Test lab. (color computer printers)(includes related article and glossary) (Evaluation)
by Peter Scisco, Tom Benford, Eddie Huffman, Tom Netsel, David English
What will make your report stand out from the crowd? How can you add notes and emphasis to a page so that you're sure it'll be noticed? What can prevent readers from seeing your page layout as rectangles of gray text?
Color.
Whether you're creating a graph for a business report or printing out your child's latest computer art, color clarifies, emphasizes, and makes your documents more interesting and attractive.
There was a time when computer printing meant black-and-white printing, when all printer drivers had to do was generate an acceptable dither pattern for 16 shades of gray. But now color seems to be coming from everywhere. Just take a look at the number of color printer drivers available in new software applications. Meanwhile, the price and performance of color printers tantalize general computer users because of technological advances and increased competition.
This month's Test Lab focuses on eight printers with color capabilities--from a 9-pin dot-matrix to a sophisticated thermal printer--and helps you decide which printer best fits your needs. Here you'll find benchmarks, output samples, and eight penetrating reviews, along with specific information about features and capabilities. How can you use the latest color printing technology to your best advantage? Read on.
CITIZEN GSX-140
PLUS
It's a color world--make no mistake about it. From televisions to laptops, from hand-held games to desktop computers, consumers are demanding color and plenty of it. Citizen America, in a move to differentiate its printers from the many other printers on the market, answers that demand by giving home-based computer users exceptional dot-matrix color output, along with a number of other attractive features, at a reasonable price.
The GSX-140 PLUS employs a 24-pin printhead for well-defined text printing. If you're looking for solid color graphics output, as we are in this month's Test Lab, the optional color kit reviewed here fits the bill nicely. With the color kit and a color ribbon installed, you should select the Color Ribbon option from the installation menu--even if you only print in black.
Anyone working in color will most likely be working within the Microsoft Windows environment. Although Citizen doesn't ship a Windows driver with the printer, one is available from Citizen's electronic bulletin board. After installing that driver, I found that the color printing worked flawlessly with a variety of applications--from low-end graphics packages like Paintbrush to high-end packages like CorelDRAW! and PageMaker. The productivity packages I used, Ami Pro and Excel, also printed in color without a hitch.
According to the documentation for this Citizen, you should be able to use the printer driver for the Epson LQ-2500 (a printer with color capability); however, I wasn't able to get color printing from Windows using that driver. The manual does provide instructions for configuring the printer to work with several leading DOS applications, including Harvard Graphics, Lotus 1-2-3 (version 2.2), Microsoft Word, The New Print Shop, WordPerfect, and WordStar (version 6.0 and Professional).
Configuration of these and other DOS applications may require that you write a macro to control how the software interfaces with the printer. Fortunately, Citizen makes this work a little easier for you. With the GSX-140 PLUS, you can create macros by using the utility and reference disk which comes with the unit. It took me only a couple of minutes to create a macro for printing color output from Harvard Graphics 3.0. Alternatively, you can load macros through the Command-Vue menu system on the printer's panel.
Almost all of the color output I produced was acceptable for the majority of small business presentation and graphics needs. Charts and colored text were quite bright and well defined. A detailed image from CorelDRAW! also reproduced well, including several subtle shadings of color. A Harvard Graphics image with a dark background revealed the printer's propensity to create bands across the page. However, such banding is to be expected from a dot-matrix printer. Overall, I though the brighter colors fared better and the printer's ability to mix colors and shadings was exceptional. Graphics printing took some time to emerge from the printer; I would recommend using a print spooler or upgrading the printer's memory from the standard 8K to 40K with the optional memory expansion chip.
In other categories, the GSX-140 PLUS also performed well. I found text very readable and sharp using the printer's built-in fonts or fonts created with Adobe Type Manager. In addition, I appreciated the printer's low noise level. At no point during testing did I feel that I had to abandon my small home office while running a print job.
More and more printer manufacturers are using color capability as a means of differentiating their products from their competitors' products. If your job requires the production of presentation materials, if you're looking for a way to enhance the educational uses of your home computer, or if you're interested in exploring the world of color graphics on your PC, this Citizen provides a low-cost, functional means of doing so.
CITIZEN 200GX
If you're in the market for a good 9-pin dot-matrix printer that can also output in color, then read on: The Citizen 200GX may be just the ticket, especially if you're on a budget.
