Comments

Coursedesign wrote on 1/13/2005, 4:04 PM
Color lasers will save you time but not money compared to inkjets. The quality also will not be as good (in this price range).

You're looking at 10-12 cents per page minimum, higher if you have high coverage. If you are buying compatible inkjet cartridges for less than $3 each instead of the typical factory $12 each, you can cut the cost substantially.

Go to an office products store like Staples, Office Depot etc. and print some samples for the available color lasers. You will also discover that some of them make the color printed areas semiglossy, even on non-glossy stock. This bugs me, but may not bug you.

Today the standard price is $499 for many of them btw.
wcoxe1 wrote on 1/13/2005, 5:02 PM
The typical HP color lasers I recently looked at on the "low" end cost about
$499, $799, and $999. The information pertains to just about any brand, though.

Each of the HPs use different toner cartridges. The following is for EACH of the 3 COLOR cartridges, not the black one:

The $499 one uses a $99 color cartridge which yields about 2000 "typical" color pages with "typical" 5% color coverage.

The $799 one uses a $99 cartridge which yields about 2000 "typical" color pages with "typical" 5% color coverage OR a $129 cartridge which yields about 4000 pages.

The $999 and above uses a slightly more expensive cartridge that either of the others (don't remember the price), but they yield 6000 pages.

In other words, the low end units are cheap to buy, but will eat you alive on toner if you print a lot. The more you print, the more you need the expensive spread.

This data comes of an HP publication picked up at Office Despot day before yesterday.

Same sort of thing can be said of the black cartridges on ANY laser, color or otherwise. Beware of cheap if you print a lot.

Speed goes up with price, also. Which is also very nice.
DOGoodman wrote on 1/13/2005, 5:12 PM
I use a Minolta 2300 DL for my inserts. Good quality, fair speed. Sam's club has them marked down to about $400.00. Toner is $69.00 ea. for the 3 colors at Office Depot. I use an Epson inkjet to print the DVDs. The Minolta is less of a hassle.

Dave
riredale wrote on 1/13/2005, 7:49 PM
You might want to try a little test. I notice that if I put a laser copy under a plastic cover and then under slight pressure, the toner will begin to stick to the underside of the clear plastic cover in time. I've never tried this with color toner, and never with a DVD jacket, but I suspect you'll have the same effect. It may take months for the sticking to happen, though, and I don't know whether it would hurt the looks of the final product, though I think it probably would.

One option that might work better is the special "crayon" color printer line from Xerox (formerly Tektronix). These printers don't use toners and electrostatic charges to build the image; rather, they literally spray, inkjet-style, a crayon-like liquid onto the paper. The resulting image has a waxy feel, but it might not stick to the clear plastic cover. A phone call or two might answer some questions.