Product ReviewsPrinters
When you think of laser printers, you generally think of great big bulky devices that cost thousands of pounds and sit in the corner of large offices. But it doesn't have to be that way: personal laser printers are a similar size to inkjets and designed for use with a single computer. The trouble is, most personal lasers aren't designed with Mac users in mind. However, the Minolta-QMS PagePro 1250E can be used with a Mac straight out of the box, and includes support for Postscript 2. Surprisingly, it's not too ugly for a laser printer, and at 44cm deep and 39cm wide, it doesn't take up too much space. It connects to your Mac through any available USB port. We experienced a slight hiccup during setup, when the printer could not be seen over the USB bus, but this was rectified by turning it off and then back on. After that, setting up the printer was pretty easy. Full installation instructions are provided for setup under Mac OS 9. It's a little bit fiddly as you have to use Apple's Desktop Printer Utility to create a desktop printer and select the appropriate PPD (PostScript Printer Description file), but it's fairly straightforward. However, the manual doesn't include instructions for Mac OS X, which is strange as the printer works just fine in OS X. To set it up, you simply click on the Add button in the Print Center, choose USB from the pull-down menu and select the PagePro 1250E from the printer list. Finally, you need to navigate to the location of the appropriate PPD. Taking a load off The paper-loading mechanism is similar to that of larger lasers, rather than typical consumer machines. This means that the paper is loaded in a self-contained tray at the bottom of the device, and printouts are delivered face down on the top of the printer. The printer's operation couldn't be simpler. Aside
As you'd expect from a consumer printer, there aren't many settings. Most of the options concern the printing of watermarks. You can also switch the print resolution between its default 600dpi and 1200dpi high-resolution mode. During testing, we had one incident where the printer output a page of nonsense and wouldn't print again until it had been restarted. While not serious, this wasted time and paper. However, when it worked, the PagePro 1250E was very good. The advantages of laser over inkjet, particularly for small businesses, are clear. Firstly, print quality for text is significantly superior, and the PagePro 1250E produces output as good as you'd expect from a more expensive laser printer. Graphics output is less impressive, it's a monochrome printer, but it's more than adequate for, say, charts and logos embedded in documents. When printing graphics, we'd recommend switching to 1200dpi mode. There's little point in doing this for text, as the quality is so good at 600dpi and high-resolution mode dramatically slows down the printer. However, the PagePro 1250E is amazingly fast for a sub-£300 printer. We were stunned to discover that for plain text documents, it prints at nearly 16 pages per minute, which is actually Minolta-QMS's quoted figure. Bear in mind that it takes longer to print out the first page, at around 16 seconds. There are a few other options available in the printer driver, such as the ability to optimise output for a variety of different media types, and Toner Saving mode. The latter is worth noting: the text in draft mode is just as easy to read and it uses considerably less toner. Overall, we were impressed with the PagePro 1250E. Aside from the few frustrating moments when it didn't work, it gives excellent quality output, is surprisingly fast, and is good value for money. Of course, you can't use USB printers on a network, although with the Mac OS' USB printer sharing function, even this drawback can be overcome. Personal lasers aren't for everyone, but if you print a lot of documents and need PostScript output, but don't want a big expensive printer, then the PagePro 1250E fits the bill. By Mike Hirschkorn |
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