Category: Printers and Scanners

Introduction

I am reviewing the Canon PIXMA MG-6150 multifunction inkjet printer which is positioned as the top inkjet multifunction in Canon’s lineup that isn’t equipped with fax functionality.

Prices

Printer

Recommend Retail Price: AUD$299

Optional Extras:

Bluetooth module: BU-30 $69

Inks and Toners

The printer itself

This machine comes in a piano-black finish and has the user-interface LCD lying flat with the top of the lid. But when you turn it on, the LCD screen lights up and various touch buttons light up in a manner that isn’t dissimilar to either the way a pinball machine or the dial panel on a mid-1970s stereo receiver lights up.

As you use the printer in its various operating modes, some of the buttons light up as required. These buttons are actually touch-panel buttons which will make you think somewhat of operating some of the mid-1980s B&O hi-fi equipment, especially the Beogram CDX CD player which had this similar kind of touch panel. As well, the main display is able to come up at an angle by pushing on a button located behind the display.

The display can come up at an angle

The printer lit up in operation mode

Walk-up printing

The printer has various “walk-up” functions like copying and printing from camera cards. As well, it can print from cameras using PictBridge, which I have used to print “proof-prints” of the pictures that I took for this review. It can even print PDF documents from USB memory sticks. But its handling of this function can be very fussy at times, especially if you use a PDF prepared by a desktop-publishing program.

As well, there is the ability to create your own stationery like notepaper, graph paper and music manuscript paper. For this latter paper type, you can turn out 12-stave pages which is a lot more flexible for most music tasks like “vocal and piano”, organ or “four-part harmony” music.

Computer functions

The software that is supplied on the CD-ROM can be very tricky to load and can think that there isn’t the printer available. But I have visited Canon’s Website and downloaded the latest version of the software and this has loaded properly and discovered the printer as it should.

The device-initiated scan-to-PC software leave a lot to be desired. The user interface looks very pale and confusing and you can only allocate one path for device-initiated scan jobs. This would be to place the files in a particular folder on the host computer or to attach them to an email in Outlook. As well, it doesn’t support other email clients for scan-to-email. You can determine how the document should be scanned from the printer but there are two forms already set – A4 document to PDF or 4×6 snapshot to JPEG.

Paper handling

Paper loading paths in this printer

The paper handling is very similar to some of the other high-end A4-capable PIXMA printers like the direct-connect MP-610 and the fax-enabled network-connectable MX-870 that I previously reviewed on this site. Here, the printer has a front-loadable tray for A4 plain paper as well as the standard rear-mount paper feed tray. This means that you can keep a reserve of ordinary paper on hand in the printer yet use the back path for glossy paper and other special media.

Also, these printers have a fabulous auto-duplex function that has very little registration problems for double-sided documents and can work “to the edge” as far as margins go. This would put the double-sided printing function beyond satisfying the need to avoid wast and in to a league where you can work on both sides for your desktop-publishing needs.

As well, there is a CD printing attachment that slides in the front but you have to flip down a tray that is deeply hidden there. There isn’t any storage for the CD printing attachment so you could then easily lose that part if you occasionally print on CDs.

Printing reliability and quality

The printer is very reliably as far as the mechanism is concerned and could handle large print jobs very easily.

Its document-printing quality is what you would expect for a high-end consumer inkjet unit. When it prints photos, the pictures come out strong on saturation but do lack a bit of definition.

6 ink tanks in this printer

This is even though it uses a six-colour ink system whereas most inkjets that I have reviewed use either four colours or five colours if they are “photo-rated”. Sometimes it may be true that the number of colours in a photo-rated inkjet may not yield particular improvements.

Points of improvement

The printer could benefit from an improved scan-to-PC program which gives the user greater choice on how the image should be handled. As well, it could support the ability to define more than one path for scan-to-PC jobs initiated from the control panel.

As well, Canon could supply high-capacity cartridges for these printers as an extra-cost option so that users are covered if they have a huge run of print jobs from the printer.

Conclusion and Placement Notes

I would recommend this printer as being on my shortlist of printers worth deploying as a home-office or secondary-use (study) multifunction printer for the home if you don’t value faxing or email-to-print.

