On Fri, 2009-03-20 at 18:16 +0000, Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk wrote:
I've seen an HP CM 1312 MFP at a reasonable price. but online reviews are not all enthusiastic. Also, the best I can find out about the duplex is that it is "manual" -- I can't find out whether that means "manual setting on control panel" or whether it means that you have to manually reverse and turn over the sheets of paper, after printing the odd page numbers, in order to print the evens! (Since that is precisely what I do right now, it would not be an advance).
I have direct experience of that print engine (but not in a MFP) and I say walk away, it is heavy on consumables, very clunky in operation and just generally not nice.
Generally manual duplex just means a printer driver function that prints odd or even pages and the mechanical ability for the printer to pass the paper again after it has been printed on one side (this wrecks the fuser on some colour lasers)
Also afaik it is not a true postscript printer
Cheap colour lasers tend to be a bit of a minefield because many of then turn out to be very expensive to run, can't really advise on a specific model except saying I would avoid HP at that price range.