“Middling in price, performance, and design, this color laser printer suffers from spotty documentation.”

This is a tagline of Melissa Riofrio’s reviewed of Ricoh Aficio SP C222DN Color Laser Printer for Washington Post. She says the Ricoh’s Aficio SP C222DN, being a lower-cost color laser printers, demonstrates some of the challenges of lower-costing. This midpriced printer performs adequately but could use some refinement.

First problems started with the installation. Instructions for physical setup are wordless (it’s comics-like poster) but pretty clear. It says to proceed to the “Software Installation Guide for Network Connection” for further instructions, but those are dreadfully inadequate, missing steps and key details. Worse, a document covering USB installation is available only on the included CD, making it less than readily available. The rest of the documentation, available in both HTML and PDF, is good.

The design was also found confusing at various points. The control panel’s few buttons perform some functions through obscure key combinations, and the printer has no LCD to spell them out for you. The foldout front panel lacks handles and feels flimsy, as does the 250-sheet main input tray. Extending the tray for legal-size paper involves a finicky pinch-and-pull process; the handle for pulling out the tray is in the same area as the manual-feed slot, too, which can be confusing. The top-exiting, 150-sheet output tray is straightforward, at least. An optional 500-sheet input tray is available. Automatic duplexing is standard, which is nice.

In conducted tests text documents churned out at a speed of 17.4 pages per minute (ppm) and graphics pieces output at 2.4 ppm (at best). Text looked dark and precise; but graphics we printed on plain paper suffered from a slightly faded look, as well as graininess or moir patterns. Use of glossy laser paper fixed the problem, but only partially.

Toner capacities of the SP C222DN are low, which means high consumables costs. The machine comes with starter black, cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges of 1000-page yield. The standard-size cartridges last for 2000 pages each and cost $55 for black (2.7 cents per page) and $100 for each color (5 cents per color, per page). The cartridges are easy to install and replace, but the transfer placement could have been better (it lies exposed during the process.)

Ricoh’s Aficio SP C222DN is targeted for small offices or workgroups, but for its spotty installation documentation and inferior design elements miss the mark, it leaves much to be desired; such users deserve a more friendly experience.

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Regretfully, we cannot review each and every printer, but what we can do is to turn our readers to reviews we find interesting and helpful.

One such review is at CBSnew.com: tech analyst Larry Magid examines consumer-targeted Brother HL-4070CDW Color Laser Printer:

Until the mid-’90s, if you wanted to print something in color, you had to use an inkjet printer. Laser was for black and white only. Then in 1994, CMS came out with
a color laser printer but it was priced at $10,000.

What a difference a bit more than a decade makes. Today you can get personal
color laser printers for less than $400. And based on my recent experience with a couple of inexpensive Brother printers, the quality can be remarkably good.

It is a good news to hear that color laser printers like Brother HL-4070CDW are becoming available for home use. For now, laser printing is not very suitable for printing photos for a scrapbook, one of the pros for owning a home printer. However, color laser may have other advantages for home user. Reading the article you can see that for yourself.

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We are back in town! Two weeks of complete isolation from computer world have left me feeling hungry for news. Let’s see what has been going on in printing industry.

Canon announced two new models: imageCLASS MF4270 and PIXMA mini320. Canon imageCLASS MF4270 is a network-ready multifunction laser printer with a built-in duplex unit, designed for small and home offices. Apart from regular printing, the duplex print applies to incoming faxes and copying documents.

Canon imageCLASS MF4270 can print and copy at speed of up to 21 pages-per-minute (ppm) at up to 1200 x 600 dpi resolution. Fax unit feature 8 one-touch speed dial numbers, 100 coded speed dial numbers and 256-page memory capacity. The printer uses Canon Single Cartridge System, which means toner and drum are combined together in one unit.

Canon PIXMA mini320 is another compact photo printer “to bring to life those images captured at important moments”. According to Canon, this is the first compact photo printer in the brand’s model range to print images up to 5×7 inches. PIXMA mini320 feature 2.5” color LCD screen with wide viewing angles, and the Easy-Scroll Wheel interface. The printer uses Canon’s ChromaLife100 system that provides 100-year-lifespan of pictures printed with genuine inks.

