16 out of 16 people found this review helpful.
Great for Graphic Designer and Anyone Else
Date of Review: Feb 13, 2007
The Bottom Line: It's a great printer, it has cheap ink cartridges, and it just overall is the best investment I've made in a year
I'm a graphic designer, so I thought my input would be helpful. I bought this printer a little over a week ago and have been scanning, copying, and printing with it. No faxes yet. Most people leave out some info I consider critical to a review: operating system, RAM, and processor. In my review, I complain about the scanning program crashing, and since I am running XP on a 2.8 GHz Pentium D with 1 GB of RAM, this certainly isn't a problem due to "not enough system resources."
Printing:
The print jobs are AMAZING. Many people complain about print jobs (not necessarily in this review, I just mean in general) because they are trying to print off photos from the internet that are low resolution. (In general, a 400 x 375 pixel, 72 DPI image isn't going to print very well unless it is about the size of a postage stamp). I haven't tried printing a low-res pic yet, but as far as printing 150 and 300 DPI images, that are at least 2000 x 1700 pixels goes... this printer is printing them just like photos. They look excellent. The ink output is perfect, you can't see any lines or paper through your image. I rate this 10/10 points. I will no longer be paying Kinkos to print my ads/designs. Also, it is insanely fast on the low ink output setting, I forgot what it is called... quick draft? It prints a page of text in about 2 or 3 seconds. A-m-a-z-i-n-g. My only criticism is that the print jobs are slightly darker than what appears on my screen.
Scanning:
This is a very good scanner. When I bought it, I thought the optical resolution of 600 PPI was going to limit me. It doesn't. I normally scan in items at at least 300 DPI and they look absolutely perfect. I do have two complaints however. One is that the magazine scanning process (the internal processing that improves your magazine scans so you can't see the moire patterns from the printing press) doesn't work 100%. It works about 99%, there is occasional noise remaining. But it isn't very bad and it is easy to fix in Photoshop. My second complaint is a bit more serious--perhaps. When scanning at 600 DPI and above, the program sometimes crashes. I thought this was due to an outdated driver, so I downloaded the updated driver from Lexmark.com, but I haven't scanned anything at that high of resolution since updating. I bet it solves the problem though. I rate this as a scanner for a graphic designer at 9/10. For a normal user, 10/10.
Copier:
I've only made two copies; one of a check, and one of a bank statement. The copies were perfect and quick. I just put the items in the scanning bed, hit copy, and out they came. Since I have had limited use of this feature, I cannot be trusted in my rating. But so far I say 10/10.
Fax:
Haven't used it, but the instructions confused me. I've never hooked up a fax machine, and I don't know if I can have it on my home phone line or not. The instructions didn't really address that.
Conclusion:
Extremely happy with my purchase. Highly recommend this item.
