[Pc_Support] Dell 3100cn Color LaserJet with PostScript and LPD for $329.40 shipped!

[Bryan J. Smith]

Wife is in the market for a new color printer.  We've
stretched our ink jets on long enough, and we really tire of
the combination of the cost of ink cartridges combined with
the reality that we're not doing photo-quality 99% of the
time.

A few weeks ago, Dealnews had the HP Color LaserJet 2600N on
sale for $339.98: 
http://dealnews.com/deals/HP-Color-Laser-Jet-2600-N-Laser-Printer-for-340-shipped/92782.html
 
Although it has a network interface, it was clearly as "host"
driven printer designed only for the Windows Graphical
Display Interface (GDI) and the fixed memory amount left much
to be desired (and to network traffic).  I mean, who cares if
it does dozens of pages per minute in color if you can't feed
it anything of substance (i.e., the communications is the
bottleneck)?

But today, lo'n behold, the Dell 3100cn Color Laser was on
sale for $329.40, about the same price as its 3000cn
brotheren.
http://dealnews.com/deals/Dell-3100-cn-Color-Laser-Printer-for-329-shipped/93496.html?ref=dndaily

The 3100cn, unlike the 3000cn, comes with a host of additions
-- beyond just the paper trays, FULL POSTSCRIPT LEVEL 3
SUPPORT!  Driven with an on-board 300MHz RISC processor and
64MB of RAM (expandable to 576MB), this is a serious printer
for a low price.  Yes, that's MacOS X and Linux support
out-of-the-box, offering Line Printer Daemon (LPD) support
(IPP and other options are available for a $99 add-on).

In reading reviews, the color for a Laser is the best you'll
get short of a leading edge photo-quality inkjet, and is
better than the latter when you need to mix text and graphics
(e.g., publication).  Most people said skip the optional
($300) duplexer, it's got alignment issues that seem to be
inherent to the design.  A few others complained about Dell
failing to ship the unit with internal packaging, and that it
could result in it being damaged upon arrival.  And we all
know how India's--er, I mean Dell's support is.  ;->

Hmmm, with that said, I think I'm going to chance it.  I
could really use a network printer for home ever since my IBM
NP17 had sensor issues.  My wife's current HP LaserJet 1200se
eats through cartridges at a good cost (several cents/page)
and the Dell 3100cn at just over a cent/page block seems to
best even my aged Lexmark E310 at price-per back'n white (let
alone our inkjet printers at colors).

-- Bryan

P.S.  Just to be complete, there is the Dell 5100cn which
DealNews mentioned is also on-sale for $699.30 shipped:
http://dealnews.com/deals/Dell-5100-cn-Color-Laser-Printer-for-699-shipped/93498.html?ref=dndaily
 
It is much, much faster at color, comes with the duplexer
built-in and has other goodies (some standard, some still
optional -- like the IPP/NCP/SMB support?).  I also saw some
notes that its color wasn't as good, but that could have been
a dated review.  IMHO, I'd rather spend half as much,
especially since the warranty is still 1 year.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                | Sent from Yahoo Mail
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org     |  (please excuse any
http://thebs413.blogspot.com/ |   missing headers)