CompTIA Network+

The Dell 5210n laser printer and its associated Dell 5210n toner cartridge are made to work together to provide printing services to networked workgroups. It combines high-speed print output with good-quality printing quality at a list price well under a thousand dollars.

How Much Can it Print? While the standard 250 sheet tray is acceptable for normal duties, you might consider adding a few optional trays to up its storage capacity. This is because it can actually hold over 2600 pages if set up right. Pair that up with its 200,000 page per month duty cycle, and chances are you won’t see too much of the printer maintenance man. Indeed, the Dell 5210n acts like a team of tireless horses, pulling your print jobs along with little effort. All in all, this is a good unit for mid-size networked workgroups.

Hooking it Up. The Dell 5210n laser printer is equipped with industry standard USB 2.0 and 10/100 Ethernet jacks, in addition to being upgradeable to optional wireless (802.11 standard) networking modes. For IT folks having responsibility for this unit’s care and feeding, it should be a snap to integrate it into a network and keep it humming along.

Print Quality. Printing quality is good. It delivers 1200 by 1200dpi, which makes for a sharp, crisp appearance on the paper. Graphics production is also solid, and it produces good-quality black and white page output, with no fuzziness or granularity to pictures or other items on the page.

Memory. Memory in the 5210n is good, with a standard 64 megabytes available. This is expandable up to 576 megs, making it more-than-adequate for almost any business printing need. Plus, the memory is easily installed into the laser printer with little or no fuss.

Ease of Utility. The Dell 5210n lets networked workgroups of medium size create print jobs with very little drama. At 40ppm of printed page output, there shouldn’t be much waiting around for a whole print job to appear. If you duplex print, though, output drops by ten pages, to 30ppm. With all the different types of connection ports that come with the printer, finding a good way to interface with the local network should be fairly simple.

Toners and Maintenance. The Dell 5210n, like most Dell products, is set up with one year of 24/7 on-site service, if needed. That can be extended a further 4 years, for a fee. The Dell 5210n laser toner cartridge puts out 10,000 pages and optional cartridges can double that amount, which makes the Dell unlikely to see much in the way of service calls.