A compact unit with a small footprint, the 200GX weighs only 11 pounds and measures a demure 17 inches wide x 12.6 inches deep x 5 inches tall. While I found the output sound level to be tolerable, the 200GX is a bit on the noisy side (a characteristic of dot-matrix printers). Thanks to its light weight, however, you can easily move the printer farther away if the noise proves to be bothersome.
The printer comes standard as a black-and-white model, but it can also output color on command with the optional color kit. The color kit consists of a wider printhead and a four-band color ribbon. Installing the color kit is a snap--literally. The color printhead snaps into place, as does the color ribbon cartridge. Installation of the kit takes less than three minutes and doesn't require any technical prowess whatsoever.
The 200GX can churn out copy in high-speed draft mode at the rate of 240 characters per second and in near letter quality (NLQ) mode at 40 cps. Select character widths in sizes of 10, 12, 13.3, 15, 17.1, and 20 characters per inch. Two fonts (draft and high-speed draft) are available in data-processing (utility) mode while three fonts (roman, sans serif, and Courier) serve your needs in NLQ mode.
Single-sheet and continuous-form (tractor-feed) paper can be accommodated in widths up to ten inches and in weights ranging from 14 to 27 pounds. You can mount the included tractor-feed unit in the push mode for rear feed with paper parking or in pull mode for bottom feed or rear feed without paper parking. Single sheets are friction-fed from the top of the unit.
It's easy to select or change all features and settings via Citizen's Command-Vue II control panel. You can access any of 25 functions in three seconds or less through the four menus that comprise this control panel. Effective overall layout and design of the menus and control mechanism make this printer easy to use.
The well-written user's manual provides comprehensive coverage of the black-and-white features and functions of the printer. I would've liked to see more attention given to using the color kit option, especially since I didn't come across any software packages with dedicated drivers for the 200GX. More coverage of how to access and implement the color features would be a welcome addition to this otherwise fine document.
Available emulations allow the 200GX to perform and behave like an Epson FX-850 or an IBM Proprinter III. If you use the color kit and want to output in color, software should be configured to emulate an Epson EX-800 or Epson JX-80 printer. As I stated earlier, the manual should go into more detail for color-kit users. Only a brief, single mention of these Epson color printer driver emulations was made on page 194 of the manual, and it isn't referenced in the index.
If you intend to use the 200GX in color mode with GEM Artline 2.0 or Presentation Team, you'll need Digital Research's optional Printer Driver Pack #7 for the Epson JX-80 driver (this is available free to registered GEM users by contacting Digital Research directly). The print resolution of the Citizen 200GX is 120 x 144 dots per inch with this driver.
Being accustomed to color output from much higher-end printers, I was pleasantly surprised that the 200GX did such a nice job using the Epson JX-80 driver. The printer can create seven pure colors (magenta, yellow, cyan, blue, green, red, and black) from its four-ban ribbon, which is adequate for most spot color tasks. Since it can't dither (combine various color dots in sequence to produce additional colors), it isn't capable of outputting sophisticated color files which use color palettes composed of more than these seven solid shades.
If you need sophisticated color palette capabilities and high-resolution output, the 200GX is probably not for you. On the other hand, if you're on a tight budget and you need a good 9-pin dot-matrix workhorse that also has color capability, this Citizen may fill the bill nicely.
EPSON LQ-860
No fuss. No bother. No conflicts. Industry standard. When a printer manufacturer wants to convince you that it's selling a recognizably superior printer, it almost always stresses that the printer's Epson compatible. Well, you don't get much more Epson compatible than with an Epson, and the new Epson LQ-860 will give you more than compatibility--it provides smooth operation and brilliant color output for all of your small business needs.
Printers are often difficult to set up, but setup of this Epson is relatively simple, and the excellent Epson documentation makes understanding and operating the printer much easier. Maintenance should prove simple, and you shouldn't have to service the printer frequently.
I tested the LQ-860 with both DOS and Windows programs. Within each of these environments, I used the Epson LQ-2500 driver, which allowed me to take full advantage of the LQ-860's color capabilities. My printouts of a Windows bitmap, a CorelDRAW! sample, and a Harvard Graphics 3.0 sample all proceeded without any complications.
As this is a 24-pin printer, you can expect some banding in your printouts. There was more of this than I would've liked, but I found the overall mix of colors and shading quite good. The results are certainly acceptable for printing graphs in your spreadsheets and for making drafts of presentations. The banding seemed most noticeable with dark colors. If you're producing charts and graphs, put those graphics against a light background or against no background at all. The banding should be much less noticeable. You'll want to steer away from dark backgrounds anyway, as dynamic presentations incorporate lighter, brighter colors.
