Fast, Slick And Cheap

Sydney Morning Herald

Tuesday March 10, 1998

DARREN YATES

Despite the rapid advances of inkjet printers, high-quality, high-volume colour printing is still best handled by laser printers. As DARREN YATES reports, they are getting better and cheaper. WHEN it comes to low-volume colour printing, it is hard to go past the inkjet printer. Its small foot-print, low up-front cost and high quality has made it a runaway success, but for the kind of volumes seen by many departmental laser printers, most inkjet units would keel over with little puffs of blue smoke.

It has been argued (and rightly so) by business for a long time that inkjet printers are too expensive to run and cannot handle the print volumes required by most large organisations. Nor can many do the job reliably on plain paper.

That is where the colour laser printer entered the scene a few years ago. But while the technology looked ready to rapidly improve, it has been relatively slow going for laser-printer manufacturers in getting the print quality up to scratch.

And in the meantime, colour inkjet printers have provided the low-cost alternative, albeit without the industrial strength required of such printers.

When I looked at colour laser printers in December 1996, you would have been hard-pressed to find much in the way of change for $14,000.

Today, they are giving the $5,000 mark a good nudge.

In line with monochrome laser printers, most of today's colour laser units can print at speeds of up to 12 pages per minute monochrome and 600 dots per inch. The roundup There are a number of vendors in this market space. However, the top four vendors and models are Tektronix's Phaser 560, Hewlett-Packard's Colour LaserJet 5, Lexmark's Optra SC 1275 and Fuji-Xerox's DocuPrint C55.

Each of these units is networkable, although it is an option that comes at extra cost.

Of the four, only the Colour LaserJet 5 from Hewlett-Packard can accept A3 paper. However, it can only print this in monochrome. It drops back to A4 in line with the other units when it comes to colour printing.

While all of these units have good paper-handling, the major differences occur under the bonnet.

Below are my individual assessments.

HIDDEN COSTS

Many IT professionals now realise that to consider the total cost of departmental printing, they have to attend not only to the purchase price, but to the running costs associated with it. One problem in many high demand mission-critical applications is that down-time can be very costly.

Laser printers of the type described below are designed to take a beating.

However, maintaining laser printers in the past often required a full-time staffer to ensure everything ran smoothly.

When you add up the true costs involved, these units were much more expensive than many executives imagined.

To counter those costs, the latest printers come with a feature known as remote management. It allows the network system administrator to check the printer's status and health from the desk rather than having to physically check the printer each morning.

Parameters, such as the printer's toner levels and photo-conductor unit life, can easily be checked without lifting a screwdriver.

It enables companies to purchase consumables in a just-in-time method rather than having to stock up in bulk. If a large print-run is required, more consumables can be ordered in.

Many printers also have Web-based management that allows the administrator to use the standard desktop Web browser to do the same tasks.

The end result is that not only have colour laser printers improved on past models in terms of print quality, but they are now also faster and smarter, reducing the overall cost quite considerably.

* FUJI-XEROX DOCUPRINT C55

Laser big on image

The DocuPrint C55 is ideal if space is a problem. Measuring 470 x 419 x 419mm, it is one of the smallest colour lasers I have seen.

Despite that, it does not miss out on features. Built around a 600dpi engine, the C55 can print up to 12 ppm in monochrome or three ppm in full colour. Interestingly, it also has a fast blue mode that cranks along at six ppm.

It is controlled by an AMD 50MHz 29040 RISC processor and comes with 30Mb of memory standard, expandable to 70Mb. As for interfacing, the C55 comes with a parallel printer and an Ethernet port on the C55mp model, plus Token Ring and LocalTalk as options.

Fuji-Xerox has drivers for just about every operating system you can find, including Windows 3.1, 95 and NT plus MacOS, OS/2 and UNIX. It handles PCL5c and PostScript, and ColorSync 2.0 and Pantone colour matching systems.

Its print quality is very good. Colour photographs show no signs of banding lines and text is crisp with good sharp edges. The colour toner cartridges are rated at 4,000 pages and the black 5,000.

The C55 also comes with CentreWare Internet Services which allow system administrators to use the Web to monitor the printer and consumable status externally.

