The Dell 3000cn - a little brother of the 3100cn, which has a paper-feed drawer and native PostScript 3 support as extras - is a clone of the Epson AcuLaser C1100. It's particularly complete, offers a very good compromise between speed and quality, and has undeniable advantages like a network interface as standard equipment.

Ergonomics And Functions

Very large and weighing over 66 lbs. (30 kg), the 3000cn is the only printer we tested for this article that has native support for the PCL5e and PCL6 page-description languages. That takes the load off the host PC for a large part of the pre-printing processing, making this unit more suitable for installation on a low-powered printer server. What's more, its built-in network interface facilitates that kind of setup. The PCL support also makes it compatible with Linux, which is rare enough to be worth mentioning. To manage long, complex documents, it comes with 64 MB of memory, an amount only the CLP-510 from Samsung can match.

The main problem we noted with the 3000cn had to do with noise level. It was the noisiest of all the printers we tested. That's related to the very high speed of the printing engine and the positioning of the toner cartridges in a carousel arrangement.