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Thursday, August 18, 2005

What is the best Laser Printer for me?

Choosing the best Printer

Printers are an essential peripheral for many of us. Whether we're using them for printing reports and other documents, publishing newsletters or just printing photos, they've become a standard part of a home computer system. However, not all printers perform equally well with every task. Here, we'll provide you with a few basic tips to help you avoid the hassle and expense of buying a printer or multifunction device that doesn't live up to your expectations.

Printer Resolution and Speed

The first and most critical aspect of printers that you'll need to be familiar with is one of the more obscure; print resolution. Print resolution may sound a little complex with the talk of DPI or "dots per inch". Simply speaking this is a measure of how many pixels or "dots" the printer can place in one square-inch. The higher the DPI, the better the print quality. Generally speaking, you want a DPI of at least 300 for text printing, and 1200 DPI if you plan to print your own photos.

Print Speed

This one's pretty much straightforward, but still important to keep in mind. Print speed is generally given in PPM (pages per minute). For most consumer printers, this one's going to be a trade off with resolution. The faster printers that can give you 25 PPM or higher do so with a decreased resolution. Therefore most color printers available give two numbers for print speed. The first number refers to black & white print speed, while the lower number is the speed for full color prints.

Number of Colors

You probably won't care a whole lot about this one unless you plan on printing your own photos. Most general-use printers only use two cartridges; a black toner cartridge, and a combination cartridge of red, cyan and yellow colors. However, if image quality if critical to you, photo printers are available with up to eight separate color cartridges which will greatly enhance the image contrast and quality.

Extra Features and Options

Make sure you know what features you'd use or would like before you shop. If you'd like a printer that's capable of printing directly from your digital media cards, you're able to confine your search to models offering only that feature. Similarly, if you can live without the additional "extras" such as CD and DVD label printing, knowing what you need in advance can save the extra premium costs that the additional unnecessary features tack on to the price.

Find a cheap compatible Printer Cartridge!

Monday, August 08, 2005

Samsung ML1710 Printer Review


The ML-1710 is one of Samsung's most affordable monochrome laser printers. The better news is that in performance tests, the ML-1710's performance and print quality are comparable to that of Samsung's more expensive, high-end machines. The ML-1710 is also compact enough to fit any small desk, and it boasts a user-friendly, eye-pleasing design. If the printer could only produce better graphics, it would be the best personal laser printer we've ever tested. Still, for those who want a simple, quiet, and fast printer with excellent text capabilities, the ML-1710 is good deal.
Get a remanufactured toner very very low cost at BrotherToners.com!

The Samsung ML-1710 comes with a toner cartridge, a power cord, a setup guide, and a software CD, but unfortunately, there's no USB cable to connect it to your computer. Once you've obtained a USB cable, the setup is easy. The printed setup guide breaks down this process into simple, well-illustrated steps that are easy to understand for even the least tech-savvy user. In case you run into problems or need more help, though, there's an electronic version of the manual on the software CD.
With a milk-white body and a gray face, the ML-1710 boasts a friendly and somewhat stylish design. At only 15 pounds and measuring 13.9 inches by 14.6 inches by 7.7 inches (WDH), it's very compact for a laser printer. The bottom-load intake paper tray is detachable, making it convenient to load paper. Plus, the tray holds as many as 250 sheets at once, compared with only a 150-sheet capacity in the larger-size Dell P1500. On the other hand, the outtake paper tray on the top holds only a limited number of sheets. During tests, printed sheets began to fall out of the tray starting at page 30 or so. The printer also has a rear output tray that works when printing only a single sheet--on stationery, for example.

The ML-1710 driver supports Windows (98 SE and later), Mac OS (8.6 or later) and many Linux titles, including Red Hat, Caldera, Debian, Mandrake, Slackware, TurboLinux, and SuSE. (CNET Labs tested the printer with Windows XP Professional only.)
The ML-1710 contains common features found on most monochrome laser printers. We really like the simplified control panel on top of the ML-1710. It includes two LEDs (Toner Save and Online/Error) and a multipurpose button, which works differently according to the status of the printer. For example, by pressing it once, you will toggle the Toner Save mode on and off. (In Toner Save mode, which is recommended for printing text only, Samsung claims that you can save up to 40 percent of ink consumption.) The button can also be used to manually load a single sheet of paper using the front manual feeder, located above the intake tray.
The printer prints text and graphics up to 600x600dpi and supports paper size A4 and smaller. It can be used with a variety of media, including plain paper, transparencies, labels, postcards, and envelopes. With a 90MHz processor and 8MB of RAM, the Samsung is ideal for personal use, but it is not suitable for a busy office. Unfortunately, you cannot upgrade the amount of RAM on the ML-1710.

The software driver allows for a few special effects, such as watermark, which embeds a dim word (for example, "confidential") on the printouts, or high-altitude correction, which adjusts the toner for use in a high-altitude location, such as Denver, Colorado. You can also choose among four layout options, including "Multiple pages per side" (for printing more than one page per sheet), Reduce/Enlarge, Fit To Page, and Poster.
For its size, the ML-1710 is a fast printer. It excelled in our speed tests, pumping out 12.25 pages of text per minute and 12.36 pages of mixed text and graphics per minute--that score is above average for printers in the ML-1710's price range, and it's a text/graphics score that's among the fastest we've seen.

The ML-1710 turned in only mixed print-quality results, however. The text printouts were clear, sharp, and easy to read overall; if the small fonts weren't just a little light, we would give the ML-1710 an excellent rating. Unfortunately, the printer did a bit worse with graphics printouts. The documents showed some banding and were dark, with somewhat inconsistent gradient, earning the printer only a fair graphics-quality rating.

Thankfully, the printer worked very quietly during our tests. It also responds very quickly, taking only a few seconds to start printing.

Basic specs for Samsung ML-1710

Printer type-- Personal printer
Technology-- Laser
Max resolution (b&w)-- 600 dpi x 600 dpi
Compatibility-- PC, Mac
Max document size-- 8.5 in (Legal) 14 in (Legal)
Media type-- Cards, Labels, Envelopes, Plain paper, Transparencies
Monthly Duty Cycle (Users Qty)-- 10,000 - 19,999 pages
Port(s) / Connector(s) Required-- 1 USB 4 pin USB Type B
OS required-- Linux, Apple MacOS 8.6 or later, Microsoft Windows 2000 / XP, Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition / Windows ME
Software type-- Drivers & Utilities
Sound emission-- 50 dBA

Very low cost toner cartridges for this printer can be found HERE.