The DocuPrint C55 is one of the cheapest colour laser printers you can buy. Despite that, there are plenty of features that make this unit well worth the look. It is also backed by a one-year on-site warranty. Price: $5,700 Cost per page (four colour @ 5 per cent): not available From: Fuji-Xerox resellers; Ph: 13 14 12 Internet: www.fujixerox. com.au/printers

* TEKTRONIX PHASER 560

Pick of the printers

One of the more recent releases, the Phaser 560 from Tektronix shows just how far these units have come in the past 12 months.

The 560 claims to be the fastest colour laser printer, with speeds of up to five pages per minute for colour and up to 14 ppm for monochrome (black).

It also incorporates smart technology that keeps track of the level of consumables. The printer keeps you up to date on toner and imaging unit levels so that you are never left high and dry in the middle of a print-run.

As for print quality, the 560 has a top resolution of 1200 dots per inch with the optional features kit, and a standard resolution of 600 dpi.

The print quality is excellent, particularly with photographs, something colour lasers have had problems with in the past. It also does a very good job with transparencies.

For connectivity, the 560 comes with a parallel printer port as standard but has options for Ethernet, Token Ring and LocalTalk. One of its better features is its PhaserLink World Wide Web management system, which allows you to adjust printer settings, view consumable levels and access online information from your browser.

It is also the only unit in this review to feature a copier option. The toner cartridges are designed for high capacity, giving up to 10,000 pages for colour and 12,000 for mono.

This is my pick of the units in this round-up. Its quality and high print-run endurance make this the ideal departmental colour laser printer. Price: $8,814 Cost per page (four colour @ 5 per cent): 15 cents per page From: Tektronix; Ph: 1800 811 177 Internet: www.tek.com/ color_printers/

* HEWLETT-PACKARD COLOUR LASERJET 5/5M

Model lacks muscle

Hewlett-Packard launched the Colour LaserJet 5 on April Fools' Day 1996 and the fact it is still around is surprising, as it only has moderate performance despite its high price tag.

It is also surprising that Hewlett-Packard has carried out no colour design of its own. The Colour LaserJet 5 is built on a Konica laser engine with a three-pages-per-minute, 300-dots-per-inch capability, and by current standards, it is certainly behind the leading contenders.

The 5M model includes PostScript Level 2, Ethernet networking and 36Mb of memory to handle high-resolution large-format images. On previous tests I have carried out, however, it just doesn't have the muscle to produce high-quality photographic images.

What saved this unit are its cheap running costs and high-quality text printing. Replacement toner cartridges cost about $60 for the cyan, magenta and yellow colours and a miserly $12 for the black. That gives an average cost per colour page at 5 per cent coverage of about 7 cents.

For a simple business monochrome letter, it works out to less than half a cent per page. Disappointingly, the Colour LaserJet 5 is retailing for about $7,600, making it an expensive choice considering its overall resolution and quality.

If running costs are a major issue, the LaserJet 5 is arguably the cheapest unit to run. However, I recommend you at least see the output quality of all four units represented here before you make a final decision. Price: about $7,600 Cost per page (four colour @ 5 per cent): 7 cents per page. From: HP resellers; Ph: 13 13 47 Internet: www.hp.com

* LEXMARK OPTRA SC 1275

Fusing top features

One of the new breed of colour laser printers, the Optra SC 1275 is a good mix of value for money and features, making it suitable for networked environments needing fast mono and high-quality colour printing.

Built on a Minolta 600dpi engine, the SC 1275 can motor up to 12 pages per minute in mono and up to three in colour. In its standard configuration, the 1275 comes with 16Mb of memory pre-installed.

The 1275 Pro includes the Ethernet network option and bumps the memory up to 32Mb. Both units are expandable to 192Mb. There is also an 840Mb hard disk drive interface available for this unit for storage of files and fonts.

Colour print quality is good and superior to the HP Colour LaserJet 5. It is not one of the cheaper printers to run - the list price total on all four toner cartridges is just more than $530. And they do not last as long as other units - the three colour units are rated at 3,500 pages and the black 4,000.

Lexmark's MarkNet S software enables the printer to be supported via Web-based remote management, freeing up your system administrator for more important tasks. In fact, almost every feature of this unit can be controlled by software.

The SC 1275 is the only unit in this round-up that supports PCL 6, which it does in monochrome mode. It supports PCL5c and PostScript for colour, in line with the other models. Overall, this is a good business unit; however, its low-toner cartridge yield may make the Phaser 560 a better alternative for some workplaces. Price: $7,920 Cost per page (four colour @ 5 per cent): 13 cents per page From: Lexmark; Ph: 1800 252 821 Internet: www.lexmark.com