The hot printers these days are Ink Jet -- awesome photorealistic images, the inks are now very long-life -- but -- they are very slow and expensive to run (cost per page for ink). Much office and basic print work is just black text and line graphics. For this, a laser printer works just fine.
The downside for the laser printer is the initial buy-in cost. I had a business ten years ago and a decent mid-range black and white laser printer was about $1,200. This was an HP LaserJet 4+ -- a real workhorse. If you optimized your print files it would do 20-30 pages/minute and the resolution (with the extra memory I added) was 1,200 by 1,200 so black and white graphics were somewhat possible. Cost per page was about two to three cents. I had quite a nice side-business printing peoples papers and theses (my store was near the University of Washington).
Today, the 'classic' laser printer broke the $100 price point with Dell's announcement.
Ars Technica has the news:
Dell pimps $99 laser printer, throws up gang signsThe downside? It is not natively Postscript Compatible which makes true page layout difficult, its largest sheet size is legal (8.5*14), it only has 2MB of RAM on board with no option for expansion (for dense pages, this can cause a slowdown in printing) and the Windows only makes it sound like the drivers are very specific so when Windows Longhorn is (finally) released, Dell will need to provide new drivers for it or the machine is toast (think Win-MODEMS). Still, it is a wonderful opening shot to a new printer war. It will be fun to see how this industry shakes out. I still have my LJ4+, parts are still available from HP, toner is cheap thanks to a large second-source toner market. Fun times to be alive! BTW -- if you are looking for a higher-end laser printer, Dell's 1700n is not bad at all. Level 3 Postscript, 25 prints/minute, user expandable memory, 1,200 DPI -- basically the same as my HP LaserJet (Except it has CAT-5 interface) and the price starts at $249 -- fully tricked out (all the RAM, large paper drawer) it's $409.
Laser printers... not exactly the hottest in tech, if they're even really gadgets at all, but I couldn't let this one sneak by. Meet the Dell Laser Printer 1100, which sports 15 pages per minute print speed and a 600dpi resolution. Best spec of all? It's US$99.There are a few tricks up Dell's sleeve to help lower the price, but it's really nothing new. The toner cartridge that ships with the unit is half-capacity, printing only 1,000 pages. Dell will be selling 2,000-page toner cartridges for $65. Even at that, it's a far cry from the direct-from-manufacturer (i.e., not aftermarket) price that hovers around $80-100, for printers with a heftier price tag.
At that price, the 1100 is almost half the price of low-end laser printers from the likes of HP and Lexmark, and is competitive in terms of toner cost. Is it time for a price war? I can only say that I hope so. It pains me to see so many people choosing ink-jet printers based on price, when the ink is a complete rip-off, and not always suited for the casual user who only prints something once every 3 months. I mean, c'mon folks, is ink jet printer ink really worth $8,000 a gallon? Let's stop this rip-off train! Also, while the printer is officially Windows-only, keep an eye out for OS X and Linux availability through CUPS.
