Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing Quality, no need for proprietary inks/drivers, June 6, 2007
Out of the Box
The printer weighs about 60 pounds, get it out of the box, pop in the inks. Essentially, the consumable ink for these printers comes in blocks of wax. The blocks of wax cost about 10 bucks a piece/per color in volume when you buy the generic (since its literally just wax with no proprietary/moving parts whatsoever, why not buy generic?) and have a yield of about 1000 pages each. You can stack them up to four high. Simply drop it in the slot (the blocks are formed so that it's impossible to put the wrong color in the hole, or put the block in the wrong way). Then plug it in and let it warm up (takes around 15 minutes to melt enough wax). It will then print out a config document
Functionality
What really drew me to this printer was the wide support and lack of proprietary components (wax blocks are very easy to replicate), and the formats supported are no different. The printer comes with 256MB of RAM, a USB and ethernet connection. It supports proprietary drivers (comes with a CD with WIndows and Mac drivers), also Postscript 3, which is great for linux users and also, mac users who do graphics work (the PS support makes this printer smoke any HP printer in the pricerange) . It does 30 PPM and also does not heat the paper like laser printers do (you can use glossy papers an other stuff that will melt in lasers). Also, I have gotten 110lb Xerox Index card stock to load from the paper tray (which is specified as having a 32lb max)
Print Quality
Print quality is great, but not photo quality. The texture of the ink is great. It feels raised, but also waxy, almost like the surface was coated with crayons. This gives any document a glossy sheen. The print quality is a tad better than the color lasers I have tried, and better than inkjets at documents, but falls short of inkjet quality when talking about optimal conditions (absolute best printing quality and heavy glossy paper). Essentially, not photo quality (by a hair), but fantastic at text, graphics, etc
Pros/Cons
+Phenomenal quality at a level above normal color lasers
+Almost no proprietary parts
+Low cost per page (.04 i read at some website)
+Postscript support
+30PPM color
+Few paper restrictions compared to Lasers
-High Initial Cost
-If printer is turned off, ink has to be reheated, and this sucks ink
-Large, energy hungry
-More for high volume printers (im going to be recouping about $400 of the cost within two months by charging some clients for printing)
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47 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great for business, be careful for home, August 16, 2007
This is a great business-oriented printer. Print quality is very good and it is very fast after is warmed up (10 min or so from power-on). No complaints there whatsoever.
Be careful if getting it for a home office. Every time the printer gets turned off, it dumps the hot ink into the overflow container, so you have to keep it on all the time unless you can afford $70 ink refills every other week. The problem with keeping it on all the time is that it's very noisy even in standby mode which is distracting in a home office. If you get it for home, I'd recommend setting it up in a different room than you work in.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great printer, but know how to get the most out of it, March 20, 2008
There's already been good information about this printer and it's clearly great for business use. However, I think it can be good for home offices as well - as long as you do a good amount of color printing and know how to minimize the costs.
1) ALWAYS leave it on - a lot of ink is wasted every time it's switched off since the heated ink is dumped out.
2) Since has to be on, make sure to put it into "Power Save Mode" whenever it won't be used for awhile. This mode uses 56W versus 124W in standby. It takes longer to warm up, but you aren't wasting energy.
3) Use generic ink. This is the major selling point of this printer for people who need to print a lot of color images. There's really no need for Xerox ink because Media Sciences ink is nearly indistinguishable. The cost per page for color prints is much lower than laser printers using the generic ink.
Bottom line - if you print a lot in color and are tired of expensive toner cartridges, this printer will save you a lot of money since you can use generic ink and get the same results.
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