The Samsung ML-1755 Printer

OVERVIEW: 
Like its twin, the ML-1750, Samsung’s ML-1755 has less of an office look to easily blend into home décor. Having a footprint of 13.8” x 14.6” makes the ML-1755 one of Samsung’s most compact monochrome laser printer. Yet, this personal laser has enough paper and toner capacity for office use as well. What makes this ML different from its twin is the ML-1755 has four times the memory.

PROS:
The ML-1755 has a 250-sheet main paper tray. This is almost more than double the capacity many other personal-use laser printers have. The tray has an adjustable rear lever to allow the ML-1755 to hold 11” x 14” legal-size paper, while maintaining the same footprint on your desk. There are other Desktop laser printers with smaller footprints out there. But those often gain their small footprints by having a pull-down paper tray to temporarily add paper.

Speaking of paper capacity, the little mechanical lever on the front of ML-1755 that indicates how much paper is in the tray is an easy, simple way to know when to refill at a glance.
Having a maximum resolution of 1200 x 600 dpi, the ML-1755 is great for printing text and simple graphics. Photographs will have a more grainy quality, and if you are a stickler for details the ML-1755’s resolution may not have the sharpness you desire. But even in Toner Save mode, printouts are still clear and readable.

The ML-1755 produces 52dB of sound during startup and printing, 35dB on standby, plus a sleep mode that makes the ML-1755 run silent until needed. To give you an idea on the amount of noise this means, think of 53 decibels as the sound of low conversations and 30 decibels as the noise from a quiet office.

With a print speed of 17 pages per minute, this personal printer has a decent speed for a laser printer of its age. With current inkjets pushing B&W print speeds of 20 ppm, inkjets are now giving lasers a run for their money.

When Samsung introduced this printer on the market, USB was still new to Wintel machines and parallel the primary way to connect non-networked printers to a computer. While PC’s with a parallel interface have become few and far between, it’s nice to free up a USB port if your computer still has a parallel port. You get that choice with the ML-1755. The USB also makes it easy to connect a laptop to the printer.

This petite printer packs a whopping 32MB of memory. With four times the RAM found in most compact laser printers, the ML-1755 can easily be shared (or networked, with the optional external adapter) in a computer classroom or office with multiple computers. Printing emulators include the popular HP PCL and Epson standards (sorry, no PostScript is available), to handle all but the most advanced Adobe jobs.

Another nice feature Samsung provides is software support for the “Big 3 OSes” (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux). Now you don’t have to be chained to one operating system just because your printer can only support one.

CONS:
On the top of the printer, Samsung has 1 button and 2 LEDs for your manual print controls and status indicators. Depending how long you press that button can cause your printer to perform several other functions than just “cancel”. And, if you want to know just what the various flashing LEDs are telling you, you’ll need the User’s Manual to find the flash codes. (Or you can do what I did: copy the page and taped it on the printer.) I can see Samsung wanting to follow the K.I.S.S approach to a console control, but this went past K.I.S.S.  all the way to M.I.C.K. (Made It Complex, Kretin)!
Unlike similar laser printers with 50-sheet multi-purpose trays, the ML1755 has a 1-sheet manual feed slot. So, if you want to print 30 invitations from a Word mailing list you will have to stay by the printer feeding the envelopes one at a time.

It takes the ML-1755 thirty seconds after it wakes-up to print. That and its 12-second delays between print jobs, gives it one of the longer start times of the Samsung ML series.  If you think this is long, just think of the ML-1755’s warm-up time like the old vacuum-tube T.V. sets. If you ever heard your parents or grandparents talk about how long it took TV’s to “warm-up” when they were kids, this printer will give you a rough idea what they went through.

An external network adapter gives the ML-1755 the ability to be a network server. But without a way to increase the printer’s 8MB memory, the ML-1755 will struggle with simultaneous job requests. For the cost of buying the adapter, you can upgrade to a more powerful network printer instead.

INK / TONER NEEDS:
A big disappointment is the ML-1755 come with a toner cartridge that’s only 1/3 full of toner. This so-called “starter” toner prints about 1000 pages, so it may be a good idea to buy the full yield toner the same time you buy the printer.
The ML-1755 toner cartridge has a standard yield of about 3,000 pages, or six reams of paper. Samsung does not offer a high-capacity toner for the ML-1755.

SOFTWARE:
The CD that comes with the ML-1755 provides software support for Windows and Linux operating systems. The Samsung web site offers new drivers you can download for Mac OS 10.3 up to the new 10.6 Snow Leopard systems.

   
With a stylish design and a small footprint, the ML-1755 offers affordability for home use. The extra memory that is standard allows it to be useful as a workgroup printer in offices and in the classroom. -- Mel Myers