With so many outstanding color laser printers available from Hewlett Packard, Lexmark, QMS, Tektronix, and Tally it was a tough choice to decide what color laser printer to install at the Digital Imaging Technology Center.

We checked all the specs, looked at test prints from QMS, Tally, and Tektronix, and selected Tally color laser printers because they are over a thousand dollars less than Tektronix color laser printers.

The Tally printer has now arrived and we can post the results immediately. This is the printer for our new digital printing test and review center in Guatemala, situated on the campus of the main private university for Central America.

We did lots of homework before selecting which color laser printer. Since FLAAR is non-profit, obviously we cannot overspend our budget. Thus if you also wish a cost-effective color printer, yet a color laser that does exhibit-quality color prints at 11x17 full bleed (11.7 x 17.7) and even prints on paper up to 13x19 inches in size, consider the proven quality delivered by Tally.

Tally is a large international company which specializes in printers for industry and giant corporations. Yet their color laser printer products are oriented towards graphics design and photo studios.

Actually the one key reason why we selected the Tally color laser printer was that their marketing manager was familiar with digital photography. Thus he knows precisely the kind of printer that photographers and other graphics people need.

HP and Lexmark are for color pie charts and color bar charts, the Fortune 500, for business correspondence. If you need to do color brochures, color photographs, or exhibit-quality color images, then consider Tally color laser printers. We are using the T8204. It does A3 (Europe and Asia) or 11x17 inch full bleed (11.7 x 17.7) or larger.

If you would like help in deciding what color laser printer or which black-and-white laser printer to buy, just send an E-mail to ReaderService@FLAAR.org and our main reviewer, Nicholas Hellmuth, will do his best to help out. Keep in mind he is opening up a new digital imaging test and review center in Guatemala and expanding his test center in Germany, so it may take a day to respond. Be sure to indicate what kinds of images you need to print, what size, and be realistic in your budget projections. It might help to include what printers you already have and what you were considering before reading the reviews of laser printers here.

Do not expect to get photo-realistic museum exhibit-quality color prints on a cheap laser printer. We only use, and thus only recommend, the better professional quality laser printers. If you want to print photographs or sophisticated graphics, then we are the right people to contact .