Hewlett Packard respondes with introduction on a new multifunction inkjet printer. HP Photosmart C5283 All-in-One combines printer, scanner and copier in one unit, so it can scan, copy and print black-and-white and color images. Bundled HP software allows printing web pages without cut-off edges. Photosmart C5283 support print directly onto CDs/DVDs, and from most common flash cards. The printer is fueled with 6 color HP Vivera Inks in separate cartridges.

HP keeps on exploiting the idea of the Web being a storage for documents for printing. Now is the time for mobile phones to come into play. Having been developing for several months, one of HP laboratories gave birth to a new service named Cloudprint. This software makes it possible to share, store and print documents using a mobile phone.

Here is how it works. Users first “print” their documents to a HP server connected to the Internet. The system assigns them a code, and transmits that code via SMS back to user. Later, using the SMS, it is possible to retrieve the documents by entering the user’s phone number and the code on the Cloudprint Web site. The documents can then be retrieved in PDF format, ready to be printed at a nearby printer. The service will include a directory service that will show the location of publicly available printers on Google Maps.

Next is Epson reporting. The Japanese company launched three new printers ranging in features and prices. The first one is Epson CX9400Fax, a multifunctional printer that also copies, scans and faxes. The device features built-in 33.6 Kbps fax modem and 30-page document feeder. The Epson CX8400 can print borderless 4×6 images in 26 seconds and monochrome documents at the speed of 32 ppm. The basic model, CX7400, produces black text pages at 28 ppm and 4×6 borderless color prints in 27 seconds.

And now Epson presents something really interesting – world’s fastest laser-quality printer! Epson C120 is the fastest laser-quality document ink jet printer around. It can print as fast as 37 ppm for black and 20 ppm for color, obviously, in fastest (draft) mode. Epson claims that this performance makes the C120 leader among ink jet printers under $160 in terms of black and white printing, while offering about twice the speed of printers in the sub-$100 segment.

Priced for only $90, Epson C120 may seem a cheap purchase. However, beware of ink costs. Black ink cartridges for the C120 are currently selling for about $20, while a color cartridge is about $38. Black and color cartridges are rated to print 250 and 350 pages accordingly, and you can count on spending at least $200 on ink for every 1000 pages. These are the cost comparable to owning an economical color laser printer, so think it over before buying the printer.

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Konica Minolta introduces bizhub C451, a next model in a series of next-generation bizhub products. This multifunction machine combines printer, copier, fax, and scanner, and provides a networked solution for high-end office workgroups and applications.

Bizhub C451 features such Konica Minolta’s technologies as Emperon Print Controller, Simitri HD (High Definition) Color Polymerized Toner, and Biometric Authentication Unit, which scans, encrypts, stores the vein patterns of a finger and then uses them to distinguish individuals.

The multifunction has a proprietary ‘360 degree design’ that makes the machine look nice from any angle of view. Remarkable part of new printer exterior is a large 8,5-inch color LCD. Also, Konica Minolta Bizhub C451 offers fast color output of 45 pages per minute; Standard Automatic Duplex Unit for double-sided printing and copying, and four paper drawers making up 3,650-sheet capacity.

Other features include:

• Exceptionally fast warm up and fast first copy time
• Tandem laser print head with polygon mirror
• Internet Fax and desktop faxing
• Lower temperature fusing, ultra-fine carrier particles and higher purity materials, and
• many more.

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Fast, capable and good at output quality. Isn’t it what you would expect from a HP color laser printer. New HP Color LaserJet CP4005dn Printer is just like that.

It has paper capacity of 600 pages (500-sheet drawer and a 100-sheet multipurpose tray), which is enough for the small to medium-size office. Want more? Then there is an optional 500-sheet tray. The printer has duplexer unit for double side printing, and offers 80,000 pages of monthly duty cycle.

HP Color LaserJet CP4005dn can print at speeds of up 30 pages per minute for monochrome and 25 ppm for color. Printing photos is fast too - 10 seconds for 4×6 in. and 14 seconds for 8×10 in. picture on average.

Text quality is good enough for almost any business documents. Graphics quality is pretty good for any internal business use, and such things such as trifold brochures and other handout materials.

The printer is rather heavy, it takes two to handle it. However, setting up is easy, and the HP toner cartridges are already inside. HP Color LaserJet CP4005dn uses 4 cartridges - CB400A, CB401A, CB402A and CB403A - that are already availavble at TonerCartridgeDepot.com

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