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The Color Laser Printer Guide: Vendor & Product Profiles
Entire Contents © 2006 Prog
ressiv
e Business Publications. Copying of Pages Prohibited.To Order: 800 247 2185 or www.betterbuys.com 11
t
han most other printers starting at under $700. But you
should look at the OKI Printing Solutions 5500 and
L
exmark C522 machines. They offer comparable color
speeds, and the Lexmark adds on PostScript as well.
If you want a solid HP model and a moderate sticker
price, this is the family to check out.
Chart entries — pages 76–77
Hewlett-Packard Color LaserJet 3000
Hewlett-Packard Color LaserJet 3000n
Hewlett-Packard Color LaserJet 3000dn
Hewlett-Packard Color LaserJet 3000dtn
15ppm full color
30ppm black & white
Sum-up: A workgroup printer series with superior black-and-
white speeds and the ability to control color use.
This printer family features fast speeds in black-and-
white and pretty g
ood speed in color. Unlike some other
HP models, this one is more suited for an environment
where standard black-and-white office printing is
required and color printing is more occasional. That’s a
description that fits many offices.
These printers come with a powerful 533MHz proces-
sor. The printer series supports both PCL and PostScript
printing, whether from Windows PCs, Macs, or various
flavors of UNIX systems. As with other newer HP print-
ers, the color functions can be blocked for some users or
for certain hours so you can have some control over the
cost of color printing in a mixed-use environment. That
mak
es especiall
y good sense with this printer f
amily,
which you can use as your standard office printer most of
the time, with color as an added feature.
There are four configurations:
● The base model, the Color LaserJet 3000 ($999),
w
hic
h features 64MB of memory and 350 sheets of
standard input.
● The Color LaserJet 3000n ($1,199), which features
128MB of memory plus a built-in Ethernet port.
● T
he Color LaserJ
et 3000dn ($1,499),
w
hich adds stan-
dard automatic duplexing.
● T
he Color LaserJet 3000dtn (its price was not avail-
able as we went to press), which adds an extra 500-
sheet tr
ay as a standard feature.
All of the models have USB connectivity. Wi-Fi wire-
less and gig
a
bit Ether
net connecti
vity ar
e also options.
A 100-sheet multipurpose tray handles transparencies
and envelopes
. A 250-sheet tray is standard on all mod-
els, and a 500-sheet input drawer is optional. (It is stan-
dard on the 3000dtn.) HP recommends a volume of up to
5,000 pa
ges per month, but its maximum duty cycle is
50,000 on the 3000n and 3000dn, and a full 60,000 pages
on the 3000 and 3000dtn.
Preinstalled toner cartridges have capacity for 6,500
blac
k-and-white and 3,500 color pa
ges
.
Consumables costs for this family come in at 16.5¢ per
color page and 2.9¢ a page for black-and-white — both
on the high side.
This is a very practical series for offices where color is a
desired, but not constantly used, feature. The price is rea-
sonable enough. What would make it more useful is
more paper capacity: the 850-sheet total input limits the
siz
e of the workgroup that can use it. There are other
models in this price range that offer more than twice the
pa
per ca
pacity
,
nota
b
l
y the Xerox Phaser 6300 family and
the Panasonic WORKiO DP-CL22. But those models are
similarly limited in output to a 250-sheet tray, so the
pa
per capacity is less of an issue.
The Color LaserJet 3000 family offers good features for
a fair price. It also offers the HP name and the upgraded
administr
a
ti
v
e tools and impr
o
ved color toner that come
with the brand.
Chart entries — pages 75–76
Hewlett-Packard Color LaserJet 3000
Consumables costs at-a-glance
Price
Yield
Full-color cost per page
Black-and-white cost per page
Black print cartridge $134.99 6,500 $ 0.02 $ 0.02
Cyan print cartridge $127.99 3,500 $ 0.04 N/A
Magenta print cartridge $127.99 3,500 $ 0.04 N/A
Yellow print cartridge $127.99 3,500 $ 0.04 N/A
Drum/black $173.99 20,000 N/A $ 0.01
Drum/4-color $173.99 5,000 $ 0.03 N/A
TOTAL PER-PAGE COSTS
$ 0.17 $ 0.03
16.53 2.95
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