SillyDog701

[Antony]

Hello all,

Okay, I know I am kind of crazy, I have bought two printers this year. Now, I am looking for another printer.

This time, I need a colour laser printer for my friend and I. Both of us print quite a bit, we do require print on colour (not high quality photos). I think the printer should be a home business model rather than personal one.

The requirments are:
1) colour and laser.
2) must be a Mac compatible printer, (and also works with Windows), preferably a network printer (ethernet)
3) able to obtain a duplex unit.
4) reasonable toner cost (e.g. not tiny toner cartridges that can't print adequate amount of pages)

If possible, the ability to handle thick paper would be good (80lb, 215 gsm).

Price range: cheaper the better, but I will set the budet to up to AU$900 (without duplex unit).

If you have any experience or suggestion, please feel free to add your comment/suggestion. If possible, please list the brand and model number.

Thanks.

Antony.

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[Antony]

No recommendations?

The printer I am currently eyeing is Epson AcuLaser C1100 or perhaps C1100N model with networking printing support.

Any suggestions?

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[Don_HH2K]

Both of those printers you mentioned emulate the printer's processor on the host system. Technically there's nothing wrong with that, but for compatibility reasons you might want to look into a printer that supports something relatively universal like PCL or PostScript natively, so that you're not always dependant on Epson's drivers (Epson pulled drivers for my Stylus C62 awhile ago.)

I've got a LaserJet 1100, which does PCL natively, and I use it with a JetDirect print server. I can print to that thing from MS-DOS all the way up through Vista, as well as out of most Linux distros. Not so when I had the 1020, which used processor emulation: it worked on 98 and 2000/XP. Vista drivers don't exist, nor do 64-bit drivers, and so on.

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[Antony]

Thanks Don_HH2K,

HP Color LaserJet 1600 (CB373A) does not support Mac, and the printer language is Host-based (i.e. uses the processing power and resources of the computer to process the print job.

HP Color LaserJet 2600n (Q6455A) supports Mac, but the printer language is Host-based as well.

To get the PCL or PostScript built-in support, I will have to get HP Color LaserJat 2605 or above (HP PCL 6, HP PCL 5e, HP PostScript Level 3 emulation).

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[Antony]

Thanks for everybody's help. I bought Epson AcuLaser C1100N.

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