Having a color printer in the home office is a necessity, not a luxury, for many workers.

Printed reports, Web pages, charts and photographs just don't measure up if condemned to black and white.

Luckily, the higher-quality color printers, especially laser quality, have reached affordable prices, with many below $1,000. These are generally faster than inkjet printers, more flexible and do a better job as shared printers on your network. I tested one good candidate last week.

Lexmark's C510 color laser printer, with a list price of $729, is a worthy competitor for a small or home office. It prints at 2,400 dots per inch up to 30 pages a minute in black and white or five pages a minute in color. The time it takes to get the first page out is 13 seconds for black and white or 19 seconds for color.

Unlike an inkjet printer, a color laser isn't so fussy about paper. The C510 supports card stock, envelopes, glossy paper, labels, transparencies and plain paper. The printer comes with a standard tray that holds about 250 sheets of paper. A paper tray is available that holds more than 500 sheets and has a duplex capability as an upgrade.

Setting up the printer was a breeze, and it installed in just minutes onto my office network. I fed it all types of media with all kinds of paper weights, card stock, transparencies and envelopes. It worked without jamming a single page. I was impressed with its speed and clear printing.

Lexmark makes this printer work with just about any type of computer and operating system. It says it supports PCs, Macs, Unix, Linux, Sun's Solaris, Citrix Metaframe and even TCP/IP. To hook up, it comes with a bidirectional parallel port and a USB port. There's also an empty option slot so the printer can be upgraded to include an Ethernet card or Token Ring adapter.

The printer comes with 158 scalable PostScript fonts and 84 scalable PCL fonts, among others. It also has bar code fonts that are scalable in narrow, regular or wide. It has a duty cycle of 35,000 per month, which is far more than most small companies would ever print. Duty cycle should roughly match how many pages you expect to print so you don't burn it out from overuse or buy more printer than you need.

Another nice feature is its warranty. Lexmark offers free on-site service for the first year. Additional warranties can be purchased.

I did not check for toner consumption. According to Lexmark's documentation, however, the printer ships with toner cartridges good for about 1,500 pages. Supplies can be purchased for 5,000- or 10,000-page black toner, and 3,000 or 6,600 for cyan, magenta or yellow toner. Lexmark estimates that each page will have 5 percent color, which is an industry standard measurement.

Overall, the printer is a good buy. It is well-packaged, prints quickly and has fine color for artwork, graphics or photos. It does not support extra finishing features, like stapling or making fancy books. But it delivers good-quality printing at a value price.

So count in color lasers when you think about technology.

No longer reserved for big companies and big budgets, a color printer is one more example where a small company can look just as professional as a large one.

Copyright 2006 Currid & Company