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Printers
Lexmark C510 Color Laser Printer
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By Joel Shore
March 15,
2004
Take the old monochrome laser printer and find another use for it,
say, as a boat mooring. That's how you'll feel after knowing that you
can get high-resolution color laser output for $699. That's certainly
less than you spent for that clunker big, noisy, dirty monochrome
printer you'll want to take to the nearest lake. (Well, not really; be
sure to recycle or donate your old printer.)
Simply put, the Lexmark C510 delivers brilliant color that any
business can afford. If you are a corporate department, an independent
small business, or even a home-based business, color is critical. The C510 gives it to you painlessly and inexpensively.
The C510 is available in three different flavors. I recommend
shelling out the extra bucks for the duplexer option. Once you use it to
start printing on both sides of the paper, you'll love the savings.
And two-sided output just looks a whole lot more professional than
one-sided output, especially if you put a binding on your reports.
- $699 C510 base model
- $999 C510n network model
- $1,999 C510dtn network model with duplex accessory and an extra
530-sheet paper tray
Why Buy Monochrome?
Think about this: You've got $700 burning a hole in your pocket, or
maybe even your little company's equipment budget. What printer are
you going to buy? You could drop $649 for the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet
2300. It's a monochrome only laser printer that churns out 25 pages
per minute. Do the math; that's $25.96 for the price to
page-per-minute ratio. And you don't get color.
Now, shell out $50 more for the Lexmark C510. First you get color.
And when you print monochrome only, it's faster than the HP at 30
pages per minutes. Do the math one more time and you'll see that the
price to ppm ratio for the Lexmark is $23.30, lower than the HP. And
you still get brilliant color!
So, you've got to ask yourself, "Why by monochrome?"
Ok, so you're convinced. Color is the way to go. But which color
product? Instead of shelling out $699 for the C510, let's toss in
another $100. For $799, you can buy a Hewlett-Packard Color LaserJet
2500. What do you get for the extra hundred bucks? Well, not much. You
get only four ppm in color, half of the Lexmark's 8 ppm. And there's
no duplexer option. And it's monochrome speed is a paltry 16 ppm, just
over half of the C510's 30 ppm. And the HP gobbles up 344 square
inches of countertop space, more than the C510's 322 square inches. I
didn't major in math, but I know which of these gives me more for the
money.
On-Site Sign Printing
One thing many retail stores do is print price signs. Most store
chains print signs at a central location and ship them out. Why
bother? Print signs at the store and there's no delay, no freight
costs, and you can change a price immediately when competition
requires it.
Color Coverage Estimator
When the boss asks you how much money you're spending to
print in color, you can respond with an exact figure.
With the Coverage Estimator feature, the C510 prints how much of each
color toner (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) is being used on a
page.
Doing some quick calculations based on the price of each toner
cartridge, it's not hard to calculate that the page shown here would
cost a meager 14 cents. That's pretty darn affordable! It's another
way to prove that color printing is very affordable. And just look at
this page. Would it have nearly the same impact in different shades of
gray? No way!
Where, Oh Where Is The Manual?
The manual is going to get lost, right? No problem. First, Lexmark
keeps all manuals available on its Web site for quick downloading. And
the manuals are also on the software CD that comes with the printer.
But you've probably lost that, too. Well, Lexmark has got you covered.
Ten different quick user guides are built right into the printer and
you can print them anytime just by pressing a couple of buttons.
Whether its help about color printing, ordering supplies, connecting
to a network, fixing a paper jam, or six other areas, the guides are
always at hand.
Bottom Line
Face it, color is a fact of life. Color TV was once too expensive
for everyday use, and so was color laser printing. But no more. With
the Lexmark C510, you'll be printing color all day long every day.
You'll wonder why you waited so long to do so.
Lexmarks C510
brings color laser printing to a whole new audience. Delivering 30
monochrome pages per minute, the $699 Lexmark C510 is faster than many
monochrome-only laser printers costing considerably more. And with its
ability to print up to eight brilliant 2400 Image Quality color pages
per minute, the Lexmark C510 is perfect for the smallest of up to the
largest of corporations. Models offering automatic two-sided duplex
printing and networking capability round out the Lexmark C510 product
line.
The economics of the
Lexmark C510 makes a very compelling argument for all color all the
time. Why buy monochrome any more?< |
