Club Printer

Each manufacturer focuses on certain qualities when producing a device. HP, for example, builds a good all-round device for offices. Ricoh doesn’t spend much time designing devices or making them user friendly, but generally delivers reliability and professional equipment. Dell took a rather different approach when creating the 2130cn. Their main goal was to sell a user-friendly device for the small office environment.

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There are many good points to this printer, and just a few bad points. But for some users, the bad points are so significant they might overshadow the good ones. It’s quite easy to spot the Dell 2130cn color laser printer in an office. This is because you’ll be wondering why the printer isn’t the usual white/grey/yellow color you’re so used to. The whole printer is black and cube shaped.

It features a backlit LCD display on the top side and seven buttons right in front of LCD for menu navigation. Initially you’ll get a 250 sheet paper tray right at the bottom of the front panel. The user can also buy a second 250 sheet tray that goes right under the printer. Another thing that you might want to consider purchasing is the duplexer that the 2130cn doesn’t include. There is a very high chance that you will want a duplexer because it will save paper and money, since it’s printing on both sides of a sheet.

All consumables, optionals, accessories have a very high price tag. While the initial price for purchasing the printer isn’t too affordable to begin with, what you’ll end up spending after you’ve purchased it is significantly more annoying. And you’ll kind of have to spend extra, not only for ink replacement, but for the extra paper tray as well, that you’ll more than likely want. This is probably the biggest inconvenient the 2130cn has and about the only reason why you might want to avoid it. If you’re not prepared to sink some money into it after purchase, it’s probably best you looked somewhere else when choosing an office printer.

The toner cartridges are possitioned in an interesting manner. On the right side of the device you’ll find a door, and when you open it you’ll discover the four toner cartridges aligned vertically. The drum unit is found on the front, behind a fold-down cover. With this layout it’s basically very easy to replace all consumables.

The speed of the printer is average, 20 pages per minute for black and 16 pages per minute for color. The quality of prints (both color and mono, images or text) is satisfying as well. It won’t compete with photo printers but it produces sharp, clean text which is exactly what an office needs from a device. The device ships with a black cartridge that will last for 2500 pages and three color ones that last for 1000 pages. Everyone in the office will probably be happy with the quality, speed and functionality of the Dell 2130cn color laser printer, that is probably until you’ll have to replace that costly ink.

The most known brand for office all-in-one’s at the moment would be HP. But other manufacturers aren’t very far off in terms of the quality and price their products offer. Dell, for example has been improving greatly and has released a pretty impressive device on the market, the Dell 968w, an all-in-one wireless printer.

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So what exactly are you getting that would make you chose the dell color printer out of a long series of options? First of all, it packs wireless. This means that it can work with as many computers as you have in your workgroup. Have a laptop in your office and a desktop in the kid’s room?

No problem, both users can print whenever they want. In the case of the Dell 968w all-in-one means that it can print, scan, copy and fax. It also has duplexing so you can print on both sides of the paper with ease. This will both save you paper (as you’ll be printing on both sides of one sheet instead of using two distinct sheets) and time as well.

As most printers nowadays, the 968w also offers the option to print directly from a digicam or from a memory card (through PictBridge). There’s a slot on the front of the printer that supports For controls you’ll be getting a power on button, direction keys and a confirmation key right in the middle, and you will navigate by using the 2.4 inch color LCD screen. It’s easy to install, the instructions Dell provides are crystal clear, and you’ll most likely have no trouble at all setting up it’s wireless capabilities.

The speed of the printer is not bad at all. The manufacturer claims up to 32 pages per minute when your printing black and 27 pages per minute for color. Despite the good speed, the quality of the prints is impressive too. If you’ll want to print some photos, by using photo paper, you’ll notice the quality of photos is very good as well. Printouts have a maximum resolution of 4800 x 1200 dpi while scanning is done at a maximum of 1200 x 4800 dpi. Along with the printer you’ll also get the Snapfire software which is said to be pretty useful for creative editing and setting various preferences. Beware of the cost and consumption of ink though.

Beware of the ink price and consumption though. Its high-yield black cartridge costs around $25 and will last for around 490 pages whereas the color (magenta, cyan, yellow) one will empty after 400 pages or so. As a conclusion, this dell color printer is a great purchase if you want to get rid of all those annoying wires in your home office or in a working environment. It’s not exactly the best in terms of affordability, but a user almost always has to make a choice between low price and good features.

