycles will clean the
printhead, but if after 5 cleaning cycles the nozzles are still
clogged, you'll have to get a little more extreme in the cleaning
attempts.

The first thing to try is to power up the printer, let it go thru it's
cleaning cycle, once you see the printhead move off the "Purge Unit"
(the pumping mechanism the printhead sits on when it's turned off),
unplug the printer, *VERY GENTLY* slide the printhead away from the
purge unit. You'll either see 2 rubber "cups" or a foam pad (depending
on model) stained with ink, this is the purge unit.

Take an eyedropper full of isopropyl alcohol and drip the alcohol into
the cups/foam, then manually move the printhead back onto the purge
unit, let it sit for around 10-15 minutes, then plug the printer back
in, run another cleaning cycle, hopefully the alcohol will have
dissolved the dried ink in the printhead nozzles.

Epson's ink is alcohol based, so the alcohol won't hurt the printheads.
If using alcohol doesn't work, you can try the same trick with warm
water. If neither of these work, you'll probably have to send the
printer to an Epson service center for a printhead replacement.

To prevent clogged nozzles, make sure you turn your Epson printer on
once a week and let it run through the head cleaning. Even if you don't
use it regularly, you have to keep the ink moving to prevent clogs.

-----

-Nik

I've had my Xerox Phaser 6100 about six months. The toner cartridges, with between 20% and 35% capacity still left do not spread the toner evenly across the roller, which gives terrible quality prints. Is there any way to fix this, short of buying new [$100 each] cartridges when there is still about 1/3 of their life expectancy remaining? Thanks, Richard Tennesen, Scotts Valley, CA

On Jun 20, 2005, at 4:05 PM, Richard Tennesen wrote:

> I've had my Xerox Phaser 6100 about six months. The toner
> cartridges, with between 20% and 35% capacity still left do not
> spread the toner evenly across the roller, which gives terrible
> quality prints. Is there any way to fix this, short of buying new
> [$100 each] cartridges when there is still about 1/3 of their life
> expectancy remaining?

It ought to still be under full warranty if it's only six months old.
It really shouldn't do that and it could be due to other components
not being up to par. (Fuser board being one possibility, a drum being
another.) I'd get a service tech in and have 'em bring things up to
speed.

Also, if you're still eligible, you might want to look into setting
up a maintenance and supplies agreement with Xerox. They're pretty
much giving away toner on these deals right now, and color lasers get
VERY expensive to maintain. Having the ability to bring in a tech any
old time you want can be a real time saver in the long run, plus it
keeps the total cost of running the printer at a reasonable level.

--Nik

At 3:05 PM -0700 6/20/05, Richard Tennesen wrote:
>I've had my Xerox Phaser 6100 about six months. The toner
>cartridges, with between 20% and 35% capacity still left do not
>spread the toner evenly across the roller, which gives terrible
>quality prints.

Does it use actual *toner*? If so, the old "rock the cartridge"
trick might work. Remove the cartridge from the printer and gently
rock it from side to side. The goal is to even out the toner inside
the cartridge, like shaking the sand back and forth in one of those
useless executive desktop toys.

--
Andrew Laurence
atlaurenuci.edu

At 09:40 AM 06/21/2005 -0700, Andrew Laurence wrote:
>the old "rock the cartridge" trick might work.

Also, unless this printer is unusual, the percentage left is a software
estimate, not a mechanical measurement. If it's really somewhat lower, than
distributing what's left is even more important.

Edward Reid (who recently succumbed to a new laser printer but reluctantly
stuck with black and white, albeit with duplexing and full networking ;-)

Art Works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

At 3:05 PM -0700 6/20/05, Richard Tennesen wrote:
|>I've had my Xerox Phaser 6100 about six months. The toner
|>cartridges, with between 20% and 35% capacity still left do not
|>spread the toner evenly across the roller, which gives terrible
|>quality prints.
|
|Does it use actual *toner*? If so, the old "rock the cartridge"
|trick might work. Remove the cartridge from the printer and gently
|rock it from side to side. The goal is to even out the toner inside
|the cartridge, like shaking the sand back and forth in one of those
|useless executive desktop toys.

The Xerox Phaser 6100 (essentially the same printer as the Samsung 510) is a
toner-based four-pass laser printer, so the "shake the tube" method often
can squeeze out a few more pages of print from an "empty" cartridge. Since
the toner is fed (as I understand) to the developer housing and thence to
the drums and paper via a calibrated auger mechanism, shaking the toner tube
should not have much effect on the actual distribution of the toner farther
downstream. That is to say that whatever toner reaches the end of the
printing process ought to be evenly distributed regardless of the shaken
status of the toner reservoirs upstream.

My guess is that one or more of the imaging drums is reaching end-of-life or
has been polluted with ambient light and therefore has lost much of its
photoreceptivity...this definitely would cause terrible print quality,
deletion areas, and other gnashings of the teeth. It's also possible that
the fuser is not providing adequate heat and/or pressure to bind the toner
to the paper, though the symptoms of this should go beyond bad image
quality; in this scenario you typically would hear things like "toner
falling off the page," or "paritally melted toner stringing across the page
like troll boogies." (apologies to Harry Potter).

Bottom line is that the printer shouldn't be doing what it's doing under
normal conditions, and that this particular printer carries a one year
warranty, so whatever it's doing is fixable for zero dinero.

As Nik notes in another posting, it is possible to upgrade the service on
the 6100 from depot to onsite service. There is a 90 day window for this
after purchase, but I'm sure that Xerox might still talk to a six month
owner about on-site service "for a small additional fee." Squeaky wheels
often get whatever grease they desire.

James Atkinson
Asheville, NC