|
|
|
| October 8 - October 15 |
|
 by Alessandro CancianI always had a love-hate relationship with inkjet printers, which are definitely affordable, of satisfactory quality, and come with high maintenance costs. In my case, keeping a small office at home means spending about $100 per month in cartridges to quench my printers thirst for ink. Alternatives do exist, however, and they are especially interesting for users belonging to the SOHO (small office home office) market segment. Laser printers, in fact, besides offering higher quality in several cases, are much more affordable in terms of maintenance costs, even though the initial disbursement can be higher. Among so many manufacturers, Oki Data offers its own solution, presenting a new line of LED-technology printers. Unlike lasers, which print through a complicated series of rotating mirrors and moving parts, the OKI printing process uses flashing pin-point beams of light that go straight to the image drum. My test-run was made using the Okipage 8z, a PC- and Mac-compatible monochrome digital LED printer. The whole installation process, which lasted less than 2 minutes, went by with no problem. The $449 (CND) model comes equipped with both a parallel port and a built-in USB one, perfect for new generation computers thanks also to its higher data transfer rate. The 8z is compact and quiet, suitable for the reduced spaces of a cluttered desk. The Oki Data printer can print up to eight pages per minute with a max resolution of 600 dpi with OKI Smoothing Technology. The results are good, especially if one needs to print pages full of text, which on plain paper is crisp and legible. If, as in my case, one also has graphical needs, image quality suffers somewhat. The 8z is quite a fast printer with an interesting price/performance ratio. Replacing a toner cartridge costs just $42.75 (CND) and the manufacturer claims that with each cartridge you can get 1500 pages of text. Definitely less than my current costs. Ideal for all those who need to print long text documents, the Okipage 8z will represent a significant yearly saving. For further information regarding the Okipage 8z or other Oki Data products, you may visit www.okidata.com. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Up-front / Mainstreet / Focus / Opinion / Italy / Movies / Music / Theatre / Culture / Fashion / Travel / Food / Computers / Sports |
 |
