FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Best printer for maybe 4 times a year use?
Old Mar 4, 2012 | 10:11 pm
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nkedel
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Originally Posted by BigLar
The results, especially when printing photos, is pretty stunning, at least to me. I would be a little leery of using this technology if I was concerned with archival storage, but for ordinary use, printing up some pix, etc. -- you know, stuff with a half-life or maybe a few years at most, I would have no problem.
There was an older Phaser (I don't remember if it was even new enough to be Xerox vs. Tektronix branded) where my wife worked, and we've got some 7-10 year old prints. They've held up at least as well to age as the oldest color laser prints I've got (10-11 years old); they definitely don't fade as fast as (consumer) inkjet prints, and it produced output MUCH nicer than the color lasers of the era.

The only big down side I've seen to the old prints is that on areas of heavy print, the solid ink can flake off if the paper sees too much mechanical stress with folding or crumpling, while color laser print seems to adhere better.

The more recent generation of mid-range color lasers seem to have caught up with that one in quality, but that was an OLD Phaser... I'd imagine a newer one (googling shows the 8560 as 2008 vintage) might be enough nicer still.

On color lasers, the drivers can matter a lot; the Dell I've got now (a refurb Dell 3130cn; something like $180 shipped on an after-Christmas sale last year) came with a recommendation to use their "Unified Printer Driver" and the results for photos were horrible; rolling back to the 3130-specific drivers produced results which are as good as any other 600-dpi color laser I've seen.
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