Dell 1600n All-In-One Laser Printer

As a fan of Dell notebooks, I jumped at the chance to replace my aging all-in-one laser printer with Dell's first entry in the AIO market. The 1600n's attractive gray and black accents on a relatively small, rectangular footprint--compared to its Canon, Brother and HP competitors--tempted me from the start. And I could purchase it direct from Dell with no fuss, along with an extra toner cartridge and RAM! The total cost was a bit less than the competitors, and this tipped me in favor of the unit. Dell was happy to take care of me painlessly over the phone, as always. But wait. There's more. And it's not good news.

I waited a couple of weeks for delivery--the first of a number of negative experiences. Setup was easy, and the unit's good looks really had me pleased with my purchase... Until I plugged it in.

When the printer sucked the juice from the wall outlet, the office lights dimmed as the fan kicked in. I hadn't printed anything yet; I just plugged 'er in! Describing the noise coming from the machine, as the neat lights shone from the control panel, is difficult. There was a loud buzz with complementary whirr that sent the cat out of the room and would require ear plugs on my part to coexist in my "small office/home office." Of course, I immediately thought something was wrong. My wife complained about the noise from the kitchen. I rationalized the purchase and exclaimed, "don't worry, honey, I'm sure it'll go into sleep mode real quick."

But, like a blender with no on/off switch, it just kept running and running. To my dismay, a call to Dell confirmed that there was no sleep mode--an obvious liability, in my book. However, the tech support guy claimed that the fan should not be unnervingly loud. He could hear it over the phone and told me that the unit was obviously defective. I concurred; there was just no way that this was correct.

So I received another unit a couple of weeks later--the second hassle in this mess. But it was no better. And remember, I hadn't printed anything yet! The machine is just so darn LOUD! All the time! It has to consume a lot of electricity! Surely somebody's done a study on this! But not Dell!

Anyway, I went to the HUGE hassle of sending both of these hefty babies back. And that's when the next battle took place. Ordering, receiving, setting up and testing these machines took me over the twenty day trial period, and I got into an argument with Dell's return personnel, as they were reluctant to refund my money.

In the long run, I won the battle. But wait, there's more. The return tag did not include the additional $80 toner cartridge or the $90 ram chip. No arguments could convince the robots at Dell that I didn't need this stuff. I sent the toner cartridge back using the recycling package it came with. Maybe somebody on the other end noticed that it was unopened and Dell could make some money off of me. I didn't care any more at this point.

And here's the only good news out of the whole shebang: the RAM chip fit very neatly in the slot in the new Brother MFC 8840 DN I purchased in lieu of both the Dell and Canon I also tried and returned (no time to review here).

I'm extremely pleased with my new Brother multi-function laser printer. And Dell makes great computers.

Read between the lines, friends!