We're on the verge of the $99 color laser printer 25 years after the first monochrome laser printer shipped for $3,500. The brand new Konica Minolta magicolor 1600W is closing in on the hundred-dollar price point. When M. David Stone annointed it the pcmag.com Editors' Choice as an affordable (mild understatement) personal color laser printing choice June 17, we cited a street price of about $180. Actually, it's better than that: Street price at a lot of retailers is now in the $120 range. And marketing being what it is, something that's $120 often finds its way to being $99. Not yet, but stay tuned in the second half of 2009. 

Other color lasers have flirted with the $100 price point, most notably the Samsung CLP-315, which preceded the magicolor 1600W as Editors' Choice. But that came later in the Samsung's life. The Konica is cheap from day one. When you put the two head-to-head now, the newer Konica Minolta magicolor 1600W wins out for print quality.

Is there a catch with a printer so affordable? At the entry level when you're toying with unheard of prices, make sure of what you're getting. In particular, "personal laser printer" typically means single-user USB not multi-user Ethernet connectivity and the initial toner load isn't a full load. Often you sell the razors cheap and make it up on razor blades.
But progress has its upsides: The first HP LaserJet weighed a ton and printed 8 pages per minute, black and white only. The little magicolor 1600W cranks out monochrome pages at 20 ppm (color is 4 ppm).

Here's one use for the magicolor 1600W: Imagine your company does an offsite event and you need to print color name badges plus a little bit of collateral material that needs color. Buy one for less than the one-day rental cost of a color laser printer, use it, and leave it. But the magic in magicolor remains: a price very close to $100.