Good King Wencelas' favourite pizza? Deep Pan, Crisp 'N' Even
Good King Wencelas' favourite pizza? Deep Pan, Crisp 'N' Even
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I'll tell you why, why, why........
OH NO! NOT AGAIN!
I wasn’t joking when I said that I always seem to be writing about computer kit, but here’s one thoroughly UN-scheduled piece of new equipment to add to the Nibbles computing arsenal that I could well have done without having to buy right here and now - a new laser printer.
Not content with a new screen, a new colour printer, a new keyboard and mouse and God-knows how much kit to network two PCs together, good old Fate has chosen this point in time to cause my long standing Canon LBP-660 laser to go west, along with my prospects of clearing off my credit card for yet another month!
SOB STORY
To be honest, the Canon had been serving us well for the four years right up the to time I cut over to Windows XP Pro and then the rot set in. Not being in its first flush of youth, a bit like its owner, I found that no one had produced the precise drivers for it vis-à-vis Windows XP. The conventional wisdom was to try NT4/Windows 2000 drivers instead, and I was relieved to find that they seemed to work.
However, all was not entirely well. Every time I needed to cancel a print
mid-stream, the Canon print-queue utility refused to clear it from the list, which of course also meant that nothing else could be added to the queue. Even re-booting the PC did not always seem to get rid of the offending item, and I had frequently to resort to printing out the remainder on scrap paper just to get rid of it for a quiet life.
YOURS TRULY SNAPS
I soldiered on, as I had just put a new toner cartridge in it, costing around £40, vowing to do something about it after the toner ran out. Well, like I said, Fate has taken the decision right out of my hands – the paper feed has now become entirely unreliable, dragging several sheets through at once, slightly in delay of the first sheet. The printer then sees this lot as an over-length piece of paper and hangs up, waiting for the jam to be cleared. It then starts all over, printing even the first successful page again. Being an Aries with a short fuse, I don’t know how I’ve suppressed to urge to throw it out of the window, except to say that we do need a laser printer for the bulk of my wife’s school planning, which would cost an arm and a leg on a inkjet. All I can say is that my doodles are becoming very angular.
That did it – onto www.dabs.com I went for the second time in four days, in search of a dead cheap laser printer. Waddya know they had one, the Samsung ML-4500 at an amazingly low £69 (I think I paid £250 for the Canon). A search of official web sites tends to indicate that this is an “outgoing” model but frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn. The only thing I was unable to glean was whether it would come with a toner cartridge or not. My first reaction, knowing that the cartridge would cost around £40, was to reckon that either the printer was worth £29 or that I’d better order the toner to go with it. In any case, if I were wrong, I’d have a stock of toner to last me the next year or so.
Having learned my lesson with the Canon with reference to suitable drivers, something on the http://www.dabs.com/ site rang alarm bells with me – no sign of compatibility with Windows XP (and further evidence that this is an obsolete model), the latest OS getting a mention being NT4/Win 2000.
So before actually committing myself to buying one, I checked with the www.samsungelectronics.co.uk site to search for the proper drivers. Lo and behold they existed and I was able to download them. Whilst on the website, I was also able to download the instruction manual in advance, and it was from this that I discovered that I was “partially” right about the toner cartridge. It does come with one included, but only a less-than-half capacity demo version, so for about £120 I’d ordered a laser printer and 1½ toner cartridges.
APPEARANCE
It’s slightly less cream than many bits of standard computer kit. Paper goes in a vertical bin at the back, and when printed, can be delivered either to a vertical bin at the front, or to a horizontal slot – the latter is useful when working with stiffer media like card as it takes a less tortuous route when leaving the printer. Don’t use media heavier than 163 gsm (nothing to do with cellphones, it’s grams per square meter – there, you’ve always wanted to know what that was, haven’t you?). Effectively, 163 gsm IS thin card.
A front control panel has three buttons, Demo (guess what that does), Cancel/Reprint and Toner Saver, plus a selection of LED indicators.
It's actually quite dinky, occupying a "footprint" of little over a square foot.
