The HP Color LaserJet 8550n printer is a workhorse laser jet printer that seems designed for use within a medium-sized business or as the designated printer for a large workgroup within a business. It can print out in black-and-white at a nice speed and it'll deliver color output at a decent speed as well. It's also not badly priced. You'll need to check out Color LaserJet 8550n compatible toners.

As far as print speeds, the 8550n has two different speeds. One, color comes in at about six or so pages per minute while the black-and-white or monochrome capability is a robust 24 pages every single minute. Hewlett-Packard looks like it intended for the 8550n to be more of a monochrome laser printer that's capable of doing color jobs if it's required rather than being a pure color printer.

The only way to connect the 8550n is through a parallel port or through a nice Ethernet port. There really is nothing to fret about when it comes to not having a USB connection, because every modern workgroup network will feature at least Ethernet capability. The parallel port connectivity function seems to be so that it can hook into older networks with no problems.

The quality of the print job that Hewlett-Packard has built into the 8550n will be uniformly acceptable across the board. It provides 600x600 dots per inch print resolution, which is normally the standard for most of its printing needs. It can handle graphics-rich print jobs, though that isn't its main duty, which even Hewlett-Packard would say is probably more appropriate for 1200 dpi printers.

An optional two-sided, or duplex, printing capability is available for an additional fee though most workgroups for which this kind of printer is intended probably wouldn't really need it. It also comes with 64 MB of RAM, which can be increased up to 512 MB in short order. Made sure to check with the IT folks before committing any more resources to increasing memory when it might not be required in the first place. Buy affordable HP Color LaserJet compatible toners.

Hewlett-Packard has included a 200 MHz processor to manage all of the activities of the printer, which will help it to ensure that any incoming and outgoing tasks are handled in speedy fashion. There's also 3.2 GB of internal hard disk drive, which is nice to have if needed. The maximum monthly duty cycle is rated by the company at 60,000 pages, so there's almost nothing to fret over when it comes to maintenance and durability.

As far as how much paper can be held onboard the 8550n, it is truly impressive at 1100 pages of standard paper stock. All of the different media varieties that can be printed out on are just as impressive, and includes glossy paper, labels, transparencies, envelopes and standard plain paper. An occasional replacement of its four printer cartridges is really almost all that's ever needed. When you need new toner ink cartridges, just do a search online.