New Multifunction Printer: Dell 2335dn

A few days ago, my Canon PIXMA MP830 stopped working—it just wouldn't turn on. A little over a year ago, I had it repaired for other problems; it was actually three months out of warranty at the time, but Canon fixed it for free anyway. Now with it being a year and a half out of warranty, there's no way Canon would be that generous. After deciding that paying to get it repaired would be pointless, I went looking for a new one. I started the way I usually do—I looked at various printers on the Best Buy web site and looked up reviews of them. Since the Canon went through ink quickly (it even used colored inks to print black), I decided to look for a laser printer. And since I rarely have a need to print anything in color (for photos, I just use Walgreen's), I decided a monochrome laser would be fine.

I almost went out and bought the Canon MF4370DN (Canon again for its excellent customer service, as confirmed by others), but after reading some reviews, I found out that scanning was a bit of a PITA (you have to actually hit a button on the printer to initiate a scan, whether or not your computer initiates it). With that model out, and the next one in the series out of my price range, I decided to check the Dell Refurbished web site; I decided on the Dell 2335dn. I also ordered the two-year extended warranty, which I'll most likely renew when the time comes.

I received the printer yesterday. Talk about a huge box! The FedEx guy who delivered it was laughing. Upon removing the printer from the box, it was clear that this printer means business (18.3" x 17.3" x 18.1" and 39 lbs). Here are the main reasons I went with this one:

• Network printing and scanning
• Ability to print from (BMP, TIFF, PDF, JPG) and scan to (same types) a flash drive plugged into the front of the unit
• Duplex (double-sided) printing
• "Duplex Automatic Document Feeder": it will scan both sides of a stack of originals

Aside from the nice features, it was very easy to set up, at least for me. After enabling the printer's ethernet port using the menu on the front panel, I easily got it working, totally over the network; a USB cable is not required at all. I downloaded the latest software for it from Dell, and set about testing. As expected with a laser printer, prints were very fast, even over the network. Unexpectedly, it scanned over the network as fast as any scanner I've used in the past. It was interesting when I chose to scan using the front display on the printer; after the scan, a Photoshop window with the image popped open on my computer (my computer is set to open TIFFs with Photoshop).

By no means consider this blog entry an "in-depth" review, but even though I've only had it for a day, I could probably safely recommend this unit to anyone looking for a multifunction printer.