My Printer: Brother HL-5250DN

When I came to school last semester, I brought my dad's old printer with me. It initially had the problem of black lines through whatever was printed. I fixed this by buying a new toner cartridge for it. About half way through last semester, it died. It was giving me a "50 Service" error. I found that this could be fixed with a $70 replacement piece. I was reluctant to spend so much money on such an old printer.

Last week, I had had enough with using the school printers, which both cost money to use, and didn't print as well as could be desired. I started looking at printers over at my favorite on-line retailer, NewEgg. I decided to go with the Brother HL-5250DN. It is a network laser printer, the only kind I would consider buying, and it has a built-in duplexer (that is, it can print on both sides of the page). It prints at 1200x1200 DPI, which is very sharp. (The LaserJet II that I had only printed at 300x300 DPI.)

Currently, I have the printer set up so that it is on it's own isolated network (which is just it and a wireless router). I connect to the wireless router whenever I want to print. To set it up properly (i.e., so that I could print to it from anywhere on campus), I would have to have to obtain some more networking hardware. Currently, my five-port switch is full and I don't have the desire to spend money on more networking hardware.

The printouts from the printer are very clean, and it is pretty quiet. The only negative thing about the printer is that whenever it gets ready to print, it draws a large amount of current, causing the lights in the room to flicker. Other than that I am very happy with this printer. The replacement toner costs around $75 or so, but I won't need that for a while.