The next printer youll want on your desk is a color laser printer. Forget those cheap outdated inkjet printers. They are cheap for one reason, to get you to buy ink. Im not making that up. It came right from an executive of a leading inkjet printer manufacturer.

Do you have a black and white laser printer? These gems are the best for the home office. Cheap, guilt free printing with high quality usually reserved for a large office. The price is right on the home models. You can almost buy one for the cost of a black and a color ink cartridge.

But lets talk about color laser jet printers. A color laser jet works just like a black printer except it has 4 toner cartridges. Each one has its own life. The base printers I was looking at had a recommended monthly volume of up to 30,000 pages. Dont think Ill have that much.

Photo printing is a must these days and you want to print your pictures without the fear of using up all the ink. Digital cameras are everywhere, but getting the pictures printed in photo quality seems to be the biggest drawback to the cameras. Enter the color laserjet printer.

Speed is a big factor in printing. At home, Im usually not in a big hurry, so Ill spend less and wait. Ill send stuff to the printer and check it later when its done. You can save a bunch if you don t need speed. The HP2600n is my pick for a home color laser printer. The Hewlett Packard was also selected as PC Magazine Editors Choice award.

Let me give you the scoop. First, price. Dont be afraid. $400. Yes, thats all for a color laser jet. Speed? 8 pages per minute. 16 meg of RAM, but the 2600n is network ready for the small or home office.

For comparison, I looked at the 2500L. This HP model was faster at 20 ppm black but only 4 ppm in color. It did have more memory 64MB as compared to 16MB, but it was not network ready. Price? Same.

The one thing that tipped me over the edge to the 2600n was that all 4 toner cartridges were right in the front. I personally examined this unit today and the quality is dead on with Hewlett Packards reputation in the printing industry.

The price and quality are hard to beat.