Introduction

Some of you may know this already but I’m about to get married in a few months. In an effort to cut down some of the costs, we’ve decided to design and create our own invitations (since having them created for you is VERY expensive). Initially we thought about using our color ink jet printer but the quality of the color text wasn’t good enough. There was light blurring of the edges – especially at smaller font sizes and the color output wasn’t always consistent. With color laser printers prices dropping rapidly we thought this would be a good time to try one out for size. My initial search on the net brought me to Dell.com where I ordered the Dell Color Laser Printer 3000cn for a price of $284.00 (it’s normally at $399). So was the Dell 3000cn worth it? Let’s find out!

Specs

The 3000cn is a color laser printer with the following features:

• Cable(s) included:  No
• Max Resolution:  600 x 600 dpi, 2400 image quality
• Maximum Print Speed: Black and White: 25 ppm, Color: 5ppm Actual print speed will vary with use
• Memory/RAM (installed): 64 MB Standard, 576MB Max
• Processor: 300MHz
• Media Input Capacity (Standard/Max): 150 sheet/900 sheet
• Media Output Capacity (Standard/Max): 250 sheet / 250 sheet
• Max Media Size (Standard): 8.5” x 14”
• Included: Cartridges: 2K Black, 1K Yellow, 1K Magenta, 1K Cyan, 150 sheet standard drawer (Multipurpose Tray), Cable not included
• Monthly Duty Cycle: up to 45K pages
• Auto-duplex: Optional
• Media Sizes: Letter, Legal, Executive, Folio, JIS-B5, A4, A5, Statement, Universal
• Media Type: Plain Paper, Envelopes, Card stock, Transparencies
• Networking: Ethernet 10/100 BaseT Standard
• Ports/Connectors: USB 2.0, 1284 Parallel, 10/100 BaseT Ethernet
• Envelop Sizes: Standard
• Expansion Slots: 1 (Memory Expansion)
• Enclosure Color: Midnight Gray, Ion Silver
• Cartridge Yield: Ships with 2K Black, 1K Yellow, 1K Magenta, 1K Cyan
• Available: 4K Black, 2K Yellow, 2K Magenta, 2K Cyan
• Paper Weight: Standard & Optional mpt : 60-90 gsm
• Manual Feed mpt : 60-216 gsm
• Postscript Support: PCL 6, PCL 5e
• Printer Management: Dell Printer Web ToolTM , a web-based tool for quick setup, installation and configuration of a single printer. Tested with leading printer management software such as HP Webjetadmin and Markvision
• Dell Toner Management SystemTM , intelligent toner and consumables monitoring which works with Dell Printer Web Tool to proactively email alerts on toner and consumables replenishment (and provides easy on-line ordering), including low toner, paper out, paper jam and fuser maintenance
• Dell Color TrackTM , driver that can lower your total cost of printing by offering a separate mono print driver that allows you to designate color and/or black and white printing on an individual or workgroup basis
• Fonts included: 81 fonts and Symbol Sets, 35 fonts for PCL and 136 fonts for PS3
• Dimensions: 16.5″ x 17″ x 16.7″
• Weight: 53 lbs (without consumables)
• Min Operating Systems: Microsoft® Windows®  (XP, 2000, NT 4.0, 98, Me, Server 2003)

Setting Up

This was the first time I’ve ever set up a color laser printer so the setup time took me a bit longer than normal – heck I actually read the directions. The only complexity was the installation of the four separate toner cartridges.

Here’s the shipping box that the Dell 3000cn came in. 

If you think the box looks big, well guess what? It is! The UPS delivery man thought I had purchased a new computer when the printer arrived. Oh yeah – the box weighed 73 lbs.

 

Out of the box, the Dell 3000cn looks as follows:

 

 

This is not a small printer by any means. When compared against ink jet printers and personal laser prints, the 3000cn is definitely a larger form factor. However, when you compare the printer against other color laser printers, the 3000cn doesn’t look too bad. If you plan on using this printer at home, make sure you allocate enough room for it (and have a sturdy table also!)

Dell packages a large poster inside the box describing how to setup the printer. The setup boils down to the following steps.

Remove the tape and safety clips
Power up the printer
Install the toner cartridges
Install the drum
Connect the printer
Install the software
 

It took me about 20 minutes to install the printer. If you’re familiar with color laser printer installations, then it should take you much less time. One of the more annoying aspects about setting up the printer is the toner cartridges. You can only install one cartridge at a time and you need to close the front compartment every time you do so in order for the printer to rotate to the next available toner slot. It’s also important to note that the 3000cn ships with 1K color toner cartridges and a single 2K black toner cartridge. That means you’ll probably need to purchase additional toner cartridges after a short amount of time.

The 3000cn comes with three different methods of connecting to your computer systems. You can directly connect the printer to your PC via a USB or Parallel port. You can also share the printer on the network by connecting an Ethernet cable to the printer and assigning an IP address to the printer.

For my home testing, I used a USB connection since that was the easiest way to get things up and running. Dell provides a CD with all the software you’ll need to get your printer set up right way. The 3000cn installed effortlessly on my Windows XP box and I was up and running in no time. Let’s see how the 3000cn performed.