One frequently overlooked feature of color printers is the way they handle black text. In this area, the LQ-860 truly excels. Even when you're using the color ribbon cartridge, black characters appear sharply defined. With some dot-matrix color printers, the black ink tends to look washed out. Needless to say, when equipped with a black ribbon, the LQ-860 prints even better.
The papter-handling features of the LQ-860 are the standard ones that you'd expect in a printer of this caliber. Loading single sheets and continuous paper is simple. Paper parking also works well. The front panel allows for the selection of fonts and pitch, but I didn't find it as intuitive as front-panel displays on other printers. It doesn't, for example, provide much visual feedback on the status of your document or on the status of print operations.
Noise levels from the printer are quite bearable. The straight-forward, complete documentation includes a well-organized troubleshooting section that will help solve any problem you're likely to face when using the printer.
The Epson LQ-860 is designed for the serious business professional who needs good-quality color output at a competitive price. It's not expressly designed for home use, although a home-based worker with serious graphics needs would do well to consider it.
FUJITSU DL3600
Exceptionally compact, quiet, and picture perfect in its output, Fujitsu's workhorse DL3600 offers versatility and respectable color at a dot-matrix price.
The DL3600 works perfectly well as a basic text printer. After installation of its enclosed color kit, the machine can also render text or graphic images using seven colors, provided you have software capable of creating color text or graphics.
Setting up the machine proved neither time-consuming nor difficult, and within minutes I was generating routine printouts. The DL3600 user's manual, with its clear illustrations and straightforward organization, helped in that regard. I would have liked a troubleshooting section, though, and I found the index to be on the skimpy side. Despite those minor flaws, the user's manual also proved vital in explaining the DL3600's different mode and font settings, which are easy to use after you take a little time to read about them.
Text printouts using the varying settings were of uniformly good quality, even if some of the draft printouts were a little dotty. Color printouts of both text and graphics yielded similarly satisfactory results, with the color images somewhat banded but very impressive otherwise. The optional Fujitsu Creative Faces software, which works only within Microsoft Windows, offers both PostScript-compatible fonts and color-saturation control for the DL3600. Four emulations are standard on this printer: the Fujitsu DPL24C PLUS, the Epson LQ-2500 and LQ-2550, and the IBM Proprinter XL24.
Weighing in at a sturdy 26.5 pounds and occupying a space that's 4.7 x 22.8 x 13.6 inches, the DL3600 requires a fair amount of operating room. With dimensions like that, you get desk-commanding bulk but also the capability of handling paper as wide as 16.5 inches. Whether pulling in tractor-feed paper or loose single sheets, the rear-loading DL3600 usually prints quickly and flawlessly. I did run into a couple of jams, though, using both loose sheets and tractor-feed paper. And while the vertical singlesheet paper-feed mechanism didn't always take hold on the first try, it works significantly better than the more complicated, horizontal-feeding setup more common to dot-matrix printers. Soundwise, the DL3600 makes about as much noise as the next model, operating neither especially loudly nor quietly. The solidly built machine comes with a two-year warranty.
If you're in the market for a printer that performs well with a variety of paper sizes, fonts, and color printing jobs, Fujitsu's DL3600 just may be the one for you.
HEWLETT-PACKARD
PAINTJET
I like computer products that are easy to install, reliable, and versatile. And it is precisely for those reasons that I like the Hewlett-Packard PaintJet color graphics printer.
With the experience and reputation HP has for developing and producing high-quality printers and plotters, I naturally expect excellence in any product bearing the HP logo, and the HP PaintJet lives up to these expectations. This color printer measures approximately 12 inches front to back by 17 1/2 inches wide by 4 inches tall. I found the PaintJet easy to set up, and thanks to its relatively light weight--only 11 pounds--this compact unit moves easily from one location in your office to another.
The PaintJet delivers ink to the paper or transparency film via jets of colored ink sprayed precisely through pinhole-size nozzles. Since black ink is used for both regular and color printing, it runs out faster than the colored inks, and the HP folks have wisely adopted a two-cartridge system in the PaintJet. One ink cartridge contains black ink only; the second cartridge contains three compartments, one each for yellow, magenta, and cyan inks. From these four basic ink colos seven "pure" tones are created (black, yellow, magenta, cyan, red, green, and blue). You can produce all other possible colors by dithering (printing small dots of the basic colors side by side). This scheme permits a color palette of several thousand shades at a resolution of 180 dots per inch.
