Keep those print jobs rolling with these fast, 16- to 32-page-per-minute networked laser printers and stay ahead of the paper flow
Jim Kane
Maybe your 12-page-per-minute networked laser printer just doesn't cut it anymore, with print jobs festering in the print queue because of its too-slow print engine. Perhaps you need some duplexing capabilities, or maybe you just want to be able to know if the printer is off-line, out of paper, or tied up. Your old printer was OK when you just had a handful of employees sending print jobs, but now your company has grown, and you need a faster, networkable, more manageable unit.
We evaluated 12 network laser printers with print speeds ranging from 16 to 32 ppm -- fast enough to satisfy the needs of larg
er workgroups. These faster devices also have built-in Ethernet capabilities, so you don't have to use a PC as a baby-sitter to provide network functionality.
With third-party equipment, any printer can be considered a network printer, so we focused on network integration and tested only those printers with internal network interfaces (either standard or optional). Network management software helps differentiate between dedicated network printers and those with third-party add-ons. Network-printer-management software delivers configuration tools to the workstation and also reports the remote printer's status to your PC, keeping you informed.
To get real-world network performance numbers, we tested only monochrome printers in network configurations. Most of these units -- which range in price from $3549 for the desktop Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 4MV to $29,616 for the copy-machine-size Dataproducts Typhoon 30 -- have at least two paper-input trays that are switchable on demand via the driver or the p
rinter management software.
These 300- to 1200-dot-per-inch-resolution printers allow documents with typical graphics to print relatively fast, along with the normal flow of letters and other text documents. The 1200-dpi devices, however, slow down when you send print jobs that have complex graphics.
We categorized these network printers into two groups: 16- to 20-ppm units and 30- to 32-ppm units. The 16- to 20-ppm printers are more common in smaller offices than their high-speed counterparts and offer higher-quality output. You can buy three or four of the 16- to 20-ppm printers for the cost of the least expensive 30- to 32-ppm printer that we put through the paces. Only two of the devices in the lower-speed group exceed $5000 as configured for testing.
The major differences between desktop lasers (some of which are featured here as printers for smaller networks) and the console-type, high-volume/high-speed lasers is that the high-end units provide larger paper capacities, faster engine sp
eeds, better longevity, and security features.
Of course, there are also price/performance issues to consider when choosing a network printer. Do you really need a 30-ppm printer/fax machine when three smaller, slower, dedicated print servers distributed evenly throughout the building would solve your printer problems? Or do your users queue up 100-page jobs regularly, making it more cost-effective to wait 4 minutes for a print job to get to the front of the line, and 4 minutes more for it to print, instead of fighting through the local queue only to wait 15 minutes for the print to complete?
You must also take into account the normal duty cycles of these printers. The higher-end, faster printers are supposed to last significantly longer between maintenance and consumables replacement. The median duty cycle for the 30- to 32-ppm printers is 200,000 pages, compared to 50,000 pages for the 16- to 20-ppm units.
HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE
We used our suite of PC- and Macintosh-based printer tests to choose the fastest network printers with the best-quality output. We summarize test details about the winners and runners-up in each of the two categories (16- to 20-ppm and 30- to 32-ppm printers) using charts.
Price as Tested:
The price of the as-tested configuration, which may include optional memory (see the Roll Call on page 246--not available online).
PPM:
The vendor's rating for engine or print-head speed, measured in pages per minute; it does not include printer-processing time.
CPU Speed:
The printer's processor speed, measured in MHz.
Scores/Quality:
A composite rating for text- and graphics-output quality; based on a 10-point scale, with higher numbers indicating better print quality.
Built for Speed
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12 Network Printers Set The Pace
