Xerox Solid Ink 8400 B- The way Disney would print
Written: Aug 15 '07 (Updated Sep 02 '07)
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Pros: Prints with a better finish than a Color Laser printer. Prints better than an InkJet.
Cons: Frequent power outages may cause the printer to use ink excessively, triggering successive cleaning mode.
The Bottom Line: You must try a solid ink Xerox Phaser printer now that the costs are coming down so. Welcome to professional quality as beautiful as Disney.
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| DenimDude's Full Review: Xerox Phaserâ„¢ 8400/YN Laser Printer |
Do you ever get tired of spending money on ink cartridges for your current printer? Do you ever get discouraged when you see your printed copy smear from a tiny single drop of water? Have you ever stained your fingers or items when refilling your ink cartridges? Have you ever wondered why the ink stains other surfaces so easily, yet lifts up off paper with the tiniest drop of moisture? Do you ever wonder why you spend so much for this type of messy ink?
Well then, you never have thought about a solid-ink alternative, the XEROX Phaser 8400. An ink as waterproof as wax, with a printed finish, glossy, like wax. And, the ink loads as easy as loading staples into a stapler.
After previously working at Sears Corporate Offices in Hoffman Estates, IL, I have longed for a Tektronix Phaser Color printer. The print from these printers is superb, and all of the employees loved printing to these printers rather than their LaserJet counter-kin, counterparts. Even the black ink prints with a solid, completely opaque, glossy finish. Why wouldn't it? These printers are loaded with solid-ink sticks that melt in the printer and are applied to the paper after being sprayed onto an oiled drum. Then, the ink dries solid, with a professional glossy finish. To replace the solid-ink, simply remove the wrapper from the solid ink color you choose to replace and simply insert the molded, palm-sized unit into the corresponding tube at the top of the printer. Each solid ink color is molded to a specific shape, according to its color, so with each color keyed to fit only one compartment, it's impossible to install the wrong color into the wrong slot, so you have perfect printing results, every time. Even if you happen to be blind.
Now, since those days are gone forever, XEROX has bought out the Tektronix company, and its Phaser line of solid-ink printers. When they did, they made the best even better, and now finally, 10 or so years later, they also made this wonderful, solid ink product much more easier to afford, for you and I. (The improvements Xerox had made to the original Tektronix line was to reformulate the solid-ink so that when printed on a page, it slips through the glass of its copiers easier, without the wax-like ink causing the page to stick to the glass.)
I still was worried for years that XEROX would stop making the solid ink printers, and that I could never obtain one....but....I FINALLY DID and now am I HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY!!!
Note that today's version of the Phaser 8400 is Xerox's 8500 or 8550 model of solid ink printers.
Please copy and paste this link for info on how to get one:
http://www.office.xerox.com/printers/color-printers/phaser-8560/enus.html
The Xerox Phaser 8400 Color Solid-Ink Printer comes with:
-128 MB of Ram - This is all we have ever needed with the printer running two business's. For detailed graphics or consistent photo printing, an upgrade to 512 MB of RAM will help improve throughput speed.
-Prints 24 Color Pages per minute - This printer prints at the speed advertised and is terrific when printing out hundreds of copy's of sales flyers. It prints out one right after the other, in one fel swoop process. The print-head's width runs the entire length of the oiled drum, with ink-jets throughout, the drum is inked as fast-as-it-can-turn and then this image is applied to the paper in a quick two second process. (No waiting for our previous printer's measily print-head to scurry back and forth a million times just to print 1/2 of a page.)
-Standard-sized maintenance kit or tray that contains the oil hasn't needed to be changed since we bought the printer in early 2005. It currently has a usable capacity of 36%. Yikes. In another 4 or so months, I'll need to order this. The printer will tell me when to do this. Good for 10,000 pages.
-One Rainbow pack of Solid Ink consisting of:
1 Cyan
1 Yellow
1 Magenta and
1 Black Solid-Ink sticks
Printer will tell you when it's low on ink and will continue printing, without interruption.
-1 User Documentation CD-ROM
-1 Installation CD-ROM
-1 Quick Reference Guide
-1 LPT Printer Port - You need to buy a parallel printer cable with a IEEE 1284 interface.
-1 USB Port - If using this type of connection, you need to purchase a standard USB cable with one end being standard and rectangular in shape; this connects to the computer and the other end being much smaller and square at the top, with a rounded bottom. This end will connect to the XEROX Phaser 8400 printer.
-One 625 sheet paper tray - Tray 2
-One multiple sheet tray for envelopes or letterhead - Tray 1
Setup with Windