My trusty Samsung ML-1210 is overdue for a new toner cartridge, and the recent arrival of a Dell catalog featuring printers has me thinking of just buying a new printer instead. The Samsung was — and remains — one of the best values in the Budget Laser class, but lately I’ve been wanting a little bit more.
The Dell 1600n, a networked multi-function laser printer, really caught my eye when the discounted price dropped to $339. In one fell swoop I could replace my crappy Brother FAX-560, ancient Canon FB 360U scanner, and ML-1210 with a single device that could be dropped in one of the common areas of the house instead of being tethered to a PC. And with native PCL6 and PostScript Level 3 support this bad boy should work flawlessly with whatever operating system I happen to be printing from, now and in the future.
What a deal, right?
I was ready to give Dell my credit card number yet again when I decided to stop for a bit of Google Research. It’s a good thing that I did. On Dell’s own Community Forums, in the Laser Printers section, I found many owners who were angered to discover that the 1600n only supports networked printing and alerts — no networked scanning or faxing. Dell’s site merely says “Built-in networking”, nowhere does it describe which networked features are offered.
Blah.
Scoping out the competition I’ve learned that networked scanning and faxing is rare on home / small-office MFPs. The Brother MFC8840DN is the cheapest that I’ve found that supports everything over the network, with duplex printing to boot, but with street prices around $550 it’s a bit more than I’m ready to spend.
Guess that my ML-1210 will live on for another couple of years…
PS: Color lasers are becoming affordable too. The Samsung CLP-500N offers color, duplex, and Ethernet for about $450. Unfortunately, that’s also about what a full set of consumables cost.
