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ressiv
e Business Pub
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requiring top-notch black-and-white performance. For
the money, they’re definitely excellent values, although
t
heir limited features and high consumables costs may
lead potential buyers to consider slightly more expensive
models such as the OKI Printing Solutions C5800Ldn,
which sells for $799 (street) and prints at 24ppm in color
and 28 in black-and-white, or HP’s own Color LaserJet
3800, which also costs $799 (street) and prints at 22ppm
in color and black-and-white.
Still, the Color LaserJet 2605dn and 2605dtn models
represent a step in the right direction by HP of upping the
quality of lower-level color laser printers while keeping
costs low.
Chart entries — pages 74–75
Hewlett-Packard Color LaserJet 3600
Hewlett-Packard Color LaserJet 3600n
Hewlett-Packard Color LaserJet 3600dn
Hewlett-Packard Color LaserJet 3600dtn
17ppm full color
17ppm blac
k & white
Sum-up: This small-workgroup printer series offers host-
based printing only but good color speed.
The Color LaserJ
et 3600 models are HP’s lowest-cost
printers that offer the same speed in black-and-white and
color. They start at $599. At 17ppm, they replace the
16ppm Color LaserJet 3550 printers, and they add a little
more in the way of standard pa
per input. The 360MHz
processor is quite good for a desktop/small workgroup
printer
. These printers are reasonably priced, starting well
under the ma
gic $1,000 level.
Note
, however, that unlike the slower Color LaserJet
2550 models, these printers do not offer PostScript or
PCL. If you want PostScript, you’ll want to look at other
HP models.
T
her
e are four models in this family:
● The base-level Color LaserJet 3600 ($599)
● The network-capable Color LaserJet 3600n ($699)
● The 3600dn, which has automatic duplexing ($999)
● T
he Color LaserJ
et 3600dtn,
w
hic
h adds more paper
capacity ($1,599)
T
he 3600 and 3600n mac
hines ha
ve 64MB of memory,
w
hile the 3600dn and 3600dtn come with 128MB. The
3600dtn also adds a 500-sheet tray. There is no option for
memory expansion. That’s no big issue, given the lack of
PostScript. HP calls its own printing language JetReady,
and it works basically like GDI. These machines are also
Mac- and Linux-compatible. HP rates them for a maxi-
mum monthly duty cycle of 50,000 pages, but recom-
mends a much lower volume, of up to 3,000 pages.
The models have a sleek curved design, simple and ele-
gant and suitable for desktop use. Connectivity is via
USB and Ethernet (optional on the 3600). Wi-Fi is avail-
able as an option on all four models.
Paper supplies include a 100-sheet bypass (which can
handle heavier stock, including envelopes and trans-
parencies). All of the models have a 250-sheet standard
paper tray. You can also add an optional 500-sheet paper
tray, for a total of 850 sheets. (That 500-sheet tray is stan-
dard on the dtn model.) On the output side, there’s a 250-
sheet standard output tray.
Like other recently rolled-out HP printer series, this one
comes with ColorSphere toner, which is designed to
show very good color gloss and consistency (useful in
printing photos or marketing materials). It also comes
with preinstalled cartridges, so the printer is ready to go
out of the box. These starter cartridges can print 5,000
black-and-white pages, 4,000 color pages. That’s a nice
head start before you have to worry about installing
supplies
.
Consumables costs are at 2.2 cents for black-and-white
and 12 cents for color. These are moderate prices.
This is a formida
ble, speedy printer family at a low
price. It has the HP administrative tools and a good-look-
ing toner technology. The base model is far faster in color
Better Buys for Business
Hewlett-Packard Color LaserJet 3600/3800
Consumab
les costs at-a-glance
Price
Yield
Full-color cost per page
Black-and-white cost per page
Black print cartridge $132.99 6,000 $ 0.022 $ 0.022
Cyan print cartridge $129.99 4,000 $ 0.032 N/A
Magenta print cartridge $129.99 4,000 $ 0.032 N/A
Yellow print cartridge $129.99 4,000 $ 0.032 N/A
T
O
T
AL PER-P
A
GE COSTS
$0.120 $0.022
11.97 2.22