I Think I Can, I Thought I Could!
Written: Jun 17 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Price, looks, good quality
Cons: Color printing and time span per printed page
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| JLSloan's Full Review: Lexmark Jet Z11 InkJet Printer |
This space-saving little printer (the Lexmark Z11) reminds me of The Little Engine that Could. It works hard and produces more than one would think, especially for the price!
PRICE:
I was thrilled when I found it online for the unbelievable price of $89.00 with a $50.00 rebate offer. Although I found nowhere in the ad that mentioned dates between which the rebate would be accepted, I was informed by mail that my purchase was not between the required rebate dates. Even so, I thought the price was decent, and I'm not dissatisfied after several months of use.
INK CARTRIDGES:
Though it's possible to purchase separate cartridges (black ink and colored), I've found good results with just the color cartridge, since it will print both equally well. Cartridge price runs anywhere from $30 to $36, depending where you're shopping. So far I've found WalMart to have the best price. It's extremely easy to load a cartridge into the printer, being simply a case of opening the top and snapping one into the holder.
QUALITY OF PRINT:
1200 X 1200 Dots Per Inch (DPI): Printed material, especially black text, is very good quality. Color produces some problems: the color can look "fake" to me, too bright or garish. I previously used a Hewlett Packard DeskJet 600C, which produced much higher quality as far as color print is concerned. It's a bit disappointing, but on considering the price of this printer, I'm willing to live with it for the present. If and when I begin to print out real photo-quality images, however, this will be a different story. (And the HP DeskJet 600C frankly had paper jam difficulties that far outweighed the problems with color of the Z11!)
WEIGHT OF PAPER:
I've found absolutely no negatives involved with paper pulling capability. In fact, I'm amazed at the ability of this printer! My regular 200 lb. sheets work well, as do much heavier weights, even card stock. Though I haven't personally tried it, it even claims to print iron-on transfers!
SIZE OF PRINTER:
As I've stated, it's a real space saver. It takes up approximately one foot front-to-back and eighteen inches side-to-side on your desktop! The paper feeds down in from the top of the printer, which also saves a great deal of space. When you want to print, a sliding tray can be pulled out to 'catch' the paper. As an aside, the Z11 is also a good-looking addition to your desk: streamlined, with a modern 'face.'
PRINTING TIME SPAN:
Now for my own purposes, this does bother me a little. The time to print out one black-printed sheet is approximately two minutes; multiply that by two for color. (This is problematical when I'm trying to print out music my students have written during a one-half hour piano lesson; each minute I have to print becomes one minute less I can teach!)
CONTROLLING THE PRINTER:
A Control Program either appears or runs minimized each time a print job is sent. Options and status of jobs for the printer are placed at tabs right in this window. It's easy to see how full (or empty!) the cartridge is because a picture shows this progress. Don't do what I did at first, though: I had disconnected the printer at one point and the Control image showed that my cartridge was extremely low on ink. I didn't think to check this more thoroughly; I just bought a new one, amazed at how quickly I'd run out of ink with this new printer! But after I printed a great deal with my new cartridge and saw that the ink level remained high, I realized what I'd done and did some more reading in the User's Guide so I wouldn't make a mistake like that again!
There is one other option I feel it's important to mention about Printer Control: THE VOICE. If you have volume up on your speaker, as I did when I first printed, you can jump right out of your skin when a man's voice yells, "PRINTING STARTED!" OK, all right, I was able to settle myself down and go back to what I was doing -- shakily, but I was fine, fine. Ahhhhhh... "PRINTING COMPLETE!" hollered the demonic VOICE while I clung to the ceiling, blathering meaningless syllables as I hung upside down ..... Watch this. If you're like me, you'll think institutional commitment might become necessary. Needless to say, I ended up disconnecting THE VOICE. I HAD to - I kept forgetting to turn the volume down! Yes, yes, that's why I quiver continuously like this....
OVERALL RATING:
I'd give this printer four stars out of five. It's not the highest quality print I've ever seen, but it's good. And the price is even better!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
JLSloan
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Location: Puyallup, Washington
Reviews written: 30
Trusted by: 17 members
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