Printer Reviews

My school owns two of these and they have worked quite well. We run an NT network and have 2 labs with about 50 computers in each. The computers in the lab print to these, and because we run a network and the printer can two, every classroom and can print to the lab printers. The printer is very versatile with 2 or 3 automatic bays for paper and 2 manual entry paper bays for large papers or envelopes and such. It prints extremely fast, but takes about 5 minutes to warm up in the morning, or 2 minutes to warm up if it hasn't been used in a couple hours. It rarely has problems, and when it does it is usually the kids' fault. It has worked extremely well for our school and has had only a few minor problems.

I've always have great looking output with HP toners in my HP IIIP - never had a problem. I only wish the toner would last the rated 3,500 pages. I usually get at most 2,000 pages out of them.

This paper is thick and great quality, however the cost per sheet is quite high. On a hewlett Packard printer this prints a full picture with no border. The colors are more vivid than on cheaper paper. I use cheaper paper for initial copies and when I like a print I do it on this paper. It also lasts.

This cartridge gave me no problems for the life of my dearly departed HP820 printer (6 years). My only complaint is one that fits many color printers and their loyal cartridges: if you run out of red but have plenty of yellow left, you either attempt a refill, which can be very messy, or toss the whole cartridge and replace it, even though only one color was empty. Not cost-efficient in that one way.

Fits my Epson C82 printer perfectly. The computer popped up a window a couple times that said, "This is not Epson ink and may perform differently." But it does the job. I don't think it is as high a quality ink, and it may smudge more because it doesn't dry quite as fast, though once it dries it's fine. I'm just talking like thirty seconds probably for a picture or other ink laden print job.
Also it may have looked a little different when I was printing a photo. Still, for the price, you can't beat it. I'm going to try their color cartridges also. If I notice any problems I will report them here.

Just purchased this unit to print postcards on heavy stock paper, two sided. Works great on Win 2000/XP and terrible on Win98 across network. Prints photos FAST and very sharp. 500 sheet feeder hangs occasionally with heavy paper, multi feed slot pulls card stock through flawlessly. I don't expect many problems with a $2000 printer and didn't find many other than the Win98 problem and the cost of replacement toners, $450 for all 4 toners. Duplex feature is oddly buried in the printer properties dialog box, almost impossible to find, you'd think since the duplex feature is what sets this model apart from the other magicolor unit Minolta might make it easier to use. I don't have any experiences with other color lasers so your mileage could vary.

My Lexmark X5270 came OVERNIGHT by FedEx from Circuit City (purchased through Amazon). Setup was fairly easy, except my machine was set up by mistake in a non-English language. I called tech support (800 number) - they answered right away - and got me squared away in a minute. The software loaded easily. The machine is superfast - both for printing and scanning - and has superb color and black and white. The only drawbacks are that the scanning box can't be resized and is a little big for my 1024x768 resolution, and it doesn't save images as jpegs. People who tout HP beware - HP's 4x6 photo paper has a jagged edge because of a tab. The Lexmark prints truly borderless graphics without needing special paper - and it prints borderless through 8.5x11. Even though I only gave it 4 stars, I heartily recommend this machine.

I researched these printers so well compared to the HP 4050N line of printers, they are about the same speed, feature a duplexer which is [money]add-on the the HP line and are great printers. Being in the Navy, My command generates lots of documents and needed replacements for our worn out HP 5L & 6L's which wear out and need repairs in about a year. These printer are durable and the toner is long lasting. I liked them so well I even purchased one of these myself for my home network.
The only problem I've seen is they use older 72 pin memory to upgrade the printer memory which is now more expensive than the newer 168 pin DIMMS.

I finally broke down and bought a Laser Printer. For the money this was a great deal. Even though it is designed for more of a office use, it was only a 2 hundred more than the home laser printer that I was looking at. It had everything I was looking for, about 12 pages per minute and it could duplex. This is where my problem is.

I have a few computers in my house, one in my office, one in my kids room and one downstairs. I decided to network the computers together. No problem, I went and bought the parts needed, even ran the wires myself. In all it was very simple. There were a few reasons to networking the computers, one being everyone can be online at the same time, and everyone can print to the laser printer. What I didn't realize was that after everything I had done to get everything done, the printer would not work. I had all the right settings, yet nothing.

I contacted NEC support, they were some help. After hours on the phone with them, my problem was not resolved. In the end I had to hook up the printer to the parellel port and share it so that everyone else could use it. Sure it works, but now my PC has to be on all the time so others can print to it. At least it is working.

I can not complain about the quality of the printing though. It is very good. Now that it is broken in with about 2500 prints, I can see this lasting a very long time. Be prepared for the terrible support from NEC if you need the support. The quality of the product definatly out weigh the quality of the service.