Price war means laser printers are almost as cheap as inkjets
THE first laser printer Doubleclick ever acquired was an Apple LaserWriter. It weighed a ton, was deadly slow by modern standards, and cost in 1987 a mind-shattering $13,000: more than an average car at the time.
Doubleclick didn’t happen to have 13 grand lying around, but we really wanted that printer, since it, along with Aldus PageMaker software, launched the desktop printing revolution.
Laser printers no longer bust bank balances or require hefty financing deals, and over the past year or so they have become almost as cheap as inkjets.
In Australia in the past couple of weeks Hewlett-Packard and Dell have launched what appear to be extraordinarily good, fast mono lasers for less than $150.
If you have a small business or home office and don’t really need colour, a laser is much better value than an inkjet. It will last longer, produce better looking output in less time and the ink will usually cost less.
Inkjet cartridges cost about $35-$40 each, and if you’re printing in colour you need at least two, and possibly four. You might get 1000 pages or so from the set, but many users find the count is less.
Many low-end laser printers have cartridges that cost about $65-$70 and will reliably produce 1500 pages or so.
Hewlett-Packard’s latest laser cheapie for the small office-home office market is the LaserJet Pro 1102, which goes for $149. It occupies little desktop space and prints 18 pages a minute.
For $40 more you can buy the 1102n, which has an ethernet port for home networking, as well as the standard USB port.
Better still for most home offices, although somewhat pricier at $399, is the LaserJet Pro M1212nf multifunction printer, which also handles faxing, copying and scanning of documents.
You can scan to email with a single mouse click, which is handy when you need to fill in a form manually and send it back.
The 1212nf has the same basic engine as the 1102 models, but adds HP’s auto on-auto off technology, which turns off the machine when it hasn’t been used for a few minutes.
Here at Doubleclick we’ve been using a 1212nf for the past week or so, and we have found it lives up to HP’s claims. It was simple to set up, works with Macs as well as Windows PCs and its claimed 8.5-second production time is spot on for the first page.
Dell, meanwhile, has answered HP’s challenge with its own range of low-cost lasers. The Dell 1130 — fetchingly described as “petite” in Dell publicity — prints 18 pages a minute and costs $149.
The 1130n is basically the same printer with ethernet and more speed, and goes for $169.
If you’re looking for a multifunction device, Dell’s 1133 model is worth considering. It doesn’t fax, but it will scan and copy as well as print at up to 22ppm, and it’s $200 cheaper than the HP M1212nf LaserJet at $199.
Japanese maker Canon offers its basic business laser, the LaserShot LBP3100B, for $159. It prints at 16ppm.
