Samsung ML-7300N: A sweet printer
Written: Jan 17 '02
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Pros: 21 ppm. Postscript. PCL. Duplex. 10/100 Ethernet/Parallel port. Cheap. 1200 dpi.
Cons: Docs highlight the features but do not guide you in choosing which ones to use.
The Bottom Line: This printer has all of the features, and is really cheap. The real problem is figuring out which of the features you want to use.
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| munggnum's Full Review: Samsung MICROLINE® ML-7300N Laser Printer |
When I looked into getting this printer, I was skeptical that the printer seemed too cheap for the feature set it offers. It's around $800, and the nearest printer with all of the same features (IBM infoprint or Xerox docuprint) is more in the $1100-$1300 range.
I also have not heard about the quality of Samsung printers. However, Samsung is up-and-coming. They are the largest provider of DRAMs; they also have nice displays.
When I received the printer, it was very well packed; all moving parts taped or styrofoamed into place. I was impressed by this; they're not trying to cut corners.
The print quality of black and white text is quite good, and the promise of 21 ppm is quite possibly attained. You've never seen something that costs around $800 crank out pages like this! The print quality of images is respectable for a laser printer, but that doesn't really say much.
I was concerned by the term "Postscript 3 emulation." I thought it might mean that the Postscript was being done in a Windows driver or something silly like that. This is not the case; it has a full implementation of Postscript running on the printer. I print postscript directly to it on linux. The implementation appears to be by Oak Technologies, as opposed to Adobe, the inventor of postscript. I believe Oak bought Xionics, which was a company that made Postscript interpreters among other things. I do not have much knowledge of this implementation, but I did not run into any problems in my limited bout of testing.
The printer can run over parallel port or ethernet.
It seems to support Appletalk networks, as well as Netware, and of course, TCP/IP. I decided to run it over ethernet. One uses the menus to enter in an IP address (it also does DHCP, but I didn't want to get in to that.) After you've set the IP address, there's a handy menu item that prints out the network configuration so you can eyeball it.
Once the printer has its IP address, you can configure it with a web browser. They also have some software you can install that allows you to configure from your machine from the start, but it doesn't seem necessary.
The duplex mechanism works like a charm; it has not yet jammed on me.
The printer has a nice sleep mode (15,30,45 minutes settings for sleeping) that is completely silent.
Configuring the software WAS confusing -- especially if you want to use postscript. It took me about 3 hours to get it setup printing both PCL and Postscript for both Linux and Windows 2000. I've never set up a printer before, but I know a fair amount of the concepts involved. I'm thinking of creating a web page to help people out. The main problem is, the printer has so many features, it's unclear which ones one needs to use.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 800
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
munggnum
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Reviews written: 1
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