1923 The first home laser printers are credited with saving Apple and ushering in the age of desktop publishing. But while the dot matrix printer is long gone, and color inkjet printers are now given away in computer bundles, quality laser printing in four colors has remained too expensive for the small office/home office (SOHO) user.



Hewlett-Packard took a step to correct that problem at MacWorld Expo with the introduction of two new Color LaserJet printers, the 3500 ($799) and 3700 ($1299). Both support CMYK printing, and are compatible with OS X (10.2 or later) and Windows.

Both printers share the same form factor, but the 3500 is targeted more towards the home office. It prints 12 pages per minute (ppm) in both black and white and color, and HP representatives estimated that with 20 percent page coverage, the cartridges should provide about 6,000 b/w pages and 4,000 color. It uses a USB 2.0 connection to your computer (ethernet optional), and uses host-based software called HP JetReady 4.0 to process print jobs, rather than a printer-based (and more expensive) processor with PostScript.

The 3700 has the same cartridge capacity, but is targeted towards the small business/workgroup user. It prints 16 ppm in both b/w and color, and has an ethernet connection built-in (along with USB 1.1). It supports HP PCL 5c and 6 color management, as well as Adobe PostScript 3 emulation through the built in 350 Mhz processor.

One impressive feature that both printers have is Instant-on Technology, which allows the device to print quickly from power save mode, without having to wait for the toner to warm up. HP estimates that the 3700 will only take 20 seconds to print from a cold start; the 3500, 22 seconds.

Neither printer is capable of two-sided printing out of the box; in fact, the 3500 isn't able to automatically duplex at all. The 3700 has optional attachments to enable two-sided printing, and HP told me that they've set up both printers to make manual duplexing (one side, then the other), as well as printing on envelopes and labels, as simple as possible. Additional tray attachments allow both printers to have an additional 500 sheet paper capacity beyond the 250 tray included. There's a bypass tray, off course, with a capacity of 100 20# sheets, and both printers are rated to handle paper from 16# (What is that? Onion paper?) to 80# cover.

Seeing the 3700 in action as the HP representatives demonstrated it with complex, preprepared images, the printouts came quickly, with crisp, vibrant color. Both printers support true 600 x 600 dpi in both b/w and color, with a monthly volume of 45,000 pages for the 3500, and 55,000 for the 3700.

More informational from HP's website: the 3500 and 3700

Bill's been using Macs since the late 80s. When he's not making smartass remarks to amuse Kirk Hiner, he enjoys fighting for the user.

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