Pros: Inexpensive to buy.
Quick warm up/first page out.
Fast!
Cons: MUST buy toner from Dell, Toner doesn't last.
Drivers are poor.
Poor support.
The Bottom Line: Don't buy. Dell not ready to join the Enterprise prt market. They simply don't understand the needs of even small business printing. After all, this is a business printer.
A little background:
After years of using HP LaserJet printers of the equivalent capacity and specs, I finally decided to take the jump and try Dell's line. We bought two of these color printers about a month apart from each other to use in a small workgroup. The capital purchase was much cheaper than HP's line, so that made the boss happy. They each get under 10,000 pages/month, which is well under their rated duty cycle. Clients were configured to print to a Windows 2000 print server, and the print server prints to the printer. About the most basic and maintenance free Windows network printing that one can ask for, and about the only way to setup if you have more than 10 clients. As with many printers these days, the installation CD wants you to install 200 MB of unnecessary garbage just to load the print driver. We've had these two printers for about 5 months now.
Who are you anyway?:
One of the two printers arrived with the incorrect customer name and address on the packing slip. The shipping label was obviously correct, so it appeared to be a mix up in Dell's shipping department. Concerned about future warranty support, I emailed our designated Dell salesperson who told me he'd take care of it and we'd be all set. This was a surprise to me since Dell salespeople are nearly always UNABLE to do anything but quote and process new orders. Beyond that, they always give you the brush off and send you to customer care who is rarely able to resolve issues.
Now comes a time that I need to call Dell support (more on why below). Dell support was quick to tell me that my customer name and service tag didn't match. Since I had the packing slip, I was able to give the person the incorrect company name and explained the problem to him. (What a surprise, the salesperson didn't fix the mix-up!) The support person then informed me that the easiest way to straighten out this service tag mess was to exchange the printer. This seemed a bit silly when the printer didn't have anything physically wrong with it. I didn't want to risk sending it back, then not get credited for it since our name wasn't on it. In addition, I didn't want to end up with someone else's refurbished problem printer. The support guy told me he could try to fix it on the paperwork side so we could avoid a hardware swap. After spending an hour of the phone with him trying to fix the paperwork, he told me he didn't have the access to do so, the "tag team" couldn't fix it, and I'd have to call customer care before we could continue with the support call. Note, I spent an hour on the phone with tech support and never even got to explain why I was calling. Yet another hour of my life that I've wasted with Dell...
Next I called customer care, and let's just say I played "holding on the phone" and "phone tag" for nearly FOUR WEEKS trying to get this resolved. Yes, customer care was more than willing to do a hardware swap, but that doesn't seem like an acceptable solution to a paperwork problem. The last message I got was that they would have it resolved by doing an ownership transfer unless I heard back from them.
After not hearing back from Customer Care for two weeks and unable to reach the person who gave me thier callback number, I started a fresh call into tech support simply to be sure the customer name had been changed. What a surprise, it wasn't resolved. This person told me in about 15 seconds that he could do the ownership transfer for me, asked me a bunch of questions, and told me that he had submitted it. At this point, I assume it has been completed, but I have yet to call in to verify.
Estimated time expended to resolve DELL's simple SCREW-UP: 15 HOURS!
And then there was the crash:
As a good network admin, I test Windows updates on a selected set of machines before deploying to all PC's on the network. All seemed well with the particular updates I tested, so I deployed. Within a few days (Software Update Services cycle can take some time for PC's to get, install updates, reboot) end users computers were crashing all over the place. Not just when using one of these printers. The short story is that Windows 2000 SP4 update and the Dell printer drivers don't get along well. If an end user who had a Dell printer driver installed tried to print anything, Windows would enumerate ALL printers, and crash the application if a Dell printer was installed. Looking back on it, the trouble was clear, but at the time of all types of help desk calls coming in, the root cause wasn't so clear.
So off I go and call Dell. This is were I first learned about the customer name problem above. Fortunately, the first identical printer had our correct name, so I could use that service tag when calling support. After several hours on the phone, two tech's, one supervisor later, their stance was made very clear and very firm: 1) Windows network printing is considered "Advanced Network Support" and they don't support it. The only supported printing is every client printing directly to the printer by loading the bloated CD. 2) The resolution is to uninstall the Windows Updates since obviously it is a Microsoft problem (HP Printers all continued to work fine on the same print server). 3) Dell had no intention of releasing or working on an update, they felt it was MS's problem and responsibility to resolve. 4) The "every application crashing problem" would go away when deleting the Dell printers from clients. Our short term solution was to manually visit every client computer and uninstall the Win2k SP4 update. Our long term solution may be to throw away all of our Dell printers even though they are nearly new.
Other random observations:
Something that is annoying to nearly all those who perform lots of printing is the inconsistency in print drivers. Regardless of the manufacturer, it seems that you need both PCL and PS drivers to be able to print everything properly. Some things simply don't print right with PCL, others don't print right with PS. If you haven't run into this yet, your users are pretty easy on you, or they simply don't look at their print jobs after they are printed. Now comes the real problem: you expect that when you change a setting at the server level, this will follow down to the client. Or worst case, you expect that if the client makes a change, that client will hold that change. Guess again. One driver changes back to color on every print, the other driver has another important setting that doesn't save (sorry, I can't remember which setting it is at the moment). This ultimately means that even with your choice of two drivers, you don't get what you want.
Toner cartridges don't go nearly as far as advertised. I wish I had the time to document exact number of pages per cartridge, but at the moment, I don't. Also, unless you are willing to pay the website price for them, they are a pain to get ordered. Salespeople don't get too excited about quoting toner when you email them. And yes, as a business having the salesperson quote anything will get you a substantial discount. Translation, keep about an extra month or two supply on hand and keep on your salesperson.
The printer is fast. This is one thing that actually does perform to the advertised spec.
Manual printing is not as straight forward as with HP's. Users need an education of how to navigate the menu on the printer. Such a simple thing should be simple. The two identical Dell printers actually work differently from each other. We have been unable to get an explanation of why or how to make them work the same.
Would I buy another Dell printer in the next two years? NO! Users love them when they are working, but when they stop, my phone rings off the hook. I would happily pay another $600 for an HP to save many hours of trouble and support calls.
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