jstrickland's Full Review: Xerox Phaserâ„¢ 6250/N Printer
Back in May of 1999 the QMS Magicolor laser printer our company had been using went belly up. Other than the fact that it was going to cost a pretty penny to replace, this was no major heartbreak for us. It was slow, hard to maintain (The toner had to be poured in to permanent toner cartridges. There was also a fuser oil that had to be poured in.), and the quality of prints just wasn't phenomenal. I went out on a limb and replaced it with a Tektronix Phaser 740P. It was fast (for it's time), easy to maintain (though expensive) and the color was great. Photos were no match for an inkjet printer, but all other types of color printing were far ahead of the competition. Even though the cost of maintenance was expensive (but, that is the case for color laser printers in general) the Phaser 740 proved to be a true champion workhorse.
Jump ahead to October 2003. After 4.5 yrs of hard labor that even the Tektronix technicians acknowledged early on was more than the duty cycle the printer was rated for, the Phaser 740 started to truly show signs of it's age. For a color laser printer, 4.5 years is a long time. It had gotten to the point where parts that should only need replacing once, maybe twice, a year were being replaced 4 or 5 times in a year. It was time to quit sinking money into the Phaser 740 and look for a replacement. I compared printers from HP, Lexmark, Okidata, Minolta (formerly QMS), and Xerox (formerly Tektronix). After comparing features, the choice came down to two contenders: Minolta QMS Magicolor 3300 and the Xerox Phaser 6250. Bother were comparable in speed and features. The Minolta was about $200 less. However, I could not get past the bad taste the last Magicolor left and the great experience we had with the Phaser 740. The decision was made, and the Phaser 6250 won.
Oh boy, did it win!!! Not only the competition, but our hearts as well. This baby comes with a 700MHz PowerPC processor. That is almost twice as fast as the processors used in all other printers in the same price class. The printer comes standard with 256MB RAM, upgradeable to 512MB. An optional hard drive for font and on-demand job storage can be purchased. The Phaser 6250 has a duty cycle of 100,000 prints per month. That is 15 to 20 thousand more than any of it's competitors. The rated print speed is 26ppm for both black & white and color. Of course, true print speed is going to be determined by job size and complexity. So far I have yet to find a print job that the Phaser 6250 couldn't smoke through. The Phaser 6250N comes with Parallel Port, USB, and 10/100 ethernet connections. The Phaser has the broadest OS support of all color laser printers. Windows 95 thru XP are supported. Various forms of Linux are supported. MacOS 9.x thru 10.X are supported.
Our network is comprised of Windows 2K/XP machines and MacOS X machines. For all of these platforms installation was a breeze. For the Windows machines I just ran the installer. It immediately installed the printer and recognized it on the network. In less than a minute it was ready for use. MacOS X is just as easy thanks to the 6250's Rendezvous compatibility. Just run the installer, go to print center and add a new printer. Choose Rendezvous and the printer instantly appears with all of the correct settings.
The printer itself is a breeze to install. Just remove all of the transporting tape, unseal the toner cartridges, and install the Imaging unit.
The printer has a built-in website called Centreware. Just type in the IP address for the printer in your web browser and you are given a plethora of configuration options. You can configure the printer to notify you when toner or parts need replacing, when a jam occurs, or a tray or door has been left open. The front LCD panel also gives a visual indication of toner levels. Both the LCD and Centreware can give you information on the current job being printed, as well as any jobs being held in queue. Centreware gives you extensive job history reporting, as well as reports on just about every other thing you may want to know. If you are having problems, the Phaser 6250 comes with an excellent troubleshooting tool called Phasersmart. This web base utility walks you through various tests and operations. If none of these corrects the problems, Phasersmart will send a detailed report of what tests and procedures you have done to Xerox. Therefore, when you call the support number, they already have a decent handle on your problem.
I suppose you want to know how well the printer prints. Well, as I stated above, the Phaser 6250 is super fast with both b&w and color printing. The black & white printing was crisp, as expected. The Phaser 6250 puts out color prints that can only be described as wonderful. The colors matched what we saw on our monitors better than anything we've ever seen. Color was consistent from print to print. Gradations were smooth and devoid of banding. Color text was just as sharp and easy to read as b&w text. All models of the 6250 except the starter 6250B have a Photo mode. This does slow down the printing but, WOW!!! The prints come out rivaling the quality of all but the best inkjet printers.
It is truly amazing how much color laser printing has advanced in the last 5 years. The Phaser 6250 is a perfect showcase for all of those advances.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2400 Operating System: Windows and Macintosh
This Refurbished Printer carries 1 Months Warranty~~ Usually Shipped within 72 hours ~~ The Phaser 6250/DP is an advanced laser printer that can keep ...More at i-Market
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