Every company is trying to knock Dell off their perch with new printer models and features, but Dell has even pushed themselves to the limit with the release of the 2130cn laser printer. The 2130cn has 256MB of memory that is expandable to 1,280MB. It prints at speeds of up to 20ppm for mono and 16ppm for color, and has an unbelievable monthly duty cycle of over 40,000 pages. The print resolution is beautiful with sharp, crisp text, and photo quality that us unbeatable for such a low price. Dell has only improved their sparkling reputation with this unit.

The Dell 2130cn and 2135cn use four standard toner cartridges of black, cyan, yellow, and magenta. These cartridges are good for over 1,000 pages and are purchasable at incredibly low prices. These large capacity cartridges hold the maximum amount of ink and provide amazing efficiency without sacrificing quality. Changing the cartridge is just as easy, and can be done in seconds since they are neatly set on the side of the printer, behind a panel.

The paper tray of the Samsung ML1710 Laser printer holds up to 250 pages and can be easily used with a variety of different media, such as envelopes. The Toner Save button helps conserve ink when printing drafts or unimportant documents. Not only can this device work with Windows, but it is completely compatible with Mac OSX and Linux as well.

Another inexpensive laser printer that has the speed and efficiency required in every home is the Samsung ML 1210. It is the easiest printer controls and is designed with the intention to satisfy even the most technologically un-friendly people. The low cost of the ML 1210 makes it one of the fastest printers in its class with great cost-per-page and easy to locate toner.

The ML 1210 ink cartridges have a capacity of up to 2500 pages, and the printer itself has an amazing monthly duty cycle of about 40,000 pages. It has energy saving feature for a more “GREEN” and carbon neutral unit, and has simple cleaning prompts to maintain the internal roller drum, and clear any excess ink that has accumulated.

The Okidata C9600 and Ricoh Aficio CL7000 are similar printers and supply features to medium work groups to help in their printing needs. The OKI C9600 comes equipped with a 720 MHz processor which beats the Ricoh’s 500 MHz and delivers quicker rendering of printed documents. This provides the OKI C9600 with faster print speeds of 36 pages per minute color and 40 pages per minute in black and white; the Ricoh comes in slightly lower at 26 pages per minute and 38 pages per minute respectively. Media handling is comparable, but the OKI C9600 can handle large format sizes in addition to the shared legal, letter, envelope, and card stocks on both printers.

The Ricoh CL 7000 serves Windows, Mac, and UNIX systems while the Okidata C9600 falls short only supporting Windows and Mac systems. The main difference is that the Okidata printer is an LED printer which by design delivers faster prints and lower costs. What the Ricoh lacks in speed it makes up for in color production providing quality color prints time after time and monochrome documents are clearly readable down to 6 point fonts. The OKI C9600 delivers great images and color reproduction but is markedly more expensive than the Ricoh CL 7000.

Both printers offer finishing options like staplers, sorters and additional paper trays, but again the OKI C9600 delivers a few more options than the Ricoh. The image enhancements are comparable on both printers and deliver good user interfaces via desktop browsers for simplicity of use. Print job accounting and statistics are handled by their respective software and are typical for this class of printers; the OKI has a more intuitive interface but not by much.

The Ricoh CL 7000 is a lower priced model delivering quality prints in quick speeds while the Okidata C9600 has comparable printing quality it is able to print on large format media and has a few more options such as finishers and a hard drive option.

The Brother excels at line art graphics and grayscale images are good for most office applications. The Xerox also beats the Brother in color printing speed at close to 20 pages per minute while the Brother chugged at around 15 pages per minute. This does solely depend upon the complexity of the document and images. Both fare well in print speeds for black and white documents at 26 pages per minute, and each has duplex printing standard. Memory on the Brother HL-4200 maxes out at 320 MB while the Xerox Phaser 2135 has a maximum of 256 MB but only on the dx model. Lower end models fall slightly.

The display interfaces on each of the printer series are similar, but the Xerox Phaser 2135 seems to be a little easier to use if only by a small margin. The printer monitoring software is more user friendly on the Xerox but comparable to that on the Brother HL-4200. Printer hard drives can be added to each of these series of color laser printers; however, it is less expensive to add the hard drive to the Brother HL-4200 than the Xerox Phaser 2135. Higher end models of both series have the hard drive as standard equipment. Paper capacity on the Brother HL-4200 beats the Xerox Phaser 2135 by 400 sheets making it a better choice for higher volume printing needs.