Most, if not all of the network-capable all-in-one printers that I have reviewed on this site have support for network-based scanning. This includes the ability to start a scan job from the printer’s control surface and have the job sent to the computer and handled in a preferred way. But this function isn’t handled in a smooth and reliable manner as judging from my experience when connecting the many different printers to my computer.

The current situation

This function is typically managed by a manufacturer-supplied “scan-monitor” program that is part of the “printer solutions package” and has to be up and running before you start your scan job from the device.

What can typically happen is that this functionality can end up being dependent on the way this “scan-monitor” program behaves. Here, you may end up not being able to scan via the network or not being able to start the scan job at the printer’s control surface. In some cases, you may be able to use the operating system’s scanning infrastructure such as Windows Image Acquisition, rather than the manufacturer’s scan tools to do a scan job,

Why integrate device-initiated scanning for networked hardware in to the operating system

The operating systems could support device-initiated scanning by offering functionality like “scan paths” that are available to each of the devices. Here, the devices could then expose the “scan paths” that are available to them based on their capabilities like colour scanning, automatic document feeder, etc. This means that if two scanners have the same capabilities, they have the same scan pathos for each computer endpoint.

Multiple-machine environments

This could include the ability to identify a particular computer as a destination for the scanned files; as well as allowing applications rather than the manufacturer’s particular applications to be the endpoints. This could allow for applications like OCR, bookkeeping, raster-to-vector and others to simply become “available” at the printer’s control panel rather than having to work the application’s user interface or find image files left by the scan monitor in order to benefit from the scanned work.

Here, it may cater for realities associated with the home or small-business network where there are many computers and, in some cases, two or more multifunction printers. This may be brought on by the use of a premium-level machine with all the bells and whistles like the HP Photosmart Premium Fax C410a or the Canon PiXMA MX-870 being installed in the home office and an economy-level machine like the HP B110a Wireless-E installed in the study, kitchen or bungalow and used as a “second” printer.

Efficient operation

Another obvious benefit of the scan-monitor function being integrated in the operating system is that it works in an efficient manner. This will free up memory and other resources and allow for a quick response from the destination computer. This is compared to a significant time delay occurring when one instigates a scan job from the multifunction printer’s control surface as the scan monitor starts up and handles the scan job.

Points of innovation

The operating system working as a scan monitor can open up paths of innovation when it comes to imaging-driven applications. An example of this could include the use of the multifunction printer’s control surface for entering job-specific information. This is more so as these multifunction printers come equipped with D-pad, numeric keypads and touchscreens; as well as graphical screens and menu-driven operation. Applications of this could include entering the file name for “scan-to-file” operations, determining the nature and amount of an expense when scanning receipts in to a bookkeeping program or entering photograph-specific information when scanning a photograph.

It can also open up another path of innovation in having network-attached-storage devices become scan destinations without the need to remember FTP or other file-path locations for these devices. This can help with activities like archiving of paper documents or scanning of pictures to be made available on the DLNA Home Media Network.

Conclusion

Once we move the workload of device-initiated scanning to the Windows, Macintosh or Linux operating system, it can then yield many improvements to people who scan hard-copy material using the current crop of multifunction printers.

Introduction

I am reviewing the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet Pro CM1415fnw colour laser multifunction printer which is an entry-level colour laser multifunction printer that is enabled for HP’s ePrint and Apple’s AirPrint “driver-free” network printing technologies.

ePrint functionality is available with a firmware update available after December 13 2010.

Prices

All prices are quoted in Australian dollars as GST-inclusinve recommended retail price at time of publishing.

Printer

The machine’s standard price $599

Inks and Toners

There are no fees or charges associated with the HP ePrint service.

The printer itself

User interface

The touchscreen control panel is the only user interface for this printer

This printer has a user interface that breaks away from the typical multifunction printer that I have reviewed. Here, it uses a colour touchscreen user-interface as the main control panel. The only real hardware switch that exists on the printer is the power on-off switch on the side.

I would say that this has been brought on through the popularity of touchscreen smartphones amd tablet MIDs based on the Apple iOS, Android and  Windows Phone 7 platforms. The user interface also is augmented with quick-navigation touch-buttons that light up as required in a “pinball-machine” manner so you can get to the home screen, browse pages on some menus or cancel an operation.

This has allowed HP to apply design flexibility when it comes to integrating the ePrint print-apps functionality which I will be talking about later. As well, HP are able to use a smaller control panel area on a desktop laser multifunction printer while avoiding the problem of reducing the machine’s ergonomics and useability. 

