Color laser printer - advice sought

[kypros44]

Despite prices coming down, I've seen surprisingly little info on Tom's Hardware or in these forums about personal color laser printers.

There are a few under or around $1,000 now: Minolta/QMS, Okidata, HP, and I'm sure some others.

Anybody have any experience with any of these cheap (relatively) printers? I'm looking to get one for a home office. Points of interest include:


1) Must have Ethernet connection.
2) Smaller is better.
3) Printing will be occassional, so power-save mode, warm up time, and noise level are all considerations
4) Mostly text printing. Sometimes photo, some brochures. Top, top quality is not needed, but good photo quality is required.
5) Consumable life and price.


Thanks in advance for the help.


Cheers,
Jason

 

[Bahumut]

Most of the cheaper laser printers I've seen only print color at a resolution of 600 x 600 dpi. This is not adequate for photos in my opinion. I've only seen a few laser color printouts form a laser color on campus. The printer was a $4000+ HP, sorry I don't remeber the model, yet I can claim better photo quality from my inkjet.

Campus charges $.50 per page for color and $.08 for black and white. So the actual cost is roughly $.12 color per page and $.02 Black and White. The color printing costs on this model is close to the same price as deskjets. I can't imagine a model under $1000 having cheaper print cost or performing better.

Perhaps this model just isn't geared toward photos, but I've never seen a laser printer that is. Of course, I haven't been keeping track lately, so anyone who knows of a good photo laser printer, kindly enlighten me.

Pain is the realization of your own weakness.

 

[Bahumut]

In an article here at Tom's
<A HREF="http://www4.tomshardware.com/consumer/20030509/index.html" target="_new">http://www4.tomshardware.com/consumer/20030509/index.html</A>
I found an example of what I'm talking about.
<A HREF="http://www4.tomshardware.com/consumer/20030509/i950-07.html" target="_new">http://www4.tomshardware.com/consumer/20030509/i950-07.html</A>

This demonstrates the nature of all laser color printers I have yet to see. Hope helps elaborates more than my words did.

Pain is the realization of your own weakness.