James Mok’s Soliloquy

Many times I have to print a load of outline guiding forms for Alec to write his creative writing homework for school. The all-in-one at home is just too slow for the job even though using refill ink cuts the ink cost down by about 1/5. I have been thinking for getting a color laser printer for home when I bought the Xerox Phaser 3116 monochrome laser for work.

After browsing through brochures and reviews on the Internet, I find none of them is all that good. The HP LJ2550 and the Lexmark C510 are just about the only two that supports emulated postscript for Mac. And I am not about to go thru all the hassle again trying to figure out whether the others are indeed Mac compatible. The Epson Acculaser C1100 is one without postscript support but has OS X drivers. Although the price of the printer itself is the least expensive color laser at about HKD$2800, I worry that the drum costs might add up as well as its rather large body size.

To be honest, most color laser printers are almost 4 times the size of a monochrome one and about a 1.5X diagonal footprint. The safest bet would be the HP LJ2550, but it doesn’t have a proper paper tray and the photo quality is said to be inferior to that of the Lexmark C510’s.

The Lexmark comes in a close second in lowest price at HKD$3288 but if you factored in the promotional free multifunction inkjet printer or a monochrome toner cartridge, it is the lowest color laser printer in the market. However, first off, the price in the US is almost US$80 less than the HK price, so the freebie is not exactly free. It has no single sheet feeder, so changing paper sizes or printing the odd envelope would be a big hassle. Accessories are said to be very expensive although toner cartridges are said to be relatively inexpensive. Then there is the noise issue. It is said to be extremely noisy. Cons out weigh pros here, at least for me.

So back to monochromes. It would be nice to have double sided printing and perhaps network capability to boot. These two function alone adds to over HKD$3400 for something like the Brother 5170DNT, which puts it right in the ball park of a color laser printer. Forget that idea.

So, I was once again faced with none but one solution that’s truly inexpensive. Hence, a second Xerox Phaser 3116, for home this time, which has been tested to run on both PC and Mac with a workaround. At HKD$688 with six $100 toner cartridge coupons, I doubt anyone can go too wrong with it.