Big Brother watches the print pennies

Printer giant unveils raft of new high speed laser printers aimed at branch offices and home workers

Brother will next month deliver three new colour laser printers supporting secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption for use in corporate branch offices and teleworker environments.

Announced yesterday the HL 4040CN, 4050CDN and 4070CDW all offer 20 page per minute (ppm) colour and monochrome print speed, 2400x600dpi resolutions and 64MB of memory, whilst the HL-4070CDW provides 802.11g WiFi alongside wired Ethernet connectivity.

Prices range from £299 to £470, up to 100 per cent more than printers from rival manufacturers such as Xerox, HP and Lexmark, which offer colour lasers of similar size and resolution with similar consumable costs.

However, Brother’s UK managing director John Sasaki points out that the faster print speeds, enabled by a new single pass print engine, help the HL-400 series achieve much lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

"Printing documents takes time, and that time is a cost to the customer as well," he said. "How much time would they waste if they purchased a cheaper printer?"

Fast colour printing remains the luxury rather than the rule in most offices, but Sasaki argued that many people working in corporate branch offices or their own homes now need more reliable colour lasers rather than monochrome lasers or colour inkjets to produce the documents they need.

"People in corporate branch offices need colour printing to produce customer documents where inkjets are still too slow. Even in shops, it is sometimes necessary to have a colour copier to produce leaflets, and we are seeing more documents feature Excel charts that require colour as well," he added.