Does anyone have experience with these? Does Dell actually manufacture them, or am I better off buying from the true manufacturer?

The specific model I've been looking at is the 3130cn. I have seen some cheaper options when you consider the 500-sheet tray and duplexer are options on the Dell, but the Dell consumables appear to be the most reasonably priced.

We plan to run 10,000-15,00 pages through it a month. The color coverage is very minimal, so we anticipate the toner outlasting the 9,000 sheet estimate on the high-yield toner cartridges. Of course, per-sheet count is difficult to calculate but I think we will come under the $0.046 per sheet that we're paying a professional printer now that our HP 4250dtn bit the dust for the last time. Plus, we will be printing in color (an added bonus).

I'm open to suggestions if anyone has a better printer in mind. Please understand that we need something to take a fair amount of abuse from dummys loading paper and clearing paper jams in a non-gentle fashion. I don't think the $100 Brother and Sumsung printers are up to the task.

Sorry, I can't speak to that exact printer, but I recently set up a B&W Dell laser and was impressed with the build quality. Not as solid as the old HP IIP's, but what is these days?

I've had plenty of experience with the HP4250 models, and was not thrilled with them, but mostly on the software side. I also probably have memories associated with them: I once had to support a user trying to print about 20K pages to one of those in a couple days. That was NOT fun.

Knowing the way Dell does things (Rio Receiver, anyone? Avocent KVM switches? Etc...) I'd lay odds that they are NOT the manufacturer of the laser printer, and that you're actually getting something by Brother, HP, Lexmark, or some such.




The only drawback I could see is: If you somehow can't find out what the "compatible cartridge" is for that printer, you might have a tough time sourcing the consumables from anyone other than Dell. Or to put it more clearly: Every time you need new toner, it's a mail-order call to Dell and a couple days' wait, rather than a 10-minute trip to Office Depot.

If, however, you can find out ahead of time what type of toner cartridge the thing uses, then you've (a) found out the real manufacturer of the printer, and (b) can source the toner from anywhere.

Not sure about the 3130cn, but most Dell printers have been rebranded Samsung or Lexmark units. It's probably similar to the Dell monitors, where Dell buys the panels and controllers from someone, adds in some Dell firmware and logos/cases, then sells them.

My only experience with a Dell laser printer is the MFP 1815 outside my office that can't scan multiple pieces of paper without jamming, and regularly also jams the paper when printing. At least 2-3 times a week, someone is having to unjam it.

I have a HP 2600n at home for color laser printing, and it's been decent. Though it's never had any heavy use so I can't say how well it would hold up in an office environment.

Hm, looking at the Toner selector at Office Depot, they have cartridges for the Dell 3100cn, which, if similarity in model numbers means anything, would probably work on the 3130cn. So maybe sourcing the cartridges would be easier than I thought.

And the compatibility notes for the cartridges list only Dell printers period, not any other brand.

So maybe Dell really is making color laser printers these days. That would surprise me, but it's not outside the realm of possibility.

I'd ask someone who works at Dell, but sadly everyone I knew who worked there has been laid off by now.

Or works in a different division...and therefore has no idea.

I would look at some kind of MFP in the 35 copy per minute range. I would recommend a MFP from someone like Ikon, xerox, canon, ricoh or someone else because you can get a fixed price per page which would include supplies and service so when users do stupid stuff it's covered. Also you don't have to worry about supplies not lasting as long as they are rated because everything is included in the cost per page.

I would not expect to get more than the toner and other supplies are rated for the ratings are for a very low coverage (5%) I never see people the number of pages toners are rated for.

Generally not consumables other than paper and toner, though. Most leasing companies require that you purchase things like fusers, waste toner receptacles, etc.

Not in my experience. What I see is you pay the leasing company for the cost of the machine the per page cost is paid to the service company and would include all of the supplies. I am talking about an actual business MFP like this not something from dell or office max or a desktop printer.

My last work place leased a couple big MFD printers and its not a good deal. Even the leasing company thought it was weird that we were leasing them but the financial director who headed this particular project liked the smaller initial outlay so went with this...

For the volume of printing we do and the amount of time we've had the printers, it would have been cheaper to just buy them outright and pay for the consumables ourselves.

In local government, at least ours, some of these decisions are made because the mayor has complete authority to enter into service contracts. To buy equipment, we have to take it to a vote in the council. So if we just rent copiers the mayor can just do it. If we buy them outright, we have to convince 7 people we need them and spend 1.5 months getting the legislation through. It grates against me when we rent things we should buy, but it's a system I can't fight.

Yeah, I'm talking about a business copier/print/fax. My office rents/leases a Xerox WorkCentre Pro C2636 and we don't pay for toner, but I'm pretty sure we pay for all the consumables except toner. (Don't know why I included paper before; we definitely pay for that.)

Well if you are paying for drums and other things I hope the per page charge is pretty low. Everything I fix has all the supplies included and maintenance included. The only thing user replaceable in the toner and paper. Yeah I have not seen paper included I guess.

Hope this isn't too late for any usefulness.
I managed a couple of Dell 3100cn printers for a year or two. My Dell rep gave them to us for free; I wouldn't have bought them otherwise.
They had a problem with reporting a paper jam whenever the main paper tray was filled properly. To get them to work, you had to make sure the paper tray wasn't filled more than halfway. I never shopped around for another supplier for toner and fusers. But that was the whole point, right? They made their money on the consumables.
Bottom line, I would advise no. There are better machines to choose from.

Edit: Oh, yeah... they had a nasty jam condition where the transport mechanism would get out of sync and I had to very physically hold the rear door closed while the machine restarted to fix it. Save yourself a lot of trouble and pass.

Activity on this thread has spurred me into action to replace my ageing mono HP laser with a new colour one. A quick trawl round my local computer shops hasn't really yielded anything I fancy so I've had a look at the Dell UK site.

Amongst the selection on the site I came across the 2130cn which looks pretty nice. In fact, I'm not ashamed to admit, it's the sexiest printer I've seen in a long time. Maybe it's the fact it reminds me of a NeXTcube. God I need to get out more.....

There's a bloke on ebay with a dozen of them brand new, selling for £150 each. I'm waiting for him to confirm the warranty is still intact and what 'ships with new toners' means. But at £150, it's sorely tempting.

If he is willing to provide you with the Service Tag number you can go to the Dell site and verify the warranty status.

They are selling that same printer on their website for £125 excl VAT (link) with a 30-day warranty.

I would bet it's a retail return/excess stock/reboxed/refurbished product, call it what you will.

Edit: The site's banner says "All Stock Is Refurbished Unless Stated" but that particular product is flagged as "unused".

It wasn't too late and I based my decision to keep looking on this. Thanks.

I ended up selecting the Xerox Phaser 8560/DN due to very positive reviews and $250 rebate being offered right now.

The solid ink leaves a nice sheen on the paper and even photos printed on 20 lb copy paper look fantastic. Another plus was the generic Media Sciences ink that comes recommended and is much cheaper than the Xerox stuff.

We've only had the printer a week, but I'm very pleased overall. Although plasticy, it's a bit more rugged feeling than the HP 4250 being replaced. It's also just a tad quieter. The solid ink level doesn't seem to have gone down much at all even after printing lots of full-page photos to ogle over.

Another pleasant surprise was that the printed pages don't come out of the printer hot like they would on a laser. They come out just barely above room temperature. With the old lasers, we would have to print on 80 lb paper to keep the duplexer from jamming constantly, especially in the more humid months. I think we can scale down our paper cost quite a bit with this Xerox.