All In One That's One For All
Written: Apr 04 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Does printing, copying and scanning in a single unit.
Cons: Requires the computer to fax
The Bottom Line: For home use this may be the only all in one you would ever need.
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| rbinck's Full Review: Lexmark X83 All-In-One InkJet Printer |
Introduction
I had a lot of photos that I needed to scan into my computer and wanted a combo unit so as to save space. I have always heard that Lexmark was a good choice for printers and a friend of mine had an X73 combo unit that he was very pleased with, so I made the purchase of the X83.
Description
The Lexmark X83 is a combination color printer, and scanner. It has the ability of photo quality resolutions both for the printer and the scanner. The scanner bed is a full legal page in size, so photos up to 8x10s are handled by it nicely. The printer is an ink jet type with two cartridges. One cartridge is for black ink and the other is for the color ink. That is a nice feature particularly if you do a lot of black and white printing because the black cartridge is far less expensive than the color cartridge.
The size of the unit is roughly 18” x 14” x 10 ½” in size, so a fair amount of table space is required. The scanner is a flatbed type and the cover will accommodate thickness of about 2” so books can be scanned, if desired.
The Printer Operation
The maximum resolution for the printer is 2,400 x 1,200 dots per inch (dpi) for both the black and white and color printing. Lower resolutions can be used to decrease the time required to print each page as well as save on ink used. The paper tray will hold about a hundred sheets of paper and the print speed runs from 2 pages per minute (ppm) in the photo color resolution to 12 ppm in the black and white draft resolution. Plenty fast enough for home use.
A nice thing about the printer is it will accommodate all sizes and types of paper. This allows labels, envelopes, photo paper, card stock, transparencies, 3"x5" index cards, iron-on transfers and of course, plain paper.
The Scanner Operation
The scanner will create an image from 150 dpi to 2400 dpi. On the 1200 dpi setting it will scan a 4x6 photo and store a file that is about 1700 by 1200 pixels, the exact size may vary. The color rendition I find to be excellent, not as good as a digital camera, but very acceptable.
The Copier Operation
The copier operation basically uses the scanner to first get a digital image then the printer to print the image. What is different in the X83 vs. the X73 is the computer does not have to be turned on to accomplish a copy. Like the scanning and printing varying resolution can be selected depending on the quality of the copy you wish. The reduce/enlarge can be set between 25% to 400% when making copies.
Control Panel
To the right of the scanner is the control panel. The control panel is used to tell the computer, printer or scanner what you wish to do. If you are just using the printer from your computer, the control panel will not get involved, but if you are going to make a copy or scan a document the control panel may be used.
Software
The software that comes with the Lexmark 83 will work with most all of the Windows operating systems from Windows 98SE to Windows XP or the Apple Mac operating systems from OS 8.6 to 10.x. Drivers are also available from the Lexmark website and it is generally recommended getting the latest drivers from the website. One note here, if you are updating the driver be sure to remove the old one first.
Along with the drivers my unit came with some really good application software. In addition to the Lexmark Scan & Copy Control software there was MGI Photosuite which is a very nice photo editing software package.
The Scan & Copy control software is installed by your computer at boot up and runs in the background with an icon in the system tray. It can be brought to the foreground by either double clicking the icon in the system tray or by pushing the scan button on the X83. There are several operations you can set up with the Scan & Copy software:
Copy
Scan to File
Scan to Application
Scan and Email
Scan and Fax (requires faxing software installed)
Additionally, there are selections to allow the lightening and darkening, reduce/enlarge for copy operations and fit to page, auto crop and rotate. Finally there is a button that will call up the Lexmark X3 parameter control settings where Job Finishing, Paper, Document/Quality and Advanced parameters can be set.
Setup
The setup is easily accomplished with the supplied CD and once it is put into the computer it should autorun and from there all that is required is to follow the instructions. One word of caution here though, be sure you do not have the X83 plugged into the computer USB port until you are instructed to do so. Very important. After the Lexmark drivers and software is loaded you will be given the option of moving on to disc two and I highly recommend this because disc 2 is where the MGI software is loaded.
When the ink cartridges are changed (or first installed) the printer will go through a test and alignment procedure. There will be a sheet printed that will allow you to set the alignment to a very fine level. This is done from the control panel on the X83 itself.
Operation
I find the overall operation of the unit to be very good. The scanner will make very nice image files to work with and the printing is capable of photo quality. It is a bit noisy, but then aren’t all printers? I like the ability of being able to push the scan button on the X83 and have the Scan & Copy control program be automatically launched on the computer. All in all I find the operation of the X83 to be quite good.
Conclusion
The X83 is a very nice all in one printer-copier-scanner and so far has done everything I’ve thrown at it. I have scanned over 500 photos so far without a hiccup. The photo printing is very nice, but with the cost of the color ink cartridges you may be better off taking a memory stick to your local Wal-Mart for printing a lot of photos.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 149
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Epinions.com ID:
rbinck
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Member: Richard Binckley
Location: Houston, Texas
Reviews written: 125
Trusted by: 26 members
About Me:
Retired A/V professional, likes Hawaii and Classic Cars
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