INSTALLATION
This must be just about the first printer I’ve bought in ages that actually comes complete with a lead for connecting to a PC (Well, cut of my legs and call me 'Shorty'!), albeit a parallel lead, which is the only connection option for this machine – the lack of a USB cable is yet more evidence that it’s really an old model. The instruction manual finally gives the game away by being of a print run dated 2000.
Using the downloaded driver, I was largely able to ignore the included CD-ROM although it came back into use when configuring the downstairs computer, which only runs Windows 98 and is networked to share this printer.
FEATURES
It’s a laser, so what? It has a maximum definition of 600 dots per inch (dpi), which can be altered to 300 for speed and toner economy, it can push out 8 pages per minute and a normal sized toner cartridge can print about 2,500 pages assuming 5% ink coverage, or “words”!
The paper bin can hold 150 sheets, and there is provision for single sheet feed as well, for example, where the first page of a document needs to be on headed notepaper.
Print quality is well up to standard, and I’m not the sort of person to take a magnifier to B&W printing anyway.
The printer itself has the ability to store the last page of a document in memory even after your PC is turned off. This means that if you just want a quick extra copy, you just press the Reprint Button. In a multi-user environment, or “office” as they are sometimes called, this facility can be disabled for privacy. You can also opt to make the most of your toner by pressing the Save Toner option. This is similar to opting for draft quality at the PC end.
Despite being designed to handle mainly A4 and letter paper, the Samsung has a facility for resizing pages to fit multiples on one sheet. Useful, for example if you wanted to print the 102 page on-line manual from Acrobat PDF format, to become an A5 sized book, you could opt for pairs of “portrait” pages to be printed on one “landscape” sheet. This can be taken to extremes, since the choices are 1,2,4,9 and 16 sheets per page. God knows how you’re supposed to read the 16 into 1 version!
The printer is “Energy Star” compliant and can be set to go to sleep saving the electricity needed to keep the mechanism hot – of course, this means that, as with scanners, there’s a warm-up delay.
I don’t envisage it having a use here in the UK, but you can even compensate for altitude! I didn’t even know this was a problem, but then I’ve never set up an office in the Andes.
CONCLUSION
Nearly every failed printer I’ve ever had has failed because of the sheet feeder mechanism rather than some problem with the printing itself, and this applies to three ink-jets and two lasers that I’ve owned over the last ten years. It therefore makes sense to buy the cheapest one I can find, because I never seem to get round to wearing out their ability to print. I guess that, at least in part, this is down to the fact that quite a lot of the printer gets replaced when you change cartridges. With most lasers, the drum often gets changed too, and with ink-jets, some or all of the print head gets renewed. This only leaves all the largely plastic moving parts to wear out.
If, as I suspect, this model is on its way out, and that probably accounts for why www.dabs.com had over 400 of them in stock at time of writing, then I’d snap one up – at £69 who cares if it’s old*? At this kind of initial price and given that a £40 toner cartridge will last for 2,500 normal sheets of print (AND on any old copier paper), this racks up very favourably against ink jet cartridges over the same period and workload. I guess what I’m saying is that it would be cheaper to have both types of printer, the laser for all monochrome text, and keep the ink jet for what it’s good at, i.e. colour printing.
*I mean to say, look at me, I’m old and I’m good value for money too!
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
I'm gutted...went there but they haven't got anymore left :-( TUT! Should have read this sooner shoulder I! Damn! Know any more lasers around this cheapo price eh Mr Bargain Hunter??
GR-Design 02.04.2003 17:42
I personally don't really like lasers. They are ok for some uses, but don't think I would have one at home. BUT! If i did as much printing as you (ok, so your wife) I would probably have done the same and gone for the cheapest one I could get! Sounds good, but never had any experience whatsoever with Samsung printers.
Dardalius 01.04.2003 13:53
Excellent op... Just bought an epson c82 which is great for my needs
Advantages: Quiet, good text quality, auto-repeat feature, toner save feature, upgradeable memory, PCL5 and 6, USB and Parallel, Linux compatible Disadvantages: Relatively slow, too much paper curl
Tickled_Pink 24.09.2002 ·
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Apr 1st, 2003
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