10 out of 10 people found this review helpful.
Wonderful, fast and great quality!!
Date of Review: Feb 6, 2006
The Bottom Line: Love it! Best combination of paper handling, consumable design, network connectivity...its a beautiful machine!
I ordered a Dell 3100cn color laser printer based on the other reviews I've seen. After a week of using it fairly steadily, I am very impressed. I am using it as a network printer (ethernet connected) to a small home office work group. I like the other parallel and USB options as well, although I have not used them. So far the printer has performed flawlessly...the setup was easy, well-documented and works great. The only thing I haven't been able to determine is the power draw when in standby...
My only concern with the printer is the cost of consumables...but Dell's indicated life seems pretty reasonable, I'm just concerned about shelling out the cost of the printer for the restocking of all four toner cartridges and the imaging drum at some point in the future! But the fact that each color is a separate cartridge should mitigate that a bit. I did see other printers with a higher resolution, but they didn't have the same combination of paper supply trays, network/printer connections and individual consumable design...but they were a bit cheaper, probably by $75-100.
The print quality is good, but photos tend to be a bit dark. I'm going to follow the other opinion listed here that indicated how to calibrate the printer's color palette.
I paid $325 for the printer direct from Dell, $70 for an additional 256KB of memory and shipping was free...so $415 total including tax, what a deal! This printer is replacing an HP895 CXI inkjet and an Epson L1500 laser printer...
