If you’re looking to outfit your business with a new printer, now is a great time to buy a color laser. Whether you’re a single user who prints newsletters at home or you’re buying for a corporate marketing department that designs collateral materials, you’re in a buyer’s market. Color laser printers are becoming progressively faster, smaller, and cheaper to operate than ever before, and with prices starting at $300, they’re affordable for all budgets.

The lowest-end (sub-$500) color laser printers, while incredibly affordable, are typically slow and have limited paper capacity–and they aren’t cheap to operate, due to the relatively high cost of consumables. Printers in the $500-to-$1000 range are faster, handle more paper and different paper sizes, and cost less to maintain than inexpensive models. If you’re prepared to pay over $1000, the sky’s the limit: You’ll find printers with workhorse print speeds, large-capacity paper trays, lower costs per page, and sophisticated paper options. Here are a few key features to consider when looking for a color laser that will work best for your business.
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Xerox has demonstrated to their visitors at GITEX Technology Week 2008 how they can recreate an effective ‘green’ experience in the workplace with the latest in environmentally friendly product innovations including their exclusive cartridge free solid ink technology. All printed material at the show including all media press packs & other marketing collateral was printed on recycled paper to reiterate that Xerox is serious about going green.

Green printing is one of the six dynamics of ‘Your New Workplace’, Xerox total solution (integrated hardware & software) that is customized for customers to help them in meeting their unique business challenges of our modern world. Xerox wide portfolio of product innovations includes various solutions designed to address such challenges and also help the customer to do great work without sacrificing quality.

At the show, Xerox showcased the Xerox Phaser 8560 color printer which is latest environment friendly printer to feature Xerox next-generation solid-ink technology (solid ink produces brilliant, vibrant prints on a wide range of media, is the easiest technology on the market to use, and produces 90 percent less waste than a typical color laser printer). After nearly five years in development, the new crayon-like ink sticks have been developed to last longer than ever before.

By increasing the total number of color pages the ink sticks produce, Xerox has drastically reduced the price of color printing. When comparing the cost of the device and the ink, printing on the Phaser 8560 is two times less expensive than using equivalent laser printers from other competitive manufacturers.

In addition to the solid-ink printers, Xerox demonstrated on their stand a variety of digital multifunction devices (MFDs) which by replacing single-function devices like printers, copiers and faxes with, customers can reduce energy use from their document technology by up to 50 percent.

Xerox solutions offer customers ways to become more productive without harming the environment through comprehensive document management and production printing solutions. Print-on-demand applications and digital workflows such as DocuShare and SMARTsend digital workflow help to reduce paper consumption by facilitating electronic data management, scan to email, print-on-demand and distribute-then-print workflows.

Another example is the GreenPrint’s software which comes bundled with Xerox solid ink printers to ensure pages printed and waste are reduced. GreenPrint’s software automatically highlights and removes unwanted pages prior to printing by analyzing each page sent to the printer and looking for typical waste characteristics (like that last page with just a URL, banner ad, logo, or legal jargon). It also incorporates an easy to use PDF writer (to provide an alternative to printing) and a reporting feature which keeps track of all the paper, money, trees, and CO2 that have been saved.

Anybody who has ever used a Polaroid Instant camera will know how convenient it was to have a picture immediately after taking it to show to your friends or as a record of an event. While it’s still very easy to take instant photos in a social setting, typically with a camera phone, a paper copy is harder, ironically, since the demise of Polaroid’s instant film cameras.

As some recompense, Polaroid is the first company to introduce a printer based on ZINK Imaging’s new technology. ZINK, which stands for Zero INK, uses no inks, ribbons or coated films. Instead, all the technology needed to produce a full-colour print is held in three layers of transparent crystals, coated on the ZINK paper. A thermal print head sends pulses through the layers to heat the appropriate set of crystals and produce a colour image.

The small, black and silver printer is easily pocketable and comes in slightly smaller in volume than the power supply used to recharge its Li-ion battery. It has a type one USB socket on the side to take a PictBridge cable from a camera and the only control is a power button. A pair of three-colour LEDs show charge and power status, and prints feed out from a narrow slot in one end of the printer

Installation and set up could hardly be easier. A catch on the end of the PoGo releases a spring-loaded lid and 10 sheets of ZINK paper fit into a recess in its body. Clip the lid shut again, and it’s ready to print. There’s no software, as this printer doesn’t work with PCs; only with cameras and mobile phones. The phone connection is via Bluetooth, and all you need to set that up is the printer’s pin, which the phone requests before completing the link.

While there’s no doubt that the PoGo printer is extremely convenient and easy-to-use, the ZINK technology is not at a stage where you’re going to see good images. Give it some more development and another couple of generations and it might get somewhere near the standard of the old Polaroid instant photos.

ZINK licenses its technology to Polaroid, but this isn’t an exclusive licence and other manufacturers are known to be working on cameras and laptops with built-in ZINK-based printers. We’d like to see larger prints, at least up to the size of old Polaroid instant prints, and fervently hope the next generation of the print technology will offer greater detail in the images it produced.

However, if you want a printer that’s immediately fun as a talking point, and one that produces expensive, business card-sized prints you can stick on your friends, the PoGo is ideal.

CLX-3175FW is another Samsung’s printer that sets record, this time as the world’s smallest WIRELESS laser printer. If you are a fan of quality printing yet don’t really like massive bulky laser printers on your desktop then Samsung’s boast that its new laser printer is the smallest in the whole wide world will no doubt impress you deeply.

This “multi-talented, four-in-one, wireless color laser printer” is memorably named the ‘CLX-3175FW’ and “guarantees an ultra high-resolution output in copy, print, scan and fax, along with a small, compact footprint, giving you maximum space saving and value for money.”

It looks quite cool as well, if you need something to accompany your shiny new MacBook Air in your flashly minimalist home work space to impress work colleagues and friends with.

The printer features Samsung’s revolutionary No Nois™ (right, no e after s) Technology engine design.

According to Samsung’s release “the CLX-3175FW’s 2400 x 600 dpi fine print resolution ensures all documents are produced with clarity and detail. A 20,000 page per month duty cycle means it is built to withstand the heaviest workloads, and its fast color and mono print and copy speeds allow you to add color with definition to all business documents.”

It seems like a nice model, ready to fit into the smallest of places, yet with the features of a robust machine.

Also check up on toner level, maybe you need to replace the Samsung toner cartridge?