READ THE DIRECTIONS!
Written: Sep 02 '03
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Pros: PRICE. Good "bang for the buck" quality. Small.
Cons: Snags with Red Hat Linux v9. No USB Cable.
The Bottom Line: Want perfect pages? Want color? Well, you're going to pay for it. If you want a good entry-level laser printer, you can't go wrong with this. I'd buy it again!
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| strikefinder's Full Review: Samsung ML 1710 Laser Printer |
Well, I hate Ink Jet printers. I've been through three of them in the past two years, and finally decided that I flat out don't need color if it looks horrible and streaky and the feed mechanism on the printer jams up. I had an old workhorse laser printer a long time ago, and decided it was about time to return to that type of equipment.
I was surprised to learn that I could get my hands on this model, the Samsung 1710, for $100 out the door from Best Buy this weekend. There's a $70 rebate going on right now, and BB had it on sale for $170 (hence, if you can do math, the final price). I figured I'd bring it home and risk the 15% restocking fee if I was disappointed.
I was not. Got it home, opened it up, and slid it directly in to the spot where my old Lexmark POS used to be, used the old USB cable (one is NOT included with the printer), and fired up the CD-ROM drive to install the drivers. Somewhat atypically for Windows XP, it ran without a hitch, and I printed out a test page without any problem. It looks pretty darn good for $100. Now, I'll admit that if you compare it to a 2400 dpi super-printer, it doesn't stand a chance. If all you're doing is printing text and an occasional grayscale graphic, it's fantastic. And, at least for B&W, it beats the tar out of any inkjet printer I've ever used.
The feed tray takes a lot of paper, which surprised me. I easily put the 250 advertised sheets into the loading tray and away it went. No sweat.
Now, everybody seems to have a problem with the manual feed tray; I reckon that these are the same folks whose VCRs still blink 12:00. You MUST read the directions on the CD, as it's not intuitive, but it's also not difficult at all to use once you've read through the directions. Basically, you have to go to "Properties" on the Print... dialog box, and find the selections labaled "Source". Once there, select "Manual Feed", and the manual feed tray works fine. I just printed a few envelopes without any issues whatsoever. THERE IS NO PROBLEM WITH THE MANUAL FEED TRAY!
The only other catch comes if you are a Red Hat Linux v9 user (I am, on a dual-boot system). Samsung actually prides itself on its Linux support suite, and the software seemed to install flawlessly up until the point when I tried to actually print something. Unfortunately, nothing happened. After a few hours of searching the web, the only answer that got me anywhere was to uninstall the Samsung product and navigate RH9's integrated printer installtion through the print manager, selecting the Samsung 1200 as the print driver. It doesn't give the full support I'd like, but it works well enough. As few users out there are Linux users, much less RH9 users, I didn't think it was appropriate to penalize the product for it's conflict with the system; Also, it's possible that a fix will be out soon.
It all comes down to this: Can you find another competitive laser printer for this price? Not right now, as far as I'm concerned. It's possible that the print quality is better on something more expensive, but I'm just a guy who prints a few pages a week, and just wanted something that wasn't going to jam up every three attempts. If that's who you are, this is exactly what you need. My neighbor saw the results, and bought one for himself, too.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 100
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
strikefinder
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Reviews written: 1
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