A black ink cartridge will yield about 1100 text pages (using PaintJet paper), while a color cartridge will be spent after about 180 pages on the average. The process of inserting and replacing ink cartridges simply requires removing the cartridge from its container, putting it into the appropriate cartridge well (back or color), and snapping the retainer clip over it. The whole process takes less than 15 seconds and is a "white glove clean" operation.
The PaintJet used for this review came equipped with a parallel interface, although both HP-IB (IEEE-488) and RS-232C interfaces are also available for this printer.
The printer can accommodate single (cut) sheets of paper, Z-fold tractor-feed paper, or singlesheet transparency film in 8 1/2 x 11 inch size. HP PaintJet paper works best and produces the most vibrant colors thanks to its fine grain; ordinary bond paper has a tendency to let the inks bleed, making the color reproduction muddy, so the slight extra cost for the HP PaintJet paper is a wise investment.
In addition to printing in color, the PaintJet is also quite serviceable as a black-and-white printer for normal uses. Standard fonts include Courier in 10 pitch and Letter Gothic in 12 and 18 pitch, along with boldface and underline enhancement capabilities. Line spacing, perforation skip, page length, top of form, and other adjustable settings normally found on line printers come standard on the PaintJet as well.
Because of the nature of the nonimpact ink-jet technology, the printer is almost totally silent in operation with only the paper-advance mechanism producing a sound as it prints. Maintenance of this printer is simple and you shouldn't need to service it often.
Hewlett-Packard's user's manual is excellent from cover to cover and very thorough. And thanks to HP's leadership in the area of printer and plotter technology, most popular software packages that support color include HP PaintJet drivers.
If you're looking for versatile color-output capability and strong software support in a durable, well-made printer that's moderately priced, the PaintJet certainly merits a closer look.
OKIDATA MICROLINE
393C PLUS
The original Okidata 393C 24-pin color dot-matrix printer was a heavy-duty, high-speed workhorse that earned the loyalty and fondness of PC users around the world. It's hard to believe that this venerable old printer could be improved, but that's exactly what Okidata did with the Microline 393C Plus--took a very good thing and made it even better.
Physically, the 393C Plus looks virtually identical to its predecessor, since most of the changes are internal, affecting performance, rather than cosmetic improvements. All of the great features of the original model remain--parallel and serial interface ports; rear and bottom paper feed; paper-handling capabilities for cut sheets, tractor-feed paper, and envelopes; the ability to print on transparency film, card stock, thick multipart forms, and labels; and more. All are here in the 393C Plus, along with some new features.
The 393C Plus uses a wide four-color ribbon as the imaging medium, driven by a high-speed 24-pin dot-matrix printhead. Highspeed is an appropriate term here, since the 393C Plus boogies along at a blistering 517 cps (characters per second) in high-speed draft mode and about 185 cps in near letter quality mode. Draft and letter quality modes are also available, as are pitches of 10, 12, 15, 17.1, 18, and 20 characters per inch.
An able contender for color printing chores, the 393C Plus proves a sterling performer for black-and-white tasks as well, especially for printing multipart forms or peel-and-stick labels. Changing the ribbon cartridge is easy, so alternating between black and color ribbons for different tasks makes sense. Black ribbons come in either fabric or film versions; the color ribbon is available in fabric only.
The 393C is a large unit. Measuring about 7 inches high by 22 1/2 inches long by 16 1/2 inches deep and weighing in at 37 pounds, it's not a printer you'd want to move around the office unless you nestle it on a roll-around printer stand. Its mass can be attributed to the heavy-duty components and solid construction, which endow it with a high reliability factor and a long life expectancy.
Available emulations include Epson LQ, IBM Proprinter X24/XL24, and IBM X24 AGM. For color work, you'll want to use the Epson LQ emulation and an Epson LQ2550 driver.
Seven solid "pure" colors are produced either by single passes of the ribbon (black, magenta, cyan, and yellow) or by two passes that overprint a second color on top of the first (red, blue, and green). Thousands of other colors and shades are produced by dithering. Virtually any software package capable of color output using the Epson LQ2500 or LQ2550 driver can be used with the 393C Plus, as well as packages which support the IBM Proprinter XL/XL24 and X24 AGM printers (black-and-white only). The output resolution is 180 x 180 dpi.