Network connectivity

The printer can work with Ethernet or 802.11g WPA2 Wi-Fi networks. When you enrol the printer in to a Wi-Fi network and you need to enter a WPA-PSK passphrase, you have an alpbabetic keypad on the touchscreen to enter this detail. If the Wi-Fi router or access point supports WPS “quick-setup”, this printer does support the functionality.

It is also worth noting that if you connect the printer to a network via the Ethernet connection, this automatically overrides the Wi-Fi connection. This will mean that you don’t have to do any further configuration if you find that Wi-Fi is too unreliable and you decide to connect it to an Ethernet or HomePlug connection instead.

There could be an option for the user to set up the printer to become a Wi-Fi access point if the printer is connected to the network via an Ethernet connection. This can come in handy if the printer is used in an area where there is insufficient signal strength for the wireless network and it is connected to the network via an Ethernet or HomePlug link.

Walk-up functions

Copy

This unit is capable of working as a basic laser-based colour copier but as the ID copy function as its unique feature.

ID copy

One feature that is peculiar to this machine so far is an “ID copy function” where you can copy both sides of a small document like a business card, ID card, passport or endorsed cheque on to one side of an A4 sheet of paper. This feature has become more important as most business transactions are increasingly requiring one of the parties to present an identification document.

Here, you place one side of the document on the left side of the scanner glass then touch START. The machine will scan that one side, then you turn the document over and place it on the right side of the scanner glass and touch “Done”. Then the machine will turn out a 1:1 copy of both sides of that document.

At the moment, this function doesn’t support the ability to scan both sides of an ID document on to one file or send both sides of an ID document as a fax.

Book-friendly automatic-document-feeder lid

This printer has the typical automatic document feeder that is part of the lid, But it has been also designed so that the lid is able to lift up rather than be hinged in the conventional manner. This can come in handy when you copy, fax from or scan bound documents like books.

Fax

The fax subsystem uses flash memory rather than RAM to store faxes that are to be sent or received faxes. This effectively eliminates the vulnerability of received or pending faxes to a power failure which is a common issue with most fax equipment. It therefore supports a comprehensive “fax vault” function which allows the user to release received faxes upon entry of a password, thus avoiding the situation of confidential faxes falling in to the wrong hands.

There are a few limitations however such as the inability to send colour faxes and no support for T.37 or 7.38 Internet faxing. This latter function would allow the fax to work with IP-based telephony setups that are going to become the norm over the next few years.

USB port and walk-up printing / scanning

The USB port on the front of the machine allows one to print a document or photo held on a USB thumb drive or scan to a USB thumb drive. This function could be augmented with a card slot for memory cards or PictBridge “print-from-camera” functionality.

It doesn’t seem to allow the user to start a scan job which ends up at a nominated computer from the control panel. This is a feature which I consider a serious omission because all of the network-enabled multifunction printers that I have reviewed other than this machine do allow the user to specify which computer a scan job ends up at and what application is to benefit from the image.

Quick-forms and HP Print Apps

This unit has a “quick forms” functionality for printing out stationery like graph paper, ruled paper for handwriting, checklists and music manuscript paper. Like the other HP printers, the graph paper and music paper is relatively limited in what you can specify like 5mm or 1/8” for graph paper; or 10 staves in portrait or 8 staves in landscape for music paper.

The HP ePrint setup allows users to download “print apps” which allow a user to print out documents like newspapers, stationery, colouring pages and the like from the printer’s control panel. It also gives the printer a unique email address which works as an “email-to-print” service in a similar vein to the previously-reviewed HP Photosmart B110a. The “email-to-print” service could support a “fax vault” function to delay release of jobs unless a code is entered in to the machine.

I would like to see this printer become equipped with functionality which allows controlled or accounted ePrint job release so it can become a public printer for use with wireless hotspots and other public networks. Here, it could then be feasible for the organisation who runs the hotspot to charge for printouts to recover running costs, use a branded “drop-box” Web page for users to submit print jobs to print or even integration with hotel billing systems.

This issue, alongside the availabilty of many quality walk-up printing apps for this printer class, will be likely to appear as the ePrint platform matures over time.

