printer and another guide

The Xerox WorkCentre PE120 is a fast machine which includes functions like scanning, faxing, printing and copying. All of these functions are conducted in the most efficient way possible and is an ideal machine for office and business use where the saving of time counts for a lot. Its only drawback is that it copies and prints in black and white only, however it scans and fax in color as well as black and white. It even has a network connectivity which it is highly convenient for office setups.

The maximum paper size it supports is 8.5 x 14 inch, which is just around the average. Its main characteristic is its Postscript3 emulation which includes PE120 and PCL6. Its document feeder works automatically and can hold 50 sheets at a time. It also has the advanced technology of scanning once and printing many copies which again results in saving of time and energy.

It directly scans to PC with a USB port. The first page either scanned or copied comes out in less than 10 seconds of time which is pretty quick. The machines hold as many as 3 paper trays which also include the bypass tray. The bypass tray holds 50 sheets which may include various media types such as envelopes, transparencies or special media. Its paper capacity is extended and thus it can carry about 550 sheets at a time, while at the same time it also has a large duty cycle of up to 15,000 pages per month.

It also has the feature of toll save, which allows savings on call costs, especially long distance calls. Its fax sends and receives high speed messages at the speed of about 33 kbps, which translates to a page every 2 seconds. The JBIG compression feature enables for fax to provide 20% to 80% efficiency in compression which further results in making the transmission faster. It even has toner saver mode faxing for further efficiency.

Its toner cartridges are easily installed in the machine and do not create any problems for users. The cartridges have a long life and can be used for a much longer time than that of other comparable machines.

If you’re after a reasonably priced low use color laser printer, then the Xerox Phaser 6125 might be just what you need. Its relatively small footprint makes it ideal for space conscious users, or home workers.

The dimensions are small, but the printer is quite tall. The single-pass laser working over vertically mounted toner cartridges to save space. The paper tray is at the bottom, and can hold up to 250 sheets. It feeds the paper up and through the printer and deposits the on the top. While there is enough input space for a decent print job, there is no way that the output tray on the top could cope with the whole 250 sheets.

The standard is set high by this machine. Considering the low purchase price, built in networking and decent print quality, this little machine is going to be hard to beat. The control panel is basic to say the least, a simple two-line LCD screen and a couple of buttons. The menu us comprehensive and can provide access to just about all the features. If you don’t like it, the Xerox web interface can also control every aspect of the printer, while also giving information on fault codes and toner status.

Talking of toner, there is a starter cartridge included which is good for around 500 pages, replacements are good value, at around $29 for a 2000 page black, or a 1000 page color cartridge.

Print quality is good for the price. Monochrome prints appear black when they need to, and the grayscale is evenly spread and lacked any noticeable banding. Color images appeared a bit on the red side, but a quick adjustment using the printer web interface remedied that in seconds. Text was great, and images were good at the native 600 dpi. The print quality of the Phaser 6125 is good enough for most situations.

At a speed of up to 12 pages per minute for color and 16 pages for monochrome, the Phaser 6125 isn’t going to be breaking any speed records, but it is perfectly adequate for the low use market it is aimed at. Saying that, this printer has a monthly duty cycle of up to 40,000 pages per month, which is much more than the target market would ever use. I guess it’s nice to have that kind of flexibility, just in case a big print job comes along.

The Phaser 6125 offers solid performance and value for money. It doesn’t excel at anything, but if proficient enough to be a worthy contender in the color laser market.

Continuing the trend of producing good quality laser printers, Xerox released the Phaser 7400. It is a large format color laser printer that has been designed for busy offices or businesses that need fast, high quality copying.

The large format option allows it to print at up to 12 x 18 paper, which is a standard format for artists and graphic designers. Not many other lasers can support paper of that size, certainly not at this price point anyway.

There is a small control panel on the front with one of the clearest and most informative LCD screens on the market. The menu is very intuitive and it’s obvious that a lot of thought went in to designing it. Each menu function is a maximum of three button presses away, and there is also a back button, which saves a lot of time when you choose the wrong function.