A quick setup guide will get you operational in just a few minutes. The comprehensive, clearly written, well-organized reference guide simplifies the use of this multifunctional printer.
Noise is a fact of life with dot-matrix printers, and the 393C Plus is no exception. Excellent design and internal sound dampening, however, keep the noise down to a tolerable level.
If your computig requires the versatile paper handling that a dot-matrix printer offers and you also need high-quality color output at 180 dpi, the Okidata Microline 393C Plus is a good choice. While it's not an inexpensive color dot-matrix printer, without a doubt it's one of the best-engineered and most rugged units available.
STAR MICRONICS
NX-2420 RAINBOW
The Star Micronics NX-2420 RAINBOW is a color printer that doubles as a professional-quality monochrome printer. With support for IBM and Epson printer commands and character sets, this versatile printer can print just about anything your computer can generate.
Installation and setup of this printer are simple, as is maintenance. Because the ribbon comes in a cartridge, moving from regular black-and-white printing to color printing is a simple matter of of changing cartridges and using a color driver.
As with all Star printers, the NX-2420 RAINBOW can handle single-sheet or fanfold paper, switching easily between the two with Star's paper-parking feature. You can load fanfold paper from the rear or the bottom. There's even a special mode that lets you print multipart forms with up to five copies, plus an original.
Instead of using a bank of internal DIP switches to set print functions, the NX-2420 RAINBOW uses electronic DIP switches on the printer panel. These let users select from 25 different functions as power-up defaults.
While the NX-2420 RAINBOW's color mode sets it apart from most printers, its ability to produce quality black-and-white print has not been compromised. It can print in regular and highspeed draft modes and in any of five letter-quality fonts. It can print condensed, bold, double-size and quadruple-size characters. Speeds range from 55 to 222 cps. Fonts and printing modes can be selected at the printer or from embedded software commands. Print quality is excellent. I wouldn't hesitate to use the NX-2420 RAINBOWN to print any business document.
For extra zest in printing, the RAINBOW model offers a splash of color. In addition to black, the NX-2420 RAINBOW can print red, blue, violt, yellow, orange, and green. Colors can be selected easily by pressing buttons on the printer panel, but I wondered if they could be accessed via software. Most word processors do not support color.
The Star manual provides a list of embedded printer commands that permit users to change fonts, size, and color from within most documents. I tried switching fonts, colors, and print size from within several word processors, and the NX-2420 RAINBOW worked flawlessly. Commands are easy to use, consisting of a capital letter enclosed in double parentheses, followed by a digit.
Producing type in a single color is no problem. I discovered that the NX-2420 RAINBOW handles multicolored graphics just as well when I ran a program that prints cards and posters with colorful cartoon characters. Since the NX-2420 RAINBOW is fairly new, there was no printer driver for it in the software's setup menu, but that wasn't a problem. If you use the printer in standard mode, the Star manual suggests a half dozen alternate drivers as substitutes. I selected one of the Epson drivers and soon had pages of colorful characters rolling off the printer. It was just as easy as that. Depending on the graphics mode selected, the NX-2420 RAINBOW can print between 60 and 360 dots per inch.
Color may not be a required feature on every home or office printer yet, but it does offer another avenue of creativity. If you need a quality monochrome printer for letters and other documents but would like the option of using color, don't overlook the Star Micronics NX-2420 RAINBOW.
TEKTRONIX PHASER
II PXI
It's virtually impossible not to use superlatives in describing the Phaser II PXi color printer from Tektronix. Everything about this high-end PostScript thermal-wax printer is turly "top drawer."
Weighing in at approximately 75 pounds when loaded and ready for use, the printer is physically large, measuring about 17 inches deep by 17.5 inches wide by about 14.75 inches high. The II PXi comes outfitted with serial, parallel, SCSI, and Appletalk (Macintosh) interface ports as standard equipment; and, since the printer can automatically switch between interfaces, you can connect all ports simultaneously. This feature makes the II PXi particularly attractive in environments where multiple PC platforms (even Macintoshes) are present, as in some graphic arts studios, advertising agencies, and office networks.
The features and capabilities of this machine are indeed outstanding, but with a suggested list price of almost $8,000, it isn't for everyone. If you're interested in printing out an occasional greeting card or banner via The Print Shop or you'd like to output your latest artistic creation in DeluxePaint II Enhanced, the Phaser II PXi is not the printer for you, even if your pockets are deep enough to afford it; neither of these popular software programs provides color PostScript drivers to support it. In truth, however, using the II PXi for such normal consumer-level software is analogous to using an Uzi to kill a fly; there's much more power than required.