Computer functions

Driver Installation and Performance

The printer comes with driver CDs for the main operating systems and supports Windows 7 and MacOS X Snow Leopard. It could use the same installation method that was used with the LaserJet M1210 Series multifunction printer where the driver software was kept on the flash memory rather than on CDs that come with the machine.

The drivers offer the basic functionality expected for a small-business printer and don’t offer a confidential-print mode where jobs can he released at the printer using a user-determined password.

Printer performance and image quality

The printer does work efficiently when a print job comes in while it is in standby mode. Here, it will take 12 seconds from when you start a document-based print job at your computer for it to start printing. Then it takes 5 seconds per page to print the job.

It will take a longer time to print highly-detailed photos or other bitmaps and ends up powering down the print engine between each page,  but is quick with text-based material.

When the printer turns out photographic material on plain paper, the images come out darker with colours that  are saturated stronger in comparison to the other colour laser printers that I have tested. The dark print output is a similar issue with laser printers when they print this material on plain paper.

Other issues of note here

The printer is likely to jam if the paper is restocked while it is printing, a common practice that most people do if the printer runs out of paper during the print job. Here, you have to wait until the pages stop coming out of the printer and the motor stops before adding paper during a print job or fax-receive even if the machine’s display shows the “paper-out” message.

Like a lot of printers that I have used and reviewed, this printer could benefit from more flash memory especially as the cost of this kind of memory comes down.

A problem I have noticed with this printer, along with other Hewlett-Packard LaserJet printers is that you can’t buy a “high-capacity” toner cartridge for these printers. This may be of limitation to users who either want to run high-capacity cartridges for reduced “per-page” printing costs or avoid the need to frequently buy and reload toner cartridges in their machines. It may also affect users who are used to inkjet printers that have high-capacity cartridges as an option or users who like to run standard cartridges but need to run high-capacity cartridges for intense print runs.

Conclusion and Placement Notes

This printer may come in handy as an organisation’s first colour-laser multifunction printer or as a low-duty “quality laser” secondary multifunction printer like a reception-desk unit. The unit’s “fax vault” function could appeal to organisations who handle confidential data but have contract staff coming through the premises “out of hours”.

It wouldn’t work well as a primary printer on a site where many jobs have to be turned out in succession.  The lack of an auto-duplex mechanism would impair its ability as a publishing printer and would reduce its “green” credentials a bit.

Therefore I would find that this colour laser printer can become a difficult option to consider for an entry-level colour laser multifunction printer for a small business especially as the high-end colour inkjet multifunctions that are pitched at thsi class of user are  approaching it for speed, quality and print economy.

Introduction

I am reviewing the Brother MFC-9840CDW colour laser multifunction printer which is pitched as a general high-throughput document “workhorse” for a small to medium business.

Prices

Printer

RRP: $1599

Optional Extras:

High-capacity secondary paper tray: $299

Inks and Toners

The printer itself

Network connectivity

This machine can connect to a network using Ethernet cable or 802.11g Wi-Fi wireless. When you enter the WPA-PSK network password, you can use the numeric keypad to enter it “SMS-style”. I have tested it on Wi-Fi wireless and it hasn’t “gone off the radar” on the network even if it goes in to energy-save mode. Still, I would prefer printers like this one to be connected to am Ethernet or HomePlug powerline network rather than using a wireless network.

User interface

The printer uses a bitmap monochrome display which is backlit using a white light and it can make the display easier to read. As well, the typefaces for the display are easy to read even for people with limited sight. The keyboard is also laid out in a logical manner and is easy to read.

Control panel

Control panel with LCD display lit - easy to read

Fax functionality and IP-faxing

The unit has regular support for Super G3 colour faxing over the regular telephone line service to a standard of a business-class fax machine.  This unit can only accept fax documents from the scanner or a computer which uses the “print-to-fax” driver supplied by Brother.

It has inherent support for email-based (T.37) IP-fax operation as well as regular Super G3 colour faxing over phone lines. This is whether it works as a receiving / transmitting endpoint or as an “off-ramp” to regular fax machines. Users can enter their destination email addresses from the control panel by using the numeric keypad in a manner similar to entering text on a mobile phone. But, as I have mentioned before in the Brother interview and an article on IP-based faxing, this feature is very hard to provision and use. The owner needs to establish a separate email address for best results as well as know the SMTP and POP3 details for their email service. Also, at the moment, it doesn’t support any colour “fax-over-email” functionality because as far as I know, this standard doesn’t have any support for colour transmissions.