Both of these printers support the same printer languages, PCL 6, PCL 5E and PostScript 3 but the Lexmark C720 blows the HP 3800 out of the water with supported platforms. The HP only supports Mac and Windows users while the Lexmark is compatible with SuSE Linux, SunSoft Solaris, Novell, and Red Hat Linux to name a few; the list is long and covers almost everything. The HP does handle and carry more media capacity than the Lexmark by about 100 sheets creating higher performance and better work flow. Base memory is a bit higher on the HP 3800 at 96 MB opposed to the Lexmark C720 base memory of 32 MB.

Envelopes are supported well in both printer camps with a few variations; the HP LaserJet 3800 supports US No. 10, while the Lexmark C720 supports both US No. 10 and No. 9 giving it a slight edge over the Hewlett Packard. The HP has a larger monthly duty cycle of 65,000 making it a bit more durable and better suited to higher volume printing needs. Toner cartridges are a bit simpler to change on the Lexmark with all of the consumables in one place under a single access panel versus the HP 3800 toner cartridges. The HP Color LaserJet 3800 is far better suited for fast and higher volume printing but the Lexmark C720 provides slightly better graphics at a slower speed.

The Samsung CLP-300 represents color better at normal or standard settings, but falls short of the impressive high resolution features of the Xerox. Mind you that these are not going to produce graphics department images as they are designed for the home and small office user. The Samsung runs a bit quieter than the Xerox Phaser 6110 and provides a less intrusive printing machine for a small office. Print speeds, although not fast at around 8 or 9 pages per minute, are typically quicker on the Xerox than the Samsung CLP-300. This will depend upon the complexity of the documents and the internal memory and processors.   The output of the Samsung CLP-300 toner cartridge is comparable to the Xerox 6110 toner cartridge.

A 300 MHz processor is used by both of these printers as well as a standard and maximum memory of 32 MB, additional memory is available on higher end models within each of the series. Color is represented almost identically by both printers although much is dependent upon the settings of the printer’s resolution. The Samsung CLP-300 uses SPL-C printer simulation while the Xerox Phaser 6110 uses Windows GDI driver. Both of these support multiple operating systems including Vista; however, they differ on the supported distributions of Linux. Displays are almost non existent, but the Xerox Phaser 6110 has a few more options than the Samsung CLP-300.

The Lexmark C534 toner cartridge and Konica Minolta 2400W toner cartridge are installed and ready to print when you purchase the printers. Simply unpack, plug in and it is ready to print. The differences lie in the cost per page and speed of printing color documents. Lexmark’s C534 has a monochromatic cost per page of around 2 cents while color is closer to 10 cents per page. Output quality for color documents and photos in particular fall a little short on the Lexmark device as it presents them with some dithering and faded colors, but it will work fine for brochures and inter office newsletters. The Konica Minolta magicolor 2400W produces a better quality color print but is still not photographic quality.

The 2400W from Konica Minolta has a slightly lower cost per page for color documents and their monochromatic prints are a bit less defined than the Lexmark C534. It should be noted that the Lexmark uses color and black toner for monochromatic prints and needs to be reset to only use the black toner. Konica Minolta uses only black toner by default. While the Konica Minolta device is a bit slower at producing color documents it is better suited to graphic work than the Lexmark. For text and monochromatic work that requires only color accents the Lexmark C534 is a great choice.

Processing on the Okidata C3200 is performed by a 200 MHz processor, but is once again beaten out by the Dell which possesses a 300 MHz processor. All of this leads to a difference in print quality. OKI delivers nice fine lines and good color definition, although the printed colors don’t always match what is displayed on the screen so an end user needs to get acquainted with the colors in order to print the desired result. The Dell 3100 produces full color documents as displayed on the screen, no need to compensate through adjustments in color.

The Dell has a tricky toner replacement set up; you must advance the color toner cartridge via the display and pop open the panel before the toner loads which can cause spills. The Oki C3200 is straight forward with no fuss. Probably the biggest difference is that the Oki C3200 requires a Mac OS, while the Dell can be used with Windows, Mac and Linux distributions. The printers both come equipped with image enhancements in the form of software and features, and have networking standard. The Oki sets up a little quicker, but that is due to its single operating system compatibility.