Way back in the day, like 1996, I bought a kick ass laser printer. A networkable (10BaseT), 16ppm, 1200dpi, postscript Lexmark Optra R+. I love the printer. It weighed as much as a VW Bug, and would cause the lights to dim when I turned it on. It printed nice, fast, clean music and text. Over the years, it had developed some issues, which I fixed (the boot that grabs the paper wore away, and I replaced it with some cork. Worked fine). However, the toner for the printer is over $200. I have no clue how many toners I have went through. One or two a year. But, you can get a new printer nowadays for that much, and they do so much more. And the toner cartridges are around $70.
So, with a little sadness, I decided to toss the Optra R+ and get a new, $199 Brother HL-5250DN and a HL-5240 for the studio to replace my previous Brother 1440. Wow. That is all I have to say….
First, they are small. They turn themselves off when not in use. Second, they both have Postscript. Which means nice slurs on music and whatnot. You have to look for it to see it. Both printers look identical. But, the DN version has a built in Ethernet port, and duplex (prints on both sides of the page). On a PC, it’s kind of hidden in the print settings (Advanced, and like 2 tabs in or something). On a mac, you have to make sure you run a Java application to set the duplexing on or off. The print driver totally lacks that feature. Shame on Brother for this!
Not much more to say about these printers. A great value. Print quality is amazing. Flawless, and the consumables (IE: toner) is cheap (around $70). If you are looking for a laser to do 8 1/2×11 sheets for music or whatever, either of these would be excellent!