The Dell 3100cn color laser printer is the follow up model to the 3000Cn. Similarities between the two include the technology used (color laser, 600 by 600 dpi resolution). Speed is the same, 25 pages per minute for black print and 5ppm when you’re printing color. Both models also feature a 10/100BaseT Ethernet interface, USB and parallel ports. Cables aren’t included with either model, but Dell will provide them for you in exchange for around $20.

What Dell decided to add to the newer model is a second 250 sheet paper drawer and a 150 sheet input tray. If you really need more capacity, you can get an optional 500 sheet third drawer. This will get you up to 900 sheets. Size-wise, you still get a bulky printer, weighting 33kg.

The reason why most businesses chose a laser printer is that they offer much better speeds in the case of high quantities of paper. They are also cheaper in the long run (less money/print). You should chose a laser color printer if you know for sure that you value fast printing of texts and graphics, you work with a lot of paperwork and need a lot of pages printed out on a daily basis, and want to save money even if this compromises quality a bit. While they aren’t as good at creating attractive color images on glossy paper, like inkjets, they print satisfactory photos as well.

The Dell 3100cn color laser printer doesn’t really abide to that rule. It compromises a bit on the speed side, and it’s not exactly as fast as your designated big office printers, but it also offers the photographic quality that you’ll most likely encounter in the case of an inkjet printer. The print per page cost is very low and the price tag of the printer itself is somewhat lower than in the case of similar products.

The printer’s four toner cartridges (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) will last for just about 4000 pages at 5 percent coverage. There is one drawback though, the speed of color prints. Its 4.5 to 5 color pages per minute possition it on the ‘i’m slow’ corner in the laser color printer store. The Dell 3100cn uses a toner management system that will keep track of consumable levels and post the results on the front LCD screen. It handles all types of paper and media, including 4 by 6 inch postcards, custom size banners, card stock, labels or envelopes of basically all sizes.

The 3100cn ships with 64MB of RAM, support for Windows, Mac and Linux and an easy to install software. Installing it is also easy, and there are step-by-step instructions in the box for installing the toners, connecting it to a computer and setting up a workgroup. While speed doesn’t recommend it for a big office full of people, for a small workgroup of around 10 people it should be an ideal candidate.

Dell announced that they were releasing two new all-in-one printers: the Dell Photo All-In-One Printer 926 and the Dell Photo All-In-One Printer 966. These two are both upgrades of existing models. The 926 replaces the 924 and the 966 replaces the 964.

Dell rates the 926 at 20 ppm for black and 15 ppm for color. The max resolution is 4800 x 1200 dpi and you have have the choice of printing in four colors or using a photo cartridge for six colors. It is PictBridge enabled and also has memory card slots. It will retail at $100, so it is intended as an entry level model for people who don’t rely on their multifunction for business use.

The 966 is a little more fancy and is rated at 32 ppm for black prints and 23 ppm for color. It has a built-in fax machine and an automatic document feeder, two features that the Dell 926 lacks. It has the same resolution and connectivity options as the 926, but it features a 2.4″ LCD not found on that model. It will retail for $200. (more…)

With the Dell MFP Laser Printer 1815dn ($389 direct), Dell redefines the ideal monochrome laser AIO for a small office or busy home office. Though not perfect, it raises expectations for what a small-office AIO should be.

Here are some impressions from pcmag’s review:
In addition to printing, scanning to and faxing from a PC over a network, the multitalented 1815dn also works as a standalone fax machine and copier. The machine is a digital sender too, letting you scan and e-mail without a PC. Most AIOs with digital sending that I’ve seen up to now have been aimed primarily at large offices. In particular, they didn’t work with most ISPs and required you to have your own corporate-style e-mail server to connect to. By contrast, the 1815dn operates with standard ISPs, as I confirmed by testing it with the Verizon DSL home Internet service. (more…)

PCWorld made a review of Dell 3100cn and here’s what they say:

The Dell Laser Printer 3100cn has all the advantages of the similar Dell 3000cn (which topped our color laser printer chart for months), including a reasonable price, strong performance, and good image quality. But the newer model has a couple of advantages. First, it comes with a 250-sheet paper drawer as standard equipment, making it even more of a bargain at $499. Adding that same paper capacity to the $399 3000cn cost $180.

Second, Dell throws in large-capacity toner cartridges, each rated for 4000 pages, in place of the 2000-page cartridges that came with the 3000cn. Replacement cartridges cost $45 for black and $95 for each of the three colors. (more…)