Cleaning the guts of an HP B & W or Color LaserJet Printer

Question

Hi:
I currently have an HP4M LaserJet printer...it appears to have "died" after 20 years.
I have had to do meticulous internal cleaning of it in the past, when I toner cartridge would go bad, dumping toner into the printer.  With brushes, lint free cloths, etc, you could clean the inside of the printer, after removing a few items; e.g., the paper feed roller mechanisms, the fuse roller, etc.  The 4M's HP User's Manual showed how to do this.  If you take time to do it properly, ...and this usually requires several hours to do...you will end up with crisp clean printouts...no excess toner-speckling on the printouts.
I am considering replacing the 4M with one of the following HP Laser Printers.
HP LaserJet Pro P1102w Printer (B & W)
HP LaserJet Pro P1606dn Printer (B & W)
HP LaserJet Pro 400 M401n Printer (B & W)
HP LaserJet Pro 400 M401dne Printer (B & W)
HP laserJet Pro 200 color Printer M251nw (Color)
Am I correct that B & W is not striclty Black or White but also includes Gray-Scale like the 4M did ?
The P1102 appears to have the same (or similar) toner cartridge mechanism that the 4M did.
When you rermove it, you can see the gear mechanisms, etc....not yet sure about the fuse roller.
The Pro 400 printers look very much like the 4M externally, but I do not yet know about the internals.
The M251nw is a different animal.
It has a metal slide-out tray that holds 4 toner cartridges which appear to be "rectanglular" in shape.
Can this tray be  removed by the user (for cleaning) if a cartridge dumps toner into the printer ?
Is the fuse roller accessible to the user for removal and cleaning ?
I have looked through the M251's User Manual, and this level of cleaning is not covered.
It only covers "cleaning" like an inkjet does for cleaning the printheads.
Somehow, I would think that the user should have access to the guts of the printer,
since a Tech Support person would also have to disassemble the printer for cleaning.
if this information exist, where do I find it ?
Thank you
DaleBr

Answer 1

Colors are great because they provide you with color.  But the cost of ownership is a lot higher because now you have 4 color toner cartridges.  With the cost of toner cartridges hovering around US$130 each, you are looking at a cost of at least $520 in toner replacement costs.  Granted you won't be using all the toner across the whole page but if you print photos or images, it will deplete quickly.  Plus with 4 toner cartridges inside, the cartridges are fairly small.
Cost per prints for black and white hovers around 1 to 4 cents per copy.  Color prints cost around 8 to 17 cents per copy. But I read somewhere from someone worker for a company selling the toner it can cost up to 30 to 75 cents per copy for a full page of color.
So in a nutshell, it's very expensive to have color.