Great printer for the price but software install needs work
Written: Sep 24 '00 (Updated Oct 11 '00)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Paper Handling: |
|
|
|
Pros: Great output quality, fast, 3 individual color cartridges
Cons: Poor testing on driver installation before putting product to market
|
|
|
| JGuynn's Full Review: DocuPrint M750 Printer |
I will split my review into the printer hardware and software installation with an overall opinion at the end.
I bought this printer to replace my failing Epson Stylus Color 600. Repairing the Epson would have cost more than the Xerox printer. This Epson is about two years old having been replaced under warrenty at about six months old and the print quality had gone down hill.
Hardware:
All I can say is WOW. The installation guide walks you through unpacking the printer, removing all the tape that was installed for shipping, installing the print heads, and installing the ink cartridges. One major upside to this printer is the 3 colors come from separate ink cartridges so that if one color runs low on ink you don't have the expense/waste of replacing a single 3 color cartridge. I'm running Windows 2000 and my computer does not support USB (fully) so I hooked the printer to the same port I removed the Epson from. That's when the trouble started but I'll cover that in the next section. Once I got the software installed (the next section), and the printheads aligned, everything I have printed looks great and comes out fast.
Software:
All I can say is I can't believe that Xerox didn't test their installation process under Windows 2000. As best I can tell that is the only way I could have had the problems I had with installing the driver for this printer. The install program tells me that the driver only works in Windows 95, 98, and NT. The funny part is when the installation guide shows the steps for USB installation it specifically says Windows 2000. After trying to find a newer driver on Xerox's website (which does not say anything about Windows 2000) I resorted to finding the NT driver directory on the driver CD and manually installing the driver through the Add New Printer icon on the Control Panel. The down side to that solution is the installation manual doesn't tell you how to run the printhead alignment utility from the Printer portion of the Control Panel, I had to stumble across that by printing a test page to see how far the alignment was off (which BTW the test page looked fine). It seems to me that Xerox never tested their installation under Windows 2000 or they would have caught this problem before the printer got to the shelf. Now they need to rework their installer program or add an addendum to the installation guide to cover this. I know that the typical computer user does not have my background in computer hardware and software installation so I can only cringe when I think of the number of support calls Xerox is going to have to field for this problem.
Overall:
I can't fault good hardware for bad install software. If the install had been smooth or if the website had addressed this problem, this would be a 5 star product. As it is, the printer can not be beat for the price given the features, output quality, and speed.
Update:
I finally received feedback from Xerox customer support telling me where to get the latest driver and that it did indeed support Windows 2000. The downside was when I went to the driver download page, it was down so I could not test their advise. The printer has continued to work well so I'm not in a big hurry to change drivers at this point.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 149
Operating System: Windows
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
JGuynn
|
|
Member: John Guynn
Reviews written: 24
Trusted by: 2 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.