Colour laser printer

[secrets in symmetry]

I'm looking to buy a colour laser printer for home use. Do our resident experts have any recommendations?

I want automatic duplex printing, with (preferably) 1200x1200 dpi resolution.

I'm not sure whether I need a wireless printer or not. I want to print from Linux and OS X laptops, and from an iPad and an iPhone, but the printer will sit very close to my router, and I have spare ethernet cables.

[jimbews]

I'm looking to buy a colour laser printer for home use. Do our resident experts have any recommendations?

I want automatic duplex printing, with (preferably) 1200x1200 dpi resolution.

I'm not sure whether I need a wireless printer or not. I want to print from Linux and OS X laptops, and from an iPad and an iPhone, but the printer will sit very close to my router, and I have spare ethernet cables.

I certainly use a wired networked laser printer at home.
Use it on ethernet, with a fixed IP address outdside the range automatically assigned by the router (my router assigns 192.168.1.100 upwards and I use 192.168.1.40 for the printer). Alternatively tell the router to assign a sepcific IP address for the ethernet (MAC) address of the printer.
That way you can specify IP printing in Mac OSX and use a fixed IP address for the printer.
Same would apply to Linux.
The Mac could of course use its own networking facilities to find the printer whatever IP address its got but I'm out of the habit of using that as its deprecated on our work network as its regarded as a noisy protocol.

I have an old HP colour laser printer and it has survived many years use and it is left on all the time. Having said that: at work we have found problems with many of the newer HP laser printers (both mono and colour) especially all-in-one models. Haven't been using the newer 401 colour series long enough to see if they are as bad.
For all-in-one we are now buying Brother printers.

I'll follow up with a question of my own:
Anyone know the best way to tweak the printer settings on Mac and PC to get decent picture printouts. They always appear MUCH too dark on a laser. I'll admit I haven't tried special photo printing paper, but don't see that would make much difference.

Jim

[secrets in symmetry]

Thanks for the information and advice Jim.

We have an HP 500 series machine at work, and I wouldn't recommend it. It's quality of build is poorer than previous models, and it claims that toner cartridges are running low when they clearly aren't, which is very annoying!

I wasn't considering an all-in-one, but it's an option. Which Brother model(s) would you recommend?

[jimbews]

We have a couple of Brother DCP-9055CDN colour networked printer/scanner/copiers.
This followed on with a successful MFC-8380DN networked MONO printer/scanner/copier/fax.

These were bought as replacements for HP machines which had a very short lifetime.
Even more recently we had a faulty HP CP2025. Luckily just within warranty. The gentleman on the "helpline" was difficult to understand, but I did realise that he would NOT progress a warranty repair until I had replaced the toner cartridge of the colour that was showing a fault (although the fault code did NOT indicate a cartridge fault). So one is supposed to have 350 quids worth of toners sitting about well inadvance of when they're needed!! Luckily I was able to borrow from another printer and once that was done and tested still faulty we had a replacement next day. Certainly we have had loads of problems with HP printers and the "formatter board" issue.
Google "HP formatter board over" for a laugh: although we have had some users reporting success.

The only "issue" we had with the Brothers was the time it takes to wake up from sleep mode. That was in an office that had both mono and colur printers and the colour was only used intermittently. Fix was to increase the time the printer took to go to sleep. Let's face it: in an office if you want a printout you want it quickly, not after a couple of minutes warming up with a "client" champing at the bit.

Personally I must admit I prefer a working HP to a Brother but that's maybe because I've been using them for YEARS.

Jim

[secrets in symmetry]

Thanks again.

I'm not overly concerned about the waking up issue with the Brother. It's for home use, so instant awakening isn't really essential, and I could do with a new scanner....

Waiting for the Brother to wake up beats 5 minutes in the oven at 400F for the HP!