2. HP Laserjet 5Si with 3.000 Paper Input and 2.300 Paper Output
capacity, 16 MB, simplex 24 ppm duplex maybe 12 ppm, Parallel port
only for 700$
I'd strongly vote for the 5Si, or its later incarnations, the 5Si
Mopier (Mopier 240) or the 8000. All are based on the Canon WX engine.
They use the same toner cartridge, are the same speed, and most of the
parts are the same. The rated monthly duty cycle is 130,000 copies.
A great advantage of these printers is cost of consumables. I can get
good quality toner carts for $45, including shipping. These carts are
good for 15,000 copies. There is no other laser printer on the market
that can come close to that cost per copy for toner.
Before going further I need to note that you have one fact incorrect.
The rated speed is 24 ppm simplex and 22 ppm duplexed. I use three of
these to print books (one 5Si and two 8000s). I generally get about 21
ppm duplexed. Considering how manufacturers hype the statistics,
that's about par for the course.
You can get a nice 5Si with low page count on eBay for well under
$300. Shipping can be a bear on these, however, as the base machine
weighs about 100 lbs. You really want to find one where you can drive
to pick it up, not just to save the shipping, but to verify condition.
You can get a nice 8000 with a low page count on eBay for under $500.
I just bought an 8000DN (with duplexer and network card) for $400 and
it had a total page count of under 16,000.
Why did I pay more for the 8000 than it would have cost me to get a
5Si, considering that the speed is the same? The answer is involved
because it deals with the design and marketing of the Canon WX engine
printer.
Canon came up with the original model about 1994. But Canon has no
real marketing ability in the big office printer market. So, while
Canon sold this printer themselves as the LBP24, they also sold the
basic engine to HP, IBM, Lexmark, QMS, and a number of others. Each
vendor made their own outer panels with their name and logo on it.
Some manufacturers changed a few features. For example, on the Lexmark
(they called it the Optra N), the control panel is in the middle,
while on other brands it is to the left. Some "manufacturers" changed
the electronics too. For example, HP came up with "Resolution
Enhancement Technology," which tweaks the basic 600 dpi so it gives
closer to the quality of 1200 dpi.
Of all the vendors of the Canon WX engine, HP sold over 95%. In other
words, Canon's major buyer for this printer was HP.
Over the years each "manufacturer" tweaked the WX engine, giving the
new printer a different model number. For HP there are three basic
levels -- the 5Si family, the Mopier 240 family, and the 8000 family.
The original HP model was the 5Si. If you added the PostScript SIMM
(genuine Adobe), it was labeled the 5SiMx. It came standard with a
Jetdirect (network) card. You could add options, such as the duplexer,
the 2000-sheet feeder, and an output mailbox. You could also add more
RAM and a hard disk. However, the hard disk was useless on the 5Si,
Mopier and 8000 lines, as HP never created drivers to utilize it.
After HP had been selling the 5Si for a while it occurred one day to
some of the suits that they were making more money on toner than they
were making on the printer. Therefore, to increase profits, it would
be desirable to increase toner consumption. Someone came up with the
brilliant idea to get office secretaries to print multiple copies
direclty on the 5Si, instead of making one copy and the running over
to the office copy machine, which was probably a Xerox, one of HP's
competitors.
However, there was a problem with this idea. The 5Si can print
multiple copies, but not collated. If you tell it to print 20 copies
of a report it will print 20 copies of pages 1 and 2, then 20 copies
of pages 3 and 4, and so on. This is not good for the office staff. No
secretary wants to walk around a table collating a long report. (Some
applications can print mulitple copies collated to the 5Si, but they
do so by spooling massive files where each copy is concatenated.)
What was needed was to print multiple copies collated. In other words,
the driver would send the print job just once, together with a counter
for how many copies. The printer would hold the imaged print job in
RAM and just keep printing it over and over. (In the trade this is
sometimes referred to as "RIP once, print many.") HP finally
accomplished this with the Mopier 240. Basically the Mopier 240 is the
same as a 5Si, and uses the same options (PostScript SIMM, duplexer,
2000-sheet feeder, mailbox), but has a redesigned formatter board that
adds the "RIP once, print many" capability.
I took the time to explain this to you because you said you were
printing books. I also print books on my printers. Believe me, the
"RIP once, print many" feature is very handy. It also speeds up
printing because the printer has to image the print job only for the
first copy; thereafter it holds the imaged job in RAM.
HP never sold a lot of the Mopiers. Eventually HP came out with the
8000 line. The 8000 line includes the "RIP once, print many"
capability of the Mopier, and also adds additional features. For
example, instead of adding a genuine Adobe PostScript SIMM to get
PostScript capability, HP licensed PostScript emulation from Xionix
and included it with all the 8000s. They also increased the speed of
the processor from 40 MHz on the 5Si and Mopier to 133 MHz. More
importantly for me, they added new optional accessories. While the 5Si
and Mopiers can take an 8-bin mailbox, the 8000s can take a 3000-sheet
stacker (C4779A). Both my 8000s have the 2000-sheet feeder and the
3000-sheet stacker. I can load up the printers with 3,000 sheets of
paper and go to bed. In the morning the stackers are full and the red
light is blinking asking me to refill the paper trays.
Caveat: These printers are pretty reliable, but jams do occur, so the
above scenario doesn't always happen as I described it. In addition,
tray 3 (the lower 500-sheet tray ont the printer itself) was a bad
idea from the day Canon first engineered it. All three of mine jam
constantly if I try to use tray 3. I just ignore it . Essentially I
figure that I have 2,500 sheet input capacity and 3,000 sheet output
capacity.
I should add that the Canon WX engine printers are good for mllions of
copies. I have over 2 million on the first 8000 I bought and it is
showing no signs of slowing down. Replacement parts are cheap and
readily available because HP sold so many of these printers.
I hope that gives you a little more information. Good luck!
