HERE is my DEAL:
Well I opened my printer box up on Sunday night to surprisingly find my 'NEW' printer and accessories had already been opened and possibly used. The toner cartrdige had been opened and already placed into the printer.
I went back to OD yesterday to try to get an exchange for a NEW and UNOPENED box and complained. I told them that it is deceiving to sell opened items without any CLEAR marking on the box with a discounted price. I also told them it was against the law. I then spoke to the manager and told him the same thing. After arguing with him I found out that my local OD has essentially no method of marking opened boxes and that they couldn't guarnatee that any ML-1710 boxes actually contained a NEW printer with UNOPENED accessories. Well I told them that was ridiculous and demanded a discounted price; the manager said he was willing to give me a 20% reduction, and I accepted. Best of all when I opened it up, it actually ended up being a new printer (everything in unopened plastic bags). So this is my final price:
$170 - $30 (Staples $30 of $150 competitor coupon) - (20% off reduction) + tax = ~$110 ... $110 - 70 rebate = $40!
Anyway...the main part of this story: if you are buying from OD B&M, make sure you are getting a BRAND NEW printer...in fact, open it up right there in the store and check! If it has been opened before then demand a reduction in price.
AND here is my REVIEW:
As for the printer itself:
It is small and worked perfectly fine with my USB2.0 cable (even though the printer is USB1.1). It is very fast. The text quality is amazing (even better when you consider the price). The graphic output, although said to be horrible, was pretty good. I printed a screen size picture of a set of Klipsch ProMedia 2.1's from BestBuy's website and it looked fine to me (actually it looked better than fine, even comparable to or better than my mom's HP1200SE LaserJet's image quality).
Also the software included is pretty useful. I just installed the print software (not the Print Monitor software). The software has many features and interesting configurations. For one, you can choose how long to wait before the printer enters the 'power save' mode. Also you can configure the toner saver function from within the software (as well as by clicking the button on the printer). I printed two copies of my resume, one in toner saver mode and one in regular mode...I couldn't tell the difference so I'll stick with the toner saver mode and extend my starter toner life by 40%. Other cool features of the software include the ability to put watermarks on the paper (like draft, confidential, etc), set up page templates, and to print multiple pages per sheet (like scaling down 4 pages and putting them on one side of a sheet of paper). This feature is great when printing out CS code.
Anyway, sorry for my long review. I'm just real happy with this printer so far. The only conceivable knock against this printer is that it is a little loud when warming up and printing, but it is silent in power save mode of course. Other than that, I am amazed at its performance and value. I think it is a steal even at the sale price of $99 after rebates.
PS....there are way to many ML-1710 threads...I have no idea which one to post in anymore??
