Phaser 1235
Idea Cafe's Use and Abuse Test
Two glaring problems showed up with our testing of the large printer. First off, while the color output is gorgeous and quick, it failed to work well with the paper samples that Xerox provided for us for this review. In some instances the color toner refused to stick properly to Xerox branded glossy paper designed for laser printers. In another instance it failed to work with Avery business card stock designated for generic use. This isn't a problem if you spend some time experimenting with various paper stocks. There are some that worked just fine, producing rich color output. The other nasty surprise was that the printer drivers failed to work efficiently. A print driver is the programming that translates a program's output to something a printer can understand. The drivers for the Phaser 1235 tended to behave erratically. Sometimes they would work without issue and other times the system would report a lack of system resources for printing and prompt us to shut down the printing program. This would sometimes happen even when only one program was running on the system. Beyond these issues, the Phaser 1235 produces a wonderful range of color, and is reasonably fast to print. At full resolution (1200 X 600 dpi), the 366 MHz print engine produces a promised 12 pages per minute of color output and black and white prints at 20 pages per minute. The printer's documentation promised that it would only take 18 seconds to print the first page in color. In our testing, the printer took 30 seconds on this count. But it was bang on the promised time of 13 seconds to print the first sheet in monochrome (black and white). We did the color testing for this review with a full-page color image containing more than 60,000 colors. We tested the monochrome prints with a double spaced full-page text document. Things turn sour for us on the Phaser 1235 again when we go to price out the replacement toner cartridges. The machine takes four toner cartridges at an exorbitant $160 each for a standard cartridge or $240 each for a high capacity cartridge. continued
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