Fast printers

By J.B. MilesSpecial to GCNWhen it comes to laser printers, there's a lot more to a bargain than price. A $400 monochrome laser printer could easily deliver the goods for a personal or small office with limited output demands. But workgroups and small departments that demand high volume and high print quality need a real workhorse with speed, power, network capability and overall reliability.The monochrome laser printers listed in this Buyers Guide generally cost $1,000 and up, with options that can push them over $4,000, but the benefits they provide can make them worth the price.This guide features networkable monochrome laser printers suitable for small and large workgroup service. All of them have manufacturers' pages-per-minute ratings of between 16 and 40. They offer true resolutions of 600 by 600 dots per inch for text printing, and most come bundled with software for enhancing resolution to 1,200 or even 2,400 dpi for high-quality graphical output.Virtually all of the printers listed boast powerful RISC processors and scalable memory that ranges from 8M or 16M up to 384M'and even 1G if an optional hard drive is purchased with the unit.Each of the units is network-ready, meaning that Ethernet or token-ring cards and drivers either are preinstalled or can be included as options. Most also include drivers for Microsoft Windows 9x and NT, and Mac OS 7.5 and later. Some of them also come with Unix drivers.Feature sets vary from vendor to vendor, but most of the units listed provide advanced paper-handling options including extra feeder trays, duplexers for printing on both sides of the page, and finishing modules such as automatic collators and staplers.Starting with a base unit priced between $1,000 and $2,000, it's not difficult to build yourself a true laser powerhouse by adding options, but keep in mind that your cost could easily soar over $3,000 as more features are added.Any workgroup printer worth its salt should be able to withstand the rigors of constant daily use, and this is where premium units depart radically from the sub-$500 laser printers designed for personal and small-office use.One measure of the difference is a printer's duty cycle, an estimate of how many pages per month a printer is designed to handle before it fails or requires maintenance. Small personal laser printers generally offer duty cycles of several thousand to 10,000 pages per month. The printers listed here have duty cycles ranging from 35,000 to 150,000 pages per month, with 65,000 being typical for most of the units priced between $1,000 and $1,500.Because there's no such thing as a perfect printer, you'll have to balance a number of factors to arrive at the one that best meets most of your requirements. The total cost includes the printer's original cost plus that of consumables'paper, toner, replaceable parts'power consumption, maintenance, downtime and training time over the life of the printer. Factoring these elements into planning cycles of six months, one year, two years and five years provides good estimates of what a printer will actually cost.After determining total cost, many information services managers find high-end printers to be better bargains for workgroup service than less expensive models.. A ppm rating of 16 or higher is a good place to start when buying a workgroup laser printer. Be aware, however, that printers are seldom as fast as their ratings because manufacturers typically test by printing the same page over and over to achieve the highest possible rating. This practice doesn't account for different types of printing'plain text vs. text and graphics, for instance'or the time it takes for different pages to come to print, all of which can radically change the actual ppm output of any printer. For quality of text output, monochrome laser printers provide the best bang for the buck, especially if text-only printing is required at resolutions of 300 dpi or 600 dpi.For high-quality graphics output, the manufacturer's bundled enhancement software comes into play, as does the inherent quality of the printer itself. The best units combine a graphics co-processor with a high-speed RISC CPU and plenty of RAM to help manage the millions of pixels involved. Why buy a printer for even a small workgroup if it isn't network-ready? If you want to save yourself the hassle of installing network cards and drivers, pay the extra $300 or $400 for a fully networkable model'usually denoted with the letter 'n' in the model number'at the outset. Support for at least Ethernet and token-ring environments should be provided, along with support for leading network protocols such as TCP/IP, Internet Packet Exchange/Sequenced Packet Exchange, AppleTalk and NetBIOS Extended User Interface. Network management is generally a function of software provided by the printer manufacturer. Most bundled software is compliant with the Simple Network Management Protocol and allows remote management of print jobs and printer functions from stations anywhere along the network. The ability to print on both sides of the paper is a handy feature to have and can be installed as an option in most of the printers listed. But know that the option usually costs an additional $400 or $500 and will cut your printer's total ppm output by half in most cases. All of the laser printers here come bundled with the manufacturer's installation and setup utilities. Most of them install the drivers automatically, but in some cases you may have to enter the path to the driver on the CD-ROM installation disk before you can successfully install the unit. This can be annoying and often requires a fairly experienced technician. Look for the ability to handle a wide variety of paper sizes'up to tabloid'and stock if you are interested in versatility. Most printers come standard with a 500-page input tray; many also come with a 100-page multipurpose tray that can handle a variety of paper sizes simultaneously.As the price of your laser printer goes up, so does its ability to handle sophisticated input/output functions. Plenty of units priced at $2,000 and up offer optional trays capable of handling 2,000 sheets or more. The more expensive units also can add finishing units with multiple bins for sorting, collating and stapling.. A print language is the means by which a computer sends information about a page to the printer. Most of the printers in this guide use Adobe PostScript or HP PLC 5x or 6 and come with an assortment of type fonts compatible with either language. Extra fonts can usually be added via a cartridge. Most of the printers in this category also can determine which language the host computer is using and automatically switch over as required.. Bear in mind that the costs of consumables, options and features of a laser printer in this class can vary widely, significantly affecting your bottom line. Check manufacturers' specifications carefully for the quoted yield of a toner cartridge'typically measured at 5 percent coverage per page for 10,000 to 20,000 pages'and measure this against the type of print jobs you will most often undertake.At about $100 to $250 per cartridge, the differences between one vendor's quoted yield and another's can make a lot of difference at year's end for a busy workgroup. Also, do some comparison-shopping among vendors, not only for options and feature sets but also for prices. Vendor Web sites are a good source of information about prices and product specifications. XXXSPLITXXX-XXXSPLITXXX-