So about that failed printer ....

We could have really fallen on our feet here.

As I previously mentioned, my twelve-year-old LaserJet 4M+ died on Sunday, and we were looking at potentially replacing both it and our balky DeskJet 2500CM with a Color LaserJet 4500DN assembled from eBay.  (Also during the associated discussion, the person we bought the 2500CM from made the offer that, since we'd had so much trouble with the 2500CM, if we ended up with a LaserJet 4500 he'd give us a free set of supplies for it.  I regard this as a pretty creditable effort on his part to make good.)

Anyway, while in the process of looking for the best shipped prices on printer and parts yesterday, I stumbled across one of those occasional deals that makes your jaw drop: a complete Color LaserJet 8550DN (with duplexer and 2,000-sheet bulk feeder), fully tested, serviced and cleaned, in basically showroom condition, guaranteed fully working, including toner and 192MB of RAM (almost the maximum it will hold), for $199 — with no bids, and only a few hours left on the auction — from Computer Liquidators in London, Ontario, who just want it out of their overstocked showroom.¹  (These typically sell for $2000+, refurbished.)  The page count on it is under 57,000 — that's less than a month's worth of its rated duty cycle.  (The 8550DN is rated for 60,000 pages per month.)  It'll print on up to 58lb paper, including glossy papers and vellum, in sizes up to 12"x18.5", and can do CMYK press emulation.

So, after some discussion with cymrullewes, I bit the bullet and bid on it ... and got it for minimum bid.  "But wait!" said the seller.  "Don't pay for it yet.  Our technician just discovered a minor fault in the fuser mechanism, so we're ordering and installing a replacement fuser.  We don't want you to pay for it until the problem's resolved."  Wow.  Talk about going the extra mile.

The only catch is it'll have to be freighted to us from Ontario.  But that's not that far, it's only about 600 miles, and for a deal this good, it's worth the freight charges.

[1]  Fear the might of my run-on-sentence-fu!