When you fax from the unit, there is twenty buttons for one-touch dialling but there is also a “shift” key to gain access to a further twenty fax numbers for one-touch dialling. This also works in addition to a large “speed-dial” registry for other regularly-used fax numbers. This registry can also handle email addresses for T.37-compliant IP-based faxing as an alternative to regular telephone numbers.

Printing colour photographs from a digital camera

The unit doesn’t have a colour LCD display nor does it have SD card slots for printing of images from digital-camera cards. But it uses an up-front USB port which allows you to print images from PictBridge-enabled digital cameras, camcorders and mobile phones. The same port can be used to print TIFF, PDF, JPEG and XPS files from USB memory keys but you would have to know your desired image’s or document’s file name and where it is on the USB memory key.

When you print photographs, the pictures come out rather dark and this may be a consequence when a colour laser printer is used to do this job on plain paper. It can be good enough when you need “there-and-then” hard copy of pictures on a digital camera. As well, like all other multifunction printers you aren’t able to send pictures by email or fax from the USB slot or PictBridge.

Scanner and automatic document feeder

The scanner uses a conventional fluorescent lamp to illuminate the document rather than the LED “bar” used in all of the other multifunction printers that I have reviewed. This may yield benefits by providing even lighting for scanning the work but can be requiring replacement on a regular interval for a busy machine.

There is a double-sided automatic document feeder but I have noticed that it has some problems in its use. Here, it can cause some documents to “buckle” up when they are being turned over and this behaviour is more so with older documents that are being scanned. This behaviour is also highlighted with the access panel at the top of the automatic document feeder “creeping open” during the duplex cycle. The ADF has a separate slot where the document partially comes out during the “turnover” cycle. It is also worth knowing that it takes 17 seconds / page to scan both sides of a regular office document.

The reason I am paying attention to this is because most businesses may want to use a double-sided automatic document feeder to expedite the scanning of documents for electronic archiving or optical-character-recognition. Similarly, they may want to use this feature to fax or copy both sides of a document.

Duplex automatic document feeder with narrow slot for paper to emerge when "turned over"

Printing

The printer is very reliable although, because it uses an older colour-laser print engine, the cost of replacement toner cartridges is more expensive than the HL-4150 machine that I reviewed previously.

Another penalty of the older mechanism design is a longer duplex-print cycle where only one page at a time can be printed on both sides. Other than that, the printer is very reliable especially when it comes to large print jobs. Infact I have sent through a single-side print of a 225-page document then followed it with the same document printed double-sided and the printer worked very smoothly.

Limitations and Points of Improvement

For a machine of the price range, it could benefit from a colour LCD display and could also benefit from a memory card reader for “ad-hoc” printing from digital camera memory cards. The automatic documet feeder could do with some improvement for a high-duty-cycle type especially when it comes to reliability when doing a double-sided scan of documents printed on older paper.

It, like most other fax-enabled multifunctions, could have support for a “fax-from-mixed-source” function where a monochrome or colour fax job to a single destination could be constructed from document pages scanned via the automatic document feeder;  document pages scanned directly on the scanner glass (such as bound or stapled documents and till receipts) and / or digital images from a digital camera or user-attached flash storage.

Conclusion and Placement Notes

This multifunction printer does work well if you intend to use it as a printer for many short-run colour jobs or use it as a high-traffic high-usage machine and not do much in the way of archiving older paper documents to electronic form.

The printer could be cheaper to run as far as materials are concerned if a business expects to buy or specify it for use as the only document centre for their operations.

Introduction

I am reviewing the Brother HL-4150CDN colour laser printer which is a dedicated printer based on Brother’s latest colour laser-printing “engine”.

There is a more-expensive “deluxe” variant of this printer available as the HL-4570CDW and this machine is  equipped with 802.11g/n WPS-enabled wireless networking out of the box.

Prices

Printer

RRP: AUD$599

Optional Extras:

High-capacity secondary paper tray: $249

Inks and Toners

All prices quoted in Australian Dollars with all taxes inclusive.

The printer itself

The local control console is based around a small LCD user-interface display which shows approximately how much toner there is left as well as the printer’s status. There is a group of buttons used for various functions like walk-up printing, and print-job management.

