Good Laser Printers - Need Advice

Personally, I don't worry to much about the brand of printer .most of them will do the job that they are designed for, the machine you have is designed for home use or light office work.Also, a printers life span is not that long.They will often print stuff for years but the quality declines quite quickly.Most of the problems are down to using cheep ink and paper.The environment the printer is in will also have an effect,too damp or too hot.
Have a look at http://www.poota.com//lpbook/10-chp10.html

If you still need to buy a new printer ,decide on the spec you need then look for the cheapest one that will do the job

What CPU are you going to be printing from? Dell has good reliable high end color lasers, with affordable toner, but usually does not have Mac OS X drivers.

I'd look closely at Lexmark and Ricoh. Xerox at around the 3k arena has good printers--but there are driver issues for Mac OS X.

Also--even more than b and w lasers, make sure you have the right paper.

Not sure if this is quite what you mean, but we've had good luck with the Xerox 6280DN in our computer lab, which has several thousand students pass through it every semester. Not crazy about the solid-ink printers.

HTH,

-Suzanne, day-nerd.

[ETA: oh, and they work great with macs & linux too.]

I just love my Lexmark X544dn multi function laser printer. Love it. Had it over a year. Still love it.

not_HarryS said:

I'm starting to think that we have been using the wrong paper. We've been using Epson Photo Quality paper (102g), because we want something that's nice, thick and smooth for our proposals. On second glance, though, I just noticed that it says "Ink Jet Paper" in HUGE letters on the packaging. A-hem.

Please don't tell my IS department that we ruined an expensive printer? ^_^;

Click to expand...

Actually, it may be ok with careful cleaning. I don't suppose you've got authorized repair folk there?

If you're going to do this, read about the corona wire first. You can irreparably ruin a printer by not treating it cautiously. Most color laser printers have 3.

not_HarryS said:

Does anyone know what kind of relatively thick and fancy paper is available for laser printers?

Sorry for all the questions; just want to make sure I do it right this time.

Click to expand...

You want to use at least two sorts of papers; one for cover stock, and one for internal pages.

In North America, I'd suggest going with Hammermill or paper branded by the printer, or Xerox. These will cost more.

I'd research the weight of paper based on reading at the printer site, for your printer, and at Staples.

If you've got local printers (as in print shops) near you, ask them to print one of the proposals, a single copy, and get them to educate you. They're going to use the same laser jet technology, with maybe a higher DPI, but the paper needs will be the same.

I know China is kicking butt in terms of both high quality POD and high quality offset printing. The last couple of scholarly books I worked on had ARCs printed, with color images, and the final bound hardcover book printed in China because the printer could handle printing color correct images of manuscripts.

You Do Not Want Ink Jet paper; the ink won't absorb right, fibers will come off in the form of fine dust that will clog the jets, and cling to the corona. And it'll suck up toner.

I know Apple goes to trade shows there, so I assume all the high end printer companies do too.

Find one. Chat up all the printer vendors. Tell them about your proposals; bring a sample, get them to tell you why you want one of their printers.