HP Color LaserJet CP1518ni

Pros: Small form factor, good for tight spaces such as a college dorm or efficiency apartment. 96mb memory included. Color reproduction is good.

Cons: Slow in color mode, noisy printing. Smart card interface on front is tricky to set up where it can be recognized on a network. Memory release issues when printing with the windows OS spooler turned off.

Summary: Good for seldom printing, but I would not recommend as a workhorse business printer as advertised. I bought this one with a $100 off on a sales tax holiday, so I got it for a decent price. First off, when installing the supplied printer drivers, Windows XP pro on several of my machines would not finish the installation due to errors, so I downloaded the driver from HP which worked. Secondly after installing the memory card interfaces on the front of the unit appeared on my network, but would not allow access. Thirdly, the print speed is laboriously slow and the unit itself is rather noisy compared with other laserjets, something I was rather dissapointed by since it has built in networking. (I have an inexpensive black laserjet 1012 when coupled with a HP laserjet network box beats this on hands down on speed) Occassionally it will cycle for no apparent reason. Thinking 96mb would be sufficient for printing needs, I thought I could speed up printing by disabling the spooling feature of windows. This did improve speed but I found after several print jobs that the memory was not being released by the printer.

Overall, Its a good step up from the inkjet models for the occassional use, but for a business workhorse I would pay more for a more reliable model. I have heard the supplied cartridges allow for approximately 750 copies, as compared to the 2500 to 4000 supplied with typical laserjets, so the replacement cartridges are a consideration here.