When my husbands old fax machine broke down we decided to take the opportunity of combining the fax and printer together.
Off he went trawling the local shops (he couldnt buy from the internet as the company were paying and didnt want the company credit card being used on-line!)
Low and behold pc world had the Lexmark X6150 reduced because it was an ex-display model. The price should have been £179.00 and he got it for £99.00.
When he brought it home he was pleased as a little dog with a bone.
It is an all-in-one colour copier, colour fax, colour printer and colour scanner.
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/>There are two versions of this machine, one that is has an auto-feeder and the one we bought that doesnt.
The instruction book isn't a book but a disk that is also used to install the software onto your pc. I much prefer books but it seems that alot of things only come with disks nowadays.
After installing the software and connecting up the fax telephone line to the machine my husband set of playing with the buttons.
The Fax.
He soon started to moan that he wished he had got an auto feed one. The problem with not having an auto feed became apparant when faxing multiple pages. You had to put each one onto the flatbed and select fax-- the machine would then scan the page-then press a button to say you had another page to fax--and so on until all pages were scanned. Then you press another button to tell it to actually fax.
The machine has the ability to send a fax straight from the computer but not receive faxes to the computer. Another thing he found slightly irritating.
However these minor irritation was soon forgot about when he started to use the other facilities.
The set up you have to go through isnt to hard. Basically it pops up a microsoft window with tabs for each of the commands. Like send, receive, connection type, speed dial (handy for those numbers you constantly fax) etc. Should take less than 5 minutes too set up.
The Printer.
My husband has an old picture of the kids saved to the pc. As soon as he gets any new printer (this is our 3rd in 18 months-dont ask he likes his toys) he always prints out this picture in full A4 to see how pixilated it is.
He was very pleasantly suprised by how good this machine was. OK its not going to be great if you make a living out of digital photogrophy but it does us.
Again set up is easy. After the initial installation of the software printing is the same here as any other printer. Select file/print and you get the usual windows pop up where you confirm how many copies etc. As usual you can go into the settings to select the number of copies/type of print. The X6150 does have another handy gadget where it automatically senses the type of paper you have used (But it also gives you the option to turn this off) . Whilst printing it shows a box in right hand corner of screen that shows your ink levels. Our last printer did this and I like this facility.
The scanner
To help use the scanner it also comes with its own photo editor.
Here you can lighten/darken/chop or enlarge photos/reduce red-eye/ turn the picture round(orientation).
Again this doesnt look any different from any other photo editor.
To use the scanner, lay your document/photo onto the flat bed and press the scan button. THe little screen then asks where you want it scanning too (it gives you 13 options). And then you press start. Simple as that.
The copier.
This is just as the scanner only it sends out a hard copy of whatever you have placed on the flat bed. Again it wants to know if you want it in colour and how many copies.
Just the same as any other copier.
There is nothing actually remarkable about this machine as each of the different functions work the same as any other individual machines. However this is all built in together.
Therefore there is only one big bulky box in my computer room now not 4 (fax, printer, scanner, copier). And they are all colour. And they all so far work great. (always say so far--just out of habit-found if i didnt thinks tend to break down very quickly as if they heard me...LOL).
I cant tell you how much the ink cartridges are as we get them from work (arnt we lucky).
So far though I would say I would give this machine 9/10. It has only dropped a point because its not auto feed but then maybe thats why we got it so cheap. Also a personal hate of mine is instructions by adobe-I cant stand adobe--but again thats me.
I have said exellent on reliabilty but we have only had it for 2 months so it should still be extremly reliable. (If it wasnt the review would be completly different)
Sorry for going on so long-I was trying to include as much as possible without going on too long. If there is anything else you want to know drop me a line.
Fran.
by (8%):
This product has not yet been reviewed.
27.12.2004 20:55
sounds good!
10.12.2004 12:53
another great review! Em x
10.10.2004 13:38
Sounds good, nice review :)