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Need recommendation for laser printers


jftuga

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We have about 80 Dell 1700n and 1710n laser printers that have been is use for about 1 - 2 years. They were fine at first, albeit a little on the slow side. Now, they have become a nuisance. Here is the cycle we are in: frequently jam, IT staff clean them out (possibly replace rollers), they work for awhile, and then start jamming again. We are at the point of wanting to replace all of these printers.

I am now looking for recommendations for HP Laserjet printers. As things stand, it would be a hard to convince us to purchase anything other than HP printers. Although network capable, only about 10 of these use the ethernet port. Most are directly attached with the USB port. I am only interested in hearing recommendations from people who have had their equipment for over a year, preferably two, as I want to know about performance and/or issues after the printers have been broken-in. I believe that we want to stay in the $200 to $300 range as we don't need high capacity, high volume printing. One feature that is important to us is the amount of time spent before the first page is printed. This is one thing we would like to minimize as well as paper jams, having to clean them, etc., etc.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

-John

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First I would like to say that printers change all the time, especially laser printers, so when you want a model that is over a year old you will need to buy the old stock.

Second, I recommend Samsung over HP ANY day when it comes to low cost printers, and guess what, Dell sold Samsung printers too with there own label on it. The 1710 is only designed to print about 50.000 prints when normally used, without replacing rollers. I’m sure if paper jams occur it must be users that abused those printers.

That said, we continue with my advice: Take a look at the newer Samsung ML-3051N, only less good point I can think of is the 250 sheet paper tray. They are cheap, so no need for IT personal to repair/fix them, just replace them when they are out of warranty...

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Those Dell printers had to have been at least overused for that model in some way. We've got several of them here (5300n, 5210n, 5310n, 5110cn) and haven't had a single problem with any of them. If they're only 1-2 years old they should still be under warranty (depending on the warranty you purchased with the printers.

What do you consider "high capacity/volume"? The 5210n that we have is barely a year old and has had over 20,000 pages printed. Of course, the bulk of the printing in that office is done to a Xerox WorkCentre Pro 238...which has has over 125,000 prints/copies in it's two year life.

I'd have to recommend staying away from HP as well...if for no other reason then their shoddy drivers (yeah, they used to be the best but times change). Try using the Universal Print Driver on a Terminal Server...

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Getting back to your request, I have had great luck with the HP Laserjet 4000 series printers, though not manufacturered any more I have a number of 4000, 4050 and 4100 printers with well over 300k pages printed on each and the only thing that has been done is to replace pickup/separation rollers with the exception of fixing abuse. Though I have not had them as long the 4250 has also been a great printer with the same service record as the others.

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Re-Posting Relavent info by request.

Any of the cheap (USB) laser printers are not (really designed) for a work/business environment. They're for home offices that don't really do much...

While you could do with a bunch of the Laserjet 1020/1022s you will most likely end up right back where you're at now by the time the warranty runs out. Note: these modles are not "repairable", if the thing dies, HP will make you send it back and then ship you a referb. e.g. Don't do that.

Your best bet would be to group your users on a much smaller number of (truly business class) network printers like the Laserjet 4250n, TCO is much lower that way because the machine is designed to take a beating, and the number of supplies you need to stock is much lower. Yes the toner cartridges are a bit more money, but you get alot more prints out of them and they don't tend to waste toner like the smaller (loss-leader) machines.

One of our clients is an accounting firm that (generates tons of paperwork) has several hundred of the 4250s in their offices spread across the country. Those machines adverage around 25,000 pages a month each while the users beat them unmercifully, and seldom ever fail even though they've been in service (at that rate) for several (2-4) years.

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