One-pass laser printers speed up color printing

Zatni Arbi Columnist, Jakarta, zatni@cbn.net.id

Color laser printers used to need a lot of investment, take a lot of time to print and be a challenge to use. That was why when PT Harrisma Agung Jaya, a distributor of Fuji Xerox Phaser printers for Indonesia, offered me the chance to try out their fast, easy- to-use, one-pass color laser printer, I got pretty excited. I agreed, and I was given a week to play around with their demo unit before it would be taken to another customer for testing.

In the past, laser printers had to run four passes to print a color page. During each pass, one of the four colors -- cyan, magenta, yellow and black -- was placed on the paper. This was the reason it took the printers so much longer to print color images as opposed to just black text. In single-pass printers, all the four colors are printed on the medium at the same time, significantly reducing the time required to print a page.

Xerox launched two new color printers earlier last month, Phaser 8200 and Phaser 6200. These two printer were meant to drive the use of color in office documents. The Phaser 8200 uses solid ink, while the Phaser 6200 uses color laser toner. There is not much price difference between the two, as the 8200 is being offered at prices starting with US$2,050 while the 6200 carries a price tag starting at $2,100. I chose the laser for my test drive. My feeling is that workgroup users and office managers will prefer the more familiar laser than the solid-ink technology.

Speed daemons

These two printers are quite capable. Both can print at a speed of 16 pages per minute (ppm) in color or in black and white. The laser printer has a very high resolution, which is 2400 dots per inch (DPI). Fuji Xerox recommends that you never try to lift the printer alone -- that should tell you how big and heavy it is.

Phaser 8200 uses a 300 MHz processor, while Phaser 6200 uses a PowerPC 500 MHz processor. A feature that Fuji Xerox boasts for Phaser 8200 is that it can start churning out printed documents within nine seconds after it is turned on.

Phaser 6200 can be connected to an IP network using its Ethernet port. I used the parallel interface for my tests, but the printer also has a USB port. A hard disk with a 10 GB capacity can be added to spool the printer jobs when the printer is used as a network printer, along with a maximum of 512 MB of RAM. Installation of the driver, which came on a CD-ROM, was quick and straightforward. Automatic duplex printing capability is optional.

Harrisma did not supply me with printed documentation. That posed no problem at all. Not only was the printer easy to install, its documentation can also be printed off the printer's memory. The menus on the printer were quite comprehensive, although I did not tinker with them very much. The backlighted LCD, which displays the menus, is a bit too small for people with limited vision like myself, although the characters are quite sharp. Navigation is done through a set of six control buttons next to the LCD panel. The power button is located a bit too far to the rear. It took me some time to locate it without the help of a manual.

Decent results

I tested the printer using the ASUS L2 notebook that I had tested earlier. Printing a whole page photo just using Windows image viewer resulted in a very acceptable print. I was pleasantly surprised, because I did the test using some JPEG files sent by a friend via e-mail. I did not expect the result to be of this quality. The printer produced a lot of noise when it was working, though. Other important features include Adobe Postscript 2.0 printing language, TekColor Corrections for optimal color results. Its four print quality modes are Standard, Enhanced, Photo and Draft. Because it has its own IP address, we can run diagnostics and device configuration remotely using a browser.

The toner is a plastic-based powder. When I took the toner tube containers out, I found a lot of this powder underneath. The unit I tested had been circulated among a number of other reviewers, and I guess Harrisma had not had the chance to clean the unit.

Overall, I like the Phaser 6200DX that I tested. Its 60,000 pages per month duty cycle shows that it was intended to work like a horse. Clearly, both the Phaser 6200 and Phaser 8200 have a few strong competitors, among which are the comparably priced HP LaserJet 4600 as well as another single-pass color laser printer from Matsushita-Panasonic. What I appreciate the most about these new printers is that they represent a breakthrough in office color printing in terms of speed and price.

If we want a true photo quality prints, the best bet is still the specialized photo printers, of course. A laser color printer is not meant to reproduce photos, they are meant to add colors to office documents to make it easier for us to highlight our messages in our memos, or impress our clients with our marketing collaterals that do not efficiently lend themselves to bulk printing. A fast and affordable printer like these two Phasers are highly welcome.