If, on the other thand, you're using high-end/high-capability software packages like Gem Artline 2.0, CorelDRAW! 2.0, or Tempra Pro (all of which have color PS drivers), you'll really appreciate the amazingly vibrant colors and absolute fidelity that the II PXi delivers on a fast and consistent basis. It's a serious printer designed to handle serious applications without a whimper. And it succeeds marvelously.
The print mechanism is hot thermal-wax transfer with a resolution of 300 dots per inch. Rather than using ink, ribbon, or toner, a thermal-wax printer uses a roll of film coated with yellow, magenta, cyan, and black was sections; the image is transferred to paper or transparency film using a thermal (heat) transfer process in three passes (one for each of the primary colors). By layering and combining the three primary colors, you can produce virtually any color (black is used as a shading medium to vary the color hue).
As with the initial cost of this printer, output materials are also more expensive. For example, a transfer roll will yield about 275 full-color prints or about 1100 black-and-white prints. A four-color transfer roll sells for $150, and a monochrome transfer roll sells for $160. In addition to the transfer roll, you'll also need special paper for your output to look really spiffy. A 1000-sheet package of letter-size paper will set you back an additional $58. Using these figures, the costs translate to about $0.60 per color copy and approximately $0.20 per black-and-white output sheet. Then, too, you might want to purchase additional RAM ($995 per 4MB upgrade), extra paper trays, or other accessories, which will add to the overall expense. Is it worth it? The answer is undoubtedly yes--if you require this much color-output power. The Phaser II PXi implements Adobe PostScript Level 2 and takes full advantage of this feature-rich page-description language. There are 39 PostScript fonts resident, and the SCSI external port permits storing and downloading additional fonts. The Phaser also runs under Hewlett-Packard HP-GL 7475A (color plotter) emulation for additional versatility and usefulness.
The II PXi is certified by Pantone as compliant with the Pantone Color Matching System and also offers CIE and TekColor-based color matching. Pantone certification is particularly important for any graphic arts or pre-print design applications, since Pantone is a universally accepted and used color-matching system. The possible color palette exceeds 8 million shades using default halftones, and the maximum printable area is 8.1 x 11.6 inches on legal-size sheets.
In addition to the exceptionally quiet operation of the II PXi, I was also very impressed with how fast this printer is--especially since it outputs in full color. On the average it only took about 45 seconds to output a color page and less than 25 seconds for a black-and-white page. The printer uses a 24-MHz RISC-based processor and comes with 6MB of RAM standard (expandable to 18MB in 4MB increments), which accounts for its remarkably swift color output. Since the image is transferred using heat, operational noise is very low. (The unit's cooling fan and paper-movement mechanisms are the only components that make noise, and even that is minimal.)
A special fine-grain pure-white paper is used in the II PXi, which affords the best adhesion for the heat-transferred was. I experimented with normal bond paper and achieved poor results, so the special Tektronix paper is a must for the highest-quality output. In addition to paper, the II PXi will also output on transparency film or fabric transfer media (to make iron-on transfers for T-shirts); all output materials are available from Tektronix directly. Tray capacity is 100 sheets of paper or 50 sheets of transparency film.
The documentation supplied with the II PXi is excellent, as are the support materials and software disks containing utilities and drivers for numerous applications. Using the printer is as simple as connecting it to your PC's parallel (or serial) port, running your favorite application (with an appropriate color PostScript print driver installed), and sending the file to print as normal. Once the file data is sent, the multipass imaging process beings. First the yellow color component is transferred to the paper, which is then drawn back into the printer. Next the magenta color is transferred, and again the paper disappears into the printer. The cyan areas are transferred next with the paper again receding into the printer for the black pass, after which it is ejected into the output tray. The output quality is absolutely breathtaking, rivaling a high-gloss color-printed magazine page.
Make no mistake: The Tektronix Phaser II PXi is not a color printer for the average PC user with limited color-output requirements. IT is the printer of choice for virtually unlimited color-output capabilities and for serious graphic art applications that require uncompromising Pantone color matching and high-resolution output.
For further information about this month's Test Lab, see the COMPUTE area on GEnie and America Online. In addition to regular Test Lab information, you'll find our HDBENCH.EXE, proprietary benchmark software developed especially for the Test Lab.
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