Looking for a good colour laser printer.

[Mike_Amiga]

So far I've looked at HP and Samsung colour printers online. However I have no experience of how good various brands are and which ones are any good for photos, or ones that might jam badly often etc. So any advice greatly appreciated.

[Mike_Amiga]

Well, thanks for all the good advise ya'll! :madashell:

[AmigaHeretic]

Well, not sure if this is for Amiga or ??  So drivers could be an issue.  Also, do you need network support or you just gonna hook it up through USB?

If you're just looking for a good color laser I can recomend the Epson AcuLaser C9100.

Few people realize that Epson also makes high quality laser printers. Seemingly these are more readily available in Europe than in the US.

Hope that helps.

[sandpiper]

I recently bought a Xerox Phaser 6120 Postscript Colour Laser. It is a network printer and also has USB. It works great with my Amigas using postscript drivers. I print to it from the Amigas using lpr. It only cost ~$350CDN/USD. The only thing I don't like about it is that it is a bit noisy. All in all, it is very good value for the money..

[hardlink]

sandpiper wrote:
I recently bought a Xerox Phaser 6120 Postscript Colour Laser.

I think Xerox has gone Trekkie by using 'Phaser' and 'Laser' in the same product  :-)

The Phaser name is something they bought from Tektronix, who made those printers since the Amiga was young (A1000 days). It refers to their solid wax-like inks undergoing a phase change, solid->liquid->solid, during printing. It has NOTHING to do with a laser printer, except for Star Trek associations

I have bought and used many true 'Phaser' printers over the years at work, both Tek and now Xrox, and they work excellently with Amigas, and anything else that can feed them Postscript. The quality is heads above laser printers, but so is the cost - they are similar in function and output (and cost) to dye sublimation printers. Plus, the prints are waterproof, and I don't mean just water-resistant - if you print on transparencies, you can actually take them underwater, and I have.

The latest one I bought is a Xerox Phaser 8550. That reminds me, I have to go check now if the new color sticks I ordered are in; I only have to order a new set once a year - with a laser printer, new supplies would be needed every couple of months.

[Piru]

Well, thanks for all the good advise ya'll!

Well huh, someone needs to relax.

[Zac67]

The Xerox solid wax printers are great in quality, but when we evaluated them back in '97, the prints were not light resistant enough and faded massively in UV exposure (sunlight). Has this improved in the meantime?

I'm usually printing on a Xerox DC250 which is a very impressive piece of hardware, quality and performance wise - but probably out of the budget...  :lol:

[Mike_Amiga]

by Piru on 2008/3/7 15:51:52

Quote:
Well, thanks for all the good advise ya'll!

Well huh, someone needs to relax.

 
Yeah I probably do... I was attempting to research them myself and getting my knickers in a twist. There's so little info about lasers since you can pick up inkjets for about £30 these days.

I've had various problems with inkjets though, and it's not that often I print out. Which probably causes the leaky ink problem. That and the print heads almost always need adjusting.

It's not like I'm doing anything out of the ordinary with my printers. The last printer Epson 1270 went for about 7-8 years with recurring problems the like ones mentioned above until one cartridge let so much ink escape it seems to have permanently gunked up the rollers. I have tried cleaning it various times and ways, but now I'm giving up.

Same sort of thing happened to a Brother all in one after about 2 years when a sheet had to be forceabley removed from it because the paper eject button wasn't shifting it. Then it just printed messy blob versions of everything like my Epson is doing.

Hence looking to go laser to see if my luck improves.  

Seriously though, thanks for replying those that did. I'll be printing on Mac/PC with doze or OSX. can't imagine hunting for ones that would be amiga compatible. I just want reliable occasional use printer, and if it copied also that would be no bad thing as my dad always wants this and that photocopied.

I used to scan then print out,  but my scanner seems to have long since borked for unknown reasons, it's also about 7-8 years old as I bought it the same time as my Epson printer and G4 mac.

[Mike_Amiga]

Budget wise I was thinking £250-£300 for an A4 laser printer. I have no need for A3 printouts. I could do them on the Epson but I very rarely did. I persuaded myself at the time of purchase that if I ever wanted to do A3 and couldn't I'd be kicking myself. That never rang true in the end though.

That Epson AcuLaser C9100PS  is way to big to stick on the end of my desk as well as being morbidly over my budget. Guess I should just keep looking. I'll probably end up with a crap Samsung or HP in the end. :-(

[hardlink]

Mike_Amiga wrote:
I've had various problems with inkjets though, and it's not that often I print out.

Exactly my feelings too. Really, about the only time I would like to make a print out at home these days is for driving directions. Downloading them to a PDA and trying to mess with it while steering is difficult at best and dangerous at worst; at least reading a sheet of paper with big type is no worse than glancing at a map. So I'm thinking of getting a 24 pin dot matrix printer! The output is not bad, the ribbons can be re-inked for next to zero cost compared to jet/toner carts, and they are still being made for the Point Of Sale market; even the old NEC Pinwriters were built like tanks and probably still work!

[swift240]

@Mike_Amiga

 "I was attempting to research them myself and getting my knickers in a twist"

Hang on a sec, you wear knickers?
 :-?

Mike. :-P  :-P  :-P

[Castellen]

I use a HP Colour Laserjet 2550L here, gives great results.
The Centronics interface works fine with the Amiga.  Not tried it with USB, or the optional ethernet expansion (2550LN).
It's kinda noisey like most lasers, and it doesn't do automatic double sided printing.

I've had it about four years (from new) and it's never given any problems.  You can pick them up 2nd hand for a low price, but I'm not sure if there's an easy way to check drum wear and remaining toner on a used HP 2550L.

Turboprint only offers a mono driver for this printer, which may be limiting, but since I mainly print directly from the postscript outputs of FinalWriter97 and PageStream, Turboprint is not needed anyway.

Another benefit of using Postscript outputs is you can "print preview" using Ghostscript, plus easily convert to PDF, or various image formats.

[hardlink]

swift240 wrote:
@Mike_Amiga

 "I was attempting to research them myself and getting my knickers in a twist"

Hang on a sec, you wear knickers?
 :-?

Mike. :-P  :-P  :-P

On this side of the pond, the term knickers is not heard, knockers is, so it is unclear what you are referring to wearing or twisting  :-o

[swift240]

Wel over hear knickers are something that women wear under there clothes. knickers as in panties.


 :lol:  :lol:

[orange]

I don't know much about colour laser printers, but I'd first look at the type of toner it uses. Thats why HP might be a good idea (even though they are usually overpriced).
I bought HP4L about 13 years ago, but can still easily find new or refilled toner for it.
Of course, price per printed page is very important.