Anyone here have or use/used a color laser printer before?

[Nocturnal]

if so, how was the quality of the print outs?

i was thinking about getting that hp color laser printer at comp usa. it runs about 2g's, but it looks nice.

 

[gentobu]

My national guard unit just got an hp color laser (I cant remember the model), and the print quality is excellent! It's almost looks like a page out of a magazine. Although the toner is *really* expensive @ ~$90 a cartridge (black, cyan, magenta, and yellow).

 

[Zim Hosein]

Originally posted by: Nocturnal
if so, how was the quality of the print outs?

i was thinking about getting that hp color laser printer at comp usa. it runs about 2g's, but it looks nice.

Nocturnal, the HP Color Laser printers on the market make excellent printouts, but w/ the the inital cost & cost per page, it all depends on what budget you have and how much you plan on using it.

edit: Can't type

 

[AvesPKS]

We had one in my office over the summer. They were really good at, say, Powerpoint slides, and of course text. For casually printing pictures off the web, it wasn't bad either.

 

[loup garou]

We use this printer at work, and I'm not impressed with it for color work at all. The colors are often way, way off. And it's slow. And the consumables are expensive. And it's absolutely ginormous. And it's expensive.

All this from a PC World Top 10 rated color laser printer...what else could you ask for?

 

[Windogg]

The Hewlett-Packard 45xx series is probably the best in terms of quality vs price. Every bit of it can be stripped down and replaced with off the shelf parts so you can basically rebuild the thing for years to come. There are cheap models like the QMS/Minoltas but their consumables are very expensive. Where I used to work, the TCO of the Minoltas were double the HPs.

The ultimate has the be a Xerox DocuColor with a Fiery box. That sucker was amazing.

Windogg

EDIT: DAmn, werk beat me to it. So I guess its two votes against Minolta.

 

[zeruty]

When I worked at office max we had a xerox color copier with a fiery print server....
worked very nicely....

 

[Zim Hosein]

Originally posted by: zeruty
When I worked at office max we had a xerox color copier with a fiery print server....
worked very nicely....

zeruty, while I agree w/ you that the Xerox CC w/ the fiery PS is an impressive setup, I don't think this is what Nocturnal had in mind when he posted this question. The Xerox CC w/ the fiery PS setup is in an entirely different setup vs. adding a color laser printer to ones' setup.

 

[iam4u2nv]

At work I have about 12 color laser jets. I have all HP's except for one Lexmark. The Lexmark has broken twice and in fact is broken now. I love the quality of the hp's. We have 4500 color laserjets. The first time I did a color print I was blown away. I have to tell you though that the ink is expensive. We spend a lot of money on toner for these. We bought black and white lasers as every day printers and we only use the color now for final prints.


EDIT Fiery sucks.. I hate that thing. We have a color Konica with a fiery and that thing sucks. The color is great but that box blows. It is down every other day. The konica guy has been out like 4 times to fix it. It keeps losing its config and I stopped trying to print from Novell print ques. Eck!

 

[zeruty]

Originally posted by: Zim Hosein

zeruty, while I agree w/ you that the Xerox CC w/ the fiery PS is an impressive setup, I don't think this is what Nocturnal had in mind when he posted this question. The Xerox CC w/ the fiery PS setup is in an entirely different setup vs. adding a color laser printer to ones' setup.

I was just adding to what Windogg said about the setup

 

[PsychoAndy]

Originally posted by: Windogg
The Hewlett-Packard 45xx series is probably the best in terms of quality vs price. Every bit of it can be stripped down and replaced with off the shelf parts so you can basically rebuild the thing for years to come. There are cheap models like the QMS/Minoltas but their consumables are very expensive. Where I used to work, the TCO of the Minoltas were double the HPs.

The ultimate has the be a Xerox DocuColor with a Fiery box. That sucker was amazing.

Windogg

EDIT: DAmn, werk beat me to it. So I guess its two votes against Minolta.

Amen w00fy. The HP 45xx series won me over. Our CS lab had one......took about 5 minutes to warm up, but the quality was excellent.

-PAB

 

[CraigRT]

We have a Xerox G620 splash here at work.

print-outs are phenomenal on the right paper.

 

[Lady In Red]

I use a HP at work and the out-put is awesome. Of course the toner(s) are expensive but I don't have to buy so what the heck!

 

[Smaulz]

Originally posted by: werk
We use this printer at work, and I'm not impressed with it for color work at all. The colors are often way, way off. And it's slow. And the consumables are expensive. And it's absolutely ginormous. And it's expensive. All this from a PC World Top 10 rated color laser printer...what else could you ask for?

Just a guess, but your color problem probably stems from incorrectly set color matching profiles. The rest, I'm definitely not going to argue with. They ARE slow, expensive, and friggin "ginormous" as you so aptly put it. Used a Ricoh for a few years, and once the color was set up correctly, the thing print beautifully! They're great for printing proofs and what-not.

 

[Viper GTS]

If you want to know anything about the 4500/4550, LMK.

I've stripped them down to a bare frame & put them back, & support them on a daily basis.

They have both been discontinued, though, replaced with the 4600.

The 4600 print quality is the same, but it does full speed monochrome and color (ie full color at 17 ppm).

As for the toner cartridges, yes they are expensive but laser toner cartridges in general are expensive.

Each of the color cartridges (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) are rated at 6,000 pages @ 5% coverage per color (total of 15%), while the black is rated at 9,000 pages. So full page coverage, at 25% each color, would be 30 cents per page.

Viper GTS

 

[Macro2]

I'm looking at the 4600. PC world says the color is a bit faded. Maybe they just don't have it set up right. The color speed is the best in class.
Can you get refilled toner?

link

mac

 

[Mavrick007]

We have an HP 4550 here at work and I really like the results that it can produce (output is only as good as the source though heh). The costs for toner while expensive, are still not in the league as what you would pay for ink jet color cartridges (unless you refill your own), and the quality is better than inkjets too IMHO.

 

[chizow]

Color laserjets look photo quality. My group in my old firm used to have a special one on stand-by for the times the Repro group wasn't around and we were cranking til the wee morning hours trying to get presentations out. Printing is pretty slow for the finest grade, but man..did it look nice on the special glossy paper. I printed out a 10 page replacement manual for a game and it looked like the original..excellent stuff. Just make sure you preview/edit before you print!!!! It really hurts when you have to trash one of these prints! :Q

Chiz