| Hewlett Packard LaserJet 2550L Printer |
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| Written by John C. | |
| Tuesday, 14 March 2006 | |
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Page 3 of 4 The Printer Cartridge Shell GameThe HP Color LaserJet 2550L was connected to our test computer with a 12 foot long USB cable. Using the long cable allowed us to install the printer inside the closet. While the 2550L is small for a laser printer, it's still a fairly large for a desktop printer and takes up way more space than most color bubble jet printer. The 2550L has no LCD display to let you know the status of the printer so you must depend on indicator lights to tell you what's going on. There is a blue light to tell you that the printer is online and ready to go. There's also 4 indicator lights with a corresponding color code on the printer for each of the four color toners. The toner black cartridge is rated at 5000 pages (based on 5% coverage) and the color cartridges are rated at 2000 pages (again based on 5% coverage). The toner cartridges have a smart chip built into them that allows the printer to track number of pages printed. These cartridges cost up to $80 so you're looking at $320 to change all the toner. The 2550L also verify that you are using genuine HP cartridges so you can't go buy cheaper replacement toner. You can buy HP replacement color toner capable of generating 4000 pages for $100 to reduce the per page cost. A replacement imaging drum cost $175, which HP says will last for 20,000 black pages or 5000 color pages. From a consumables standpoint, the HP Color LaserJet 2550L is an expensive printer to run. This seems to be the way printers are marketed and sold today - sell you the hardware cheap, then screw you on the consumables. At $175 for an imaging drum and $320 to $400 for toner, you might as well buy a brand new LaserJet! Now before you go saying this printer is a complete rip off, you should know that its operating cost on a per print basis is in fact cheaper than many inkjet printers. On a per print basis inkjet toner cost more than laser toner and because inkjet require special paper to get the best result, printing cost can run well over $2 a page. When you compare that to the 25 cents per page it cost to run the LaserJet, it doesn't seem so bad. Where to buy it?  |
