Hi, I am going to purchase an entry to mid-level laser printer for a small office setting. I was wondering what I can expect to pay for toner, and which companies are the best in terms of long term ownership costs, i.e. cost per page. Thanks, Ed

You can only find out that information once you have a Printer Model number. Some are better than others, even different models from the same manufacturer. Cost per page is not realy that important these days. They are all cheap. Other things you should be looking at is speed, reliabilty, paper handling and other facilities. Duplex printing, papers sizes and thickness, network capabilty and the cost of a replacement drum unit. Cheap printers tend to have expensive drum units. I have a Panasonic XP-7100 which is very good on toner and is cheap and reliable. No network facilities but automatic duplex printing which saves on paper. Good paper handling. A5, A4 and rear feed for cardboard. Front feed for envelopes. For a bit of extra speed you could look at the Panasonic XP-7110. Stuart

I have had an HP 4050N at work for going on five years. Never had a problem. High-yield cartridges are $89 and last over 10,000 pages.

hi For me best printer laser are HP.They cost more then other brands, but in long run, toner cost less then other.And they run and run forever.They have quality and live longer then other brand sincerely titi

For your smaller needs, look at the low end models and go one step up. Check out a couple makers, find your price/performance bracket, and then shop. This is for a single user (i.e. about 1, maybe 1-3, user print jobs at once). For multiuser (the possibility of over 7 concurrent users) and moderate to heavy load (the duty cycle, basically), specs become a bigger issue. 32MB RAM is minimal for a constant queue of print jobs (by contrast over 100MB is a lot and you are probably paying for it). The processor speed is not incredibly important (watch for it with older models if you need the performance). Remember RAM can be tremendously expensive for printers. Other features might influence your decision, like brand name. HP still has nice models in their Laserjet line (but most of the alternatives ,of which there are about a dozen, are fine). Brother, Dell, and low end Xerox's might not be a good choice (do a little research on them). Look at the printer and price. Especially, look at the price jumps between low to mid-range models. Somewhere in there is probably the best deal. Dots-per-inch isn't a huge deal in b/w text - it is however loosely related to the amount of RAM in the machine. 600DPI is fine, but if you want pictures (especially in color) look at 1200DPI. These numbers are not the only factors in print image (DPI is only one factor in gray shading, LPI is important). Input/output (in pages) shouldn't really be below 100. Don't pay too much for networking (generally). You can buy yourself a cheap print server ($50-$150) from one of the major SOHO networking companies. You can pay about $100 (or more) for an ethernet interface in some printers. Instead, buy a print server with more than one parallel port. Pages-per-minute will be above 15 on all the models you look at (for b/w). But that is usually a lie - take 15 to mean 10 in the low/mid range bracket. 20 ppm and over is fine. When mixing text and graphics, printers can drop in ppm performance (usually they drop to the speed of color images, if applicable). Warranties are standard at one year. Duplex is a nice feature. Toner can change between manufacturers in quality. Generally, all makers of laser printers have a satisfactory quality (compared to inkjets). Companies like Minolta have alternative polymers in their machines which actually lubricate (thus reduce wear) and produce a slight sheen, for example. Toner will run (for lasers, color and b/w) between $60-$100 or more. This can be true up to $2,000 models, but prices can run the gamut. There are some places you can read a little. Always browse your target price/feature bracket at each manfacturer's site. laser-print-reviews.org zdnet Froogle Find reviews of the models you are looking at to get the actual per page price. To maximize on this, you usually need to invest in at least a mid-range model and/or use high density catridges.

Printer manufacturers tend to sell their printers cheap, and then make money on the consumables needed afterwards. Here in the UK, outlets are appearing that refill laser cartidges, which reduces costs considerably. Good luck - Keep us posted.