Performance-wise the 7400 is pretty good. Print speed is around 35 pages per minute for a typical business document, and color around 32 pages per minute. This isn’t far off the Xerox promotional material, of 36 pages per minute for color, and 40 for black and white.

Print quality is good for both black and white, and color. Text and images are sharp, even down to fine details. There were examples of banding on grayscale images, and a little darkness for color, but overall the quality was good.

The 7400 is network ready, including a built-in Ethernet port. Connecting it to a network was as easy as plugging it in and switching it on. It appeared in our workgroup a couple of minutes later. The included driver package is good, easy to use and worked first time. There were also useful programs in there to add features to it.

The standard paper drawer holds 800 sheets. As this is a large format printer they natively support the larger 12 x 18 in the drawer. This makes a nice change as normally, to print at that size we have to use the manual feeder. Paper capacity can be enlarged to 3000 sheets with additional drawers.

It also includes a hard drive for storing and scheduling large print jobs, a finisher for stapling, hole punching etc, PostScript support, and optional duplex printing to allow for a fully functioning almost commercial printing environment.

Toner is relatively inexpensive, with high yield versions being able to produce around 15000 sheets before needing replacement. Color ones cost more, but also produce more, with an average lifespan of 18000 pages.

This is a good printer for business or those who want to provide commercial printing services on a budget. The Xerox Phaser 7400 puts the company in the fight for a share of the lucrative laser printer market.

On the Workcentre 7525, you can see the page count directly on the screen.  To view the page count (called "impressions") press the Machine Status button, and then select the Billing Information tab.

OVERVIEW: With one of the smallest footprints for a color laser printer, the affordable and network-ready Xerox Phaser 6125 produces fast color prints right out of the box.

PROS:
Weighing in at 46 pounds and a height of 15”, the boxlike Phaser 6125’s has a true 15.5” x 17.5” footprint. Sitting on a normal office table, the 6125 sits at about elbow height.

In less than 14 seconds, the Phaser 6125 will start printing up to 16 black-and-white pages per minute. The selling point of this color laser comes with its speed. Using a single-pass print design, color prints can be as fast as 12ppm.

The 6125 comes with a 250-sheet cassette tray that supports up to legal-size (8½” x 14”) paper without expanding the printer’s footprint. A multi-purpose feed slot is built right into the paper tray for manual feeding transparencies, labels, post cards, envelopes, 3” x 5” postcards, and paper of various bond weights up to 90 lb.

Having built-in Ethernet network support and hi-speed USB, this printer is right at home either in the middle of an office floor or directly connected to a secretary’s computer. The built-in 64MB of printer memory is fixed, but enough for personal and small office printing needs.

The intuitive control panel on the Phaser 6125 has a multi-line LCD Display, plus buttons that make manual control of the printer relatively painless. By default, it immediately shows you the toner levels for each color. The control panel, toner levels, printer information, configuration, emulation, and network settings can be performed.

The printer produces up to 52dB of sound printing, while idling at 26dB. To give you an idea of what that means: 60 decibels is the level of typical conversations and 30 decibels is the level of a quiet room. You don’t want to have this printer stationed in a conference room chugging away when a meeting is in progress. But, when placed in the copy room or in the middle of a busy office floor, any printing noises will blend in with the background.

CONS:
One of the sacrifices of a color printer is print speeds. However the Phaser 6125 has unusually slow print speeds even in B&W mode at a 600 x 600 dpi resolution. While the color print speed is impressive, a business or office that prints mostly in monochrome should invest in a separate monochrome laser printer instead of relying on the 6125 for doing both jobs.

INK / TONER NEEDS:
The toner cartridges that come with the Phaser 6125 are only good for about 500 pages (or a lot fewer pages if you plan on doing a lot of printing photographic images). The black toner has double the print capacity of the 1,000-page color toners. To save on costs toner combo-packages are available