Control panel detail

The printer has a USB host port on the front for walk-up printing from a USB memory key. It can print PDF or XPS documents or JPEG and TIFF pictures. You have to use the LCD display to select the document or picture to print from and this can be difficult if you don’t know it by folder location and filename. This is something you have to do as soon as you insert the USB memory key in to the port because it will show the first file in the list of files that you can print when that happens. This function could be improved on by providing PictBridge functionality to print from digital cameras or mobile phones using the camera’s control surface.  <optional detail on USB port>

It also supports “confidential job release” where you can send the job to the printer but it isn’t printed out unless you are at the machine. The small keypad makes this function more difficult to operate because you have to “pick ‘n’ choose” numbers to enter the document-release password. This could be improved on by use of the USB HID device class to support the connection of a keyboard or numeric keypad to the USB port for entering this password.

Similarly, this same USB port could be used to connect USB flash storage for print jobs so as to provide increased print-queue capacity and fail-safe printing; or a Bluetooth radio module to allow a user to send print jobs from their phone.

The printer would take between 30 and 40 seconds to start printing even if it went in to a standby mode after a long period of inactivity.It will take 5 seconds per page for the printer to turn out a job, This is even if you use the inbuilt automatic duplexer where it will “draw in” and print the reverse side of two pages thus avoiding any time penalty associated with double-side printing.

The duplex-print functionality has support for a “booklet-print” function. This is where the printer scales the document so that two pages fit on each side of the sheet of paper and are sequenced in a book-like manner. Then the pages will be printed using the automatic-duplex mechanism. It can work effectively for documents with up to 6 or 8 pages and comes in to its own with food-service menus, order-of-service sheets and similar documents.

If the printer runs out of paper during a print job, it immediately continues printing from where it has left off once the user puts new paper in the paper tray and closes that tray. There is no need to press any button to continue printing.

Toner cartridges on drum-unit "drawer"

In most cases, the printer is easy to service and maintain. The drum unit works as easy-to-load toner cartridge drawer so you don’t have to grope inside the machine to change cartridges. may have to remove drum unit and reach in to machine to remove jammed paper. There is a drop-down back panel for access to paper in the duplex mechanism but it can be dropped down for print jobs where a straight-through paper path is needed like envelopes.

The standard print-driver software is easy to use for most job-specification requirements but if you needed to use functions like Secure Print (confidential job release), you have to go to an “advanced” window to set these options. One feature that I like is that if an option is enabled, it is listed in blue on the left side of the window.

Driver setup screen

Limitations and Points of Improvement

Like most printers on the market, this printer could support “CD-free” setup, whether through storing the driver set on flash-memory or using a link to the Internet to download the drivers.  As well, it could have the option to support “print-to-the-edge” printing for use in running off “full-bleed” print jobs or printing photographs.

As well, when I talked of the control panel and USB port earlier in the review, the printer could make better use of the USB port for activites like PictBridge printing.

Conclusion and Placement Notes

This is one colour laser printer that I would recommend as a dedicated short-order / “as-needed” publishing machine for a small business, church or other similar organisation. It doesn’t matter whether the organisation has a multifunction inkjet printer or monochrome laser printer for use with their ordinary printing needs or not.

Similarly this colour laser printer could come in handy for organisations who end up printing out “infill copies” of material that is printed elsewhere due to delays or short-runs or printing out test-runs of PR material before it is sent out for printing.

The high-capacity toner cartridges and the high-capacity paper-tray option can then come in to their own when you find that you do more of these print jobs frequently.

I have received two colour laser printers from Brother International on loan for me to review for this site. These are able to turn out large runs of high-quality colour documents very quickly but a lot of mainstream business users are hesitant to deploy them in the office. They may be used by people in the publishing sector as another tool for turning out proofs of publications. As well, larger organisations may provide a single machine for use by the marketing department for printing up marketing material. But typically, a lot of businesses limit their use because of the cost to buy and run these machines. There is also a fear that employees will use the colour laser printer for running off party invitations or publication material for their own school or community effort, rather than to further the needs of the employer’s business. As well, not many small businesses and community organisations do consider the purchase of a colour laser printer even though they may need to turn out larger colour print runs. Often they end up overworking a colour inkjet multifunction printer or outsource the job to a printing service whenever they do a large print run. A key user case for these printers would be anyone in the real-estate business. This also includes anyone who specialises in short-term or long-term property rental. These people would be relying on these kinds of printers as they turn out many different documents associated with the sale or rental of a property. But most users could use these machines for creating “as-needed” colour business stationery. Similarly, they could be useful for using colour in the reports and accounts that your business sends out. This could include preserving colour in your organisation’s logo.