 

Usage:

Here’s the 3000cn’s exterior. The body comes in what Dell calls a Midnight Gray/Ion Silver color and honestly it’s not too bad at all. Here are additional pictures of the printer.

The front panel has a simple monochrome LCD display and four navigational controls with an action button in the middle. To the right of the navigational controls is the menu button and to the left is the Cancel button.

Pressing the menu button cycles you through several features that you can set. Here’s one of the more interesting (if not annoying) things with the 3000cn. If you plan on printing a specific paper size – you need to make sure the settings on the printer are set to the same size. Thus if you are printing an A5 document, you need to make sure the printer is set to A5 also. If you’re doing custom sized prints, the tray paper size needs to be set to freeform. This doesn’t pose much of a problem if you plan on using the printer in a personal environment. However in a small office setting, this becomes rather annoying because every user needs to go to the printer and change the settings should the paper size change.

 

The good

The 3000cn is rated at 25 ppm for black colored printing and 5 ppm for colored prints. In my own unofficial tests, I was able to get roughly 23 ppm for black colored documents and around 4.5 ppm for color documents. Remember that your results will vary depending on the type of documents you decide to print.

 

The 3000cn excelled in text printing – both black and colored text. I was able to print out text as small as four point sizes and had little trouble making out the letters. The text was sharp and crisp and we think you’ll be pleased with the output also – perfect for wedding invites!

 

The 3000cn performed adequately when it came to printing graphics. If you’re looking to publish colored brochures or pamphlets that contain simple illustrations then the 3000cn will perform fairly well. Solid colors come out very well with little or no banding at all.

 

When it comes to printing digital photographs, don’t expect the 3000cn to replace a high end ink jet printer. If you’re looking to print digital images for newsletters or reports, the 3000cn is good enough for those tasks.  Also – remember that the 3000cn doesn’t support photo paper so you’ll need to do prints on card stock, plain paper or transparencies.

 

Finally, it’s hard to argue against the price of the 3000cn – especially when it’s on sale like it was for me. However at the regular price of $399, there are other color laser printers out there that compete more favorably than this monster.

 

The bad…

Thus far, the 3000cn sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Well not so fast. There are a couple of annoyances with the printer which in the end nixed the printer for me. First let’s talk about paper sizes.

 

As we mentioned earlier, you need to set the paper size on the 3000cn to the correct size before starting your print process. This is fine if you’re working with regular paper sizes but what if you are dealing with a custom paper size? Well things get a bit trickier.  You need to set the paper size to freeform on the printer and then you need to create a custom paper profile within the Dell printer driver for that specific paper size. For computer savvy people, this is a minor detail but it’s not listed in the Dell documentation anywhere. Thus if I wanted to print a 4.5” x 6.25” document, I need to create a custom paper profile for this size within the Dell driver and then set the printer to freeform sizes. That’s a bit annoying and time consuming if you ask me. Honestly, I was actually willing to overlook this issue because I did find the solution (albeit I had to dig around on the Dell forums website for the answer). However, the next problem really peeved me off.

 

As I kicked off more test prints from the 3000cn, I noticed a disturbing pattern. The outputted text and graphics skewed downward going left to right across the document. It’s easy to initially overlook on an 8.5” x 11” document but when you print on a smaller document, the skew is easier to see. I found that my text was consistently trending downwards. If you print a straight line going from left to right on a document, the line will not skew downwards by about 1-2 mm depending upon the width of the paper. I checked out the Dell forums and sure enough there were a couple of people out there with the very same problem. There apparently was no resolution except for getting a new printer from Dell. I thought I could overlook this problem too but honestly I couldn’t. Once I knew the skew was there, it would forever bug me whenever I printed something important. Come on Dell – a 50 dollar ink jet printer can print a straight line!

 

Now of course, this could have been an isolated problem with my printer alone but knowing that several other people in the forums ran into the very same problem didn’t give me much confidence. Thus, this printer is going back to Dell. 

 

The original reason for me getting a color laser printer was due to the falling price of color lasers and the quality of the printed text. However, I need the text on my wedding invitations to be straight and not skewed so the Dell 3000cn is a no no. It’s hard to say if this is a real problem or not since I’m sure Dell has sold many units of this printer already in the last year. Unfortunately, it’s hard for me to recommend this printer even if it is fairly cheap.

 

Summary:

As with computers, Dell has continued its push into the printer market with low cost printers. The Dell Color Laser Printer 3000cn is an example of such a product and it offers a wealth of features that on paper make it an incredible deal. At first glance the 3000cn performed very well in text output and decently at graphics. Unfortunately the annoyances starting to pile up with the printer; capped off with the printing skew problem which you may or may not run into. Thus while the 3000cn is good on paper, several features are poorly executed in real life and we have to bid adieu to the printer. On to a different printer for my invitations. Stay tuned for another printer review shortly

 

You can find the Dell Color Laser Printer 3000cn product page here:

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/print_3000cn?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
 

 

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