By Ben Pate

You'll find yourself pleasantly surprised when it comes to putting the Dell3010cn color laser printer to work. Starting with its fairly good color printing capabilities, it can be quickly integrated into small networks or joined to a solo PC with little or no muss or fuss. Plus, it's comparable in price to some black and white printers of like performance. And Dell 3010cn toner cartridges are just as easy to find and use as the printer itself. In fact, the 3010cn may be ideal for the small office printer segment.

Vital Statistics. Though it weighs about fifty-five pounds, the 3010cn is still within recognized standards for printers in this market segment. Plus it offers color print features normally found in printers costing a bit more than this particular device. Its size (somewhat larger than a square foot), is also the proper for many a small office or home business.

Printing Capabilities. The Dell prints black-and-white pages at about 25 per minute. If you choose to print in color, you can expect about 5 pages per minute of speed. Clarity is fine, at about 600x600dpi. What's outstanding is the amount of pages it can put out before needing maintenance (over 45,000 per month). It can also hold 250 sheets of paper, and that can be expanded to 900 sheets with the addition of a couple of other paper trays.

Compatibility. The Dell printer works well with MS Vista, XP, 2000 and also in a network with NT 4.0 or MS Server 2003. It also comes with Ethernet 10/100 or USB 2.0 ports, which are the standards for today's computer data interface ports.

Memory: Dell equips the 3010cn with a standard 64 megabytes of memory which is expandable all the way up to 576 megs. For most home-based purposes, the standard memory allotment will be more than sufficient.

On-Site Service. Dell's normal 24/7 year-long service warranty applies. This is upgradeable to 5 years, for a small price. The plan also has a home-user version, which is essentially the same in all aspects.

Toner Cartridges. The printer takes the standard Dell 3010cn toner cartridge. The ones that come with the printer are rated at about 2,000 pages, but that's because these are so-called starter cartridges. Replacement ones will print out somewhat more. In fact, some owners have reported going more than a couple years without having to replace their toner. This can make the costs of owning a color laser printer like the Dell 3010cn well within the reach of most budgets.

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