Main benefits

Like its monochrome brethren, the colour laser printers have the ability to turn out high-quality printouts of documents and publications in a very quick time. But these units can do the same thing in colour and can work to a standard for proofing or short-run multiple-copy publishing. As well, like the monochrome laser printers, most of these printers can run for a long time before they need the toner replaced. They are also designed to handle large amounts of paper thus allowing for long intervals before you need to replenish the supplies. This also allows the printers to be considered on a “per page” level as being cheap to run and is more so with newer equipment.

Drawbacks

One main drawback is that the printers are initially expensive to buy and the cost to replace parts can mount up considerably. As well, because the mechanism has to print the four colours for process printing (cyan, magenta, yellow and black), it is a lot more complicated and this can be of concern with serviceability and reliability. Another limitation is that the availability and cost of special printing media may be limited compared to that for inkjet printers. This is because of the fact that these units use heat to “fix” the image to the media and the special media has to be designed to cope with this situation. In some cases, certain media like vinyl adhesive stickers wouldn’t be available for this class of printer due to the use of plastic as a writing media and also the use of an adhesive in the same media.

Features to look for

There are certain feature that should be considered essential for one of these printers, whether as a dedicated printer or as a multifunction unit. One is for the printer to be able to be connected to the business’s network via a Cat5 Ethernet “blue cable” at least. They may also come with an 802.11g or 802.11n Wi-Fi wireless network that works with WPA2 security and, preferably, WPS quick-setup. Another is for the printer to have an integrated auto-duplex mechanism which allows you to print on both sides of the paper. These should allow the whole of the paper face to be printed on when printing both sides and preferably there should be no time penality for doing double-sided printing. As well, you should be able to buy a high-capacity paper tray for the unit, whether as standard or as an optional extra. There should also be the option to buy high-yield toner cartridges so, with the combination of the high-capacity paper tray and these cartridges, you don’t have to attend to the machine frequently.

Conclusion

It is still worth considering putting the colour laser printer in your printing technology landscape especially if you intend to turn out a large number of short-run or application-specific documents. So have a look at the reviews of the Brother HL-4150CDN colour laser printer and the Brother MFC-9840CDW colour laser multifunction printer and stay tuned to this site for more networked colour laser printer reviews. While you are waiting, any of you can leave comments after this article about your experiences with buying or using a colour laser printer.

iOS 4.2 beta hits Apple’s developer portal, wireless printing dubbed ‘AirPrint’ – Engadget

From the horse’s mouth

HP ePrint enabled printers first to support printing direct from iOS devices |  The HP Blog Hub

My comments

A function that most of us who own smartphones long for is the ability to print documents from the smartphone using a regular printer. The main problem with this is the requirement for the computing device i.e. the smartphone to have drivers for the various printers that it will encounter. Typically this has been achieved through printer manufacturers providing free single-purpose apps through app-store platforms like iTunes App Store that only do a task like printing photographs on the manufacturer’s printer.

Now Apple have taken up the initiative by establishing a one-size-fits-all printing mechanism as part of the iOS 4.2 operating system. This mechanism is intended to work with the HP ePrint-enabled printers like the HP Photosmart Wireless-E printer that I previously reviewed but is intended to be rolled out to more printers offered by other manufacturers.

There are a few questions that I have about this wireless-printing platform. One is whether the platform is really reinventing the wheel that standards like UPnP Printing have established or simply is a way of allowing a manufacturer to market one of these standards under their own name?

Another more serious question is whether other handset operating systems and platforms like Android will implement the wireless-printing platform in a universal way at all. It may be easy to accept the status quo with Apple providing support in the next version of iOS but if this feature is to work properly, it has to work for other handset operating platforms and devices made by other manufacturers.

Other issues worth tackling include support for public-access printers, including secure job submission and collection as well as support for paid operation models.

This concept may open up a new field of access to hard copy for devices like smartphones and tablet computers as well as dedicated-function devices.