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The Color Laser Printer Guide: Industry Briefing
Entire Contents © 2006 Progressive Business Publications. Copying of Pages Prohibited.To Order: 800 247 2185 or www.betterbuys.com 65
require special ones that cost more than the regular vari-
ety. Printing on transparencies always runs slower than
on regular paper.
Interfaces & network connectivity
Older color printers come with parallel interfaces stan-
dard. This ensures that they are compatible with all
Windows PCs. More common on newer machines is a
Universal Serial Bus (USB) port, which is used for direct
connection to a PC (or a Mac). USB interfaces, especial-
ly the now widely used Version 2.0, provide faster data
flow than parallel interfaces and are “hot-swappable.”
That means you can connect or disconnect the printer
without restarting your computer. It also can be used
with Macintosh computers.
All workgroup color printers can be fitted with network
interface cards that allow you to connect them directly to
Ethernet. This is a standard feature on most printers in
this guide. Also optionally available — though increas-
ingly less important — are Token Ring network inter-
faces.
Some newer models are offering wireless connectivity:
either the Ethernet-based IEEE 802.11b (sometimes
kno
wn as “W
i-Fi”) or (less commonly) the infrared
Bluetooth. We discuss these in more detail in the
Business
Ink Jet Printer Guide
in this volume (pages 125–130).
Buying a Color
Laser Printer
Recent price reductions have helped make color laser
printers more mainstream devices, and this has meant
tha
t they are easier to buy than before. Previously, a lot of
places you could turn to for black-and-white laser print-
ers simply did not sell color models. Today, any reseller
tha
t handles f
aster b
lac
k-and-w
hite printer
s — for exam-
ple, 24–40ppm models — is likely to offer one or more
color models as well.
This is a market where vendors generally sell through
distributors that supply the computer dealer channel. As
a rule, vendors do not maintain a network of authorized
dealer
s tha
t ar
e supplied dir
ect.
An exception is when
some manufacturers that are also in the copier business
sell color lasers through their copier dealers as well as
through the main computer printer channel.
In the past, vendors haven’t dealt directly with end
user
s
,
e
x
ce
pt when pursuing the very largest accounts.
T
his has c
hang
ed, however, with the advent of purchas-
ing over the Internet.
Certain vendors — Hewlett-Packard (www.hp.com)
a
nd Lexmark (www.lexmarkstore.com) among them —
will sell end users just about any of their color laser
machines from their own sites on the Web. Xerox tends
to direct customers to reseller sites or to brick-and-mortar
dealerships for most color lasers.
Still other vendors do little or no direct selling over the
Internet, although their color laser products are available
on online reseller sites. Some of these sites are multi-line
resellers, such as Zones (www.zones.com), Computer
Discount Warehouse (www.cdw.com), and PC
Connection (www.pcconnection.com) — while others
are the online shop windows of in-store retailers such as
Staples (www.staples.com) and Best Buy
(www.bestbuy.com). The latter sites have a much smaller
selection of color laser printers than the former.
Some of the online vendors also offer printer leases,
extended warranties, and additional services, such as
installation by a local dealer. Generally speaking, you
may not get the very lowest prices on the vendors’ sites.
(After all, they can’t undersell their retail vendors and
resellers.) But their prices are a good reference point to
start from. They also may include rebates and special
offers.
We can’t stress enough, however, the importance of see-
ing color output with your own e
yes, especially if you are
going to do more than just add color to text-based docu-
ments. It’s not a good idea, in our opinion, to buy a color
printer over the Web without seeing a few hard-copy sam-
ples first.
War
ranties and consuma
bles
Most color laser models ha
ve warranties that include one
year of onsite service. However, a few models through
copier companies bear 90-da
y warranties. You’ll need to
contract with a dealer for a service contract beyond that
period.
Keep in mind that there is less competition in the mar-
ket for color supplies than in the black-and-white supplies
market. Resellers do, however, compete on price over the
“of
ficial”
supplies for the most popular brands; consum-
a
bles for the HP Color LaserJet series tend to be dis-
counted most of
all.
And na
tur
all
y
,
consuma
b
les are also
widely available over the Web.
Because actual, or “street,” prices for color printer con-
suma
b
les vary widely, we don’t attempt in our
Consuma
bles Costs at-a-Glance charts (see the Vendor &
Product Profiles section beginning on page 3) to report
these prices. Instead, we give you the “list” prices at
which vendors suggest that consumables be sold or the
“Web” prices on the vendors’ own Website. These prices
will gi
ve you an idea, although not a perfect one, of
w
hich printers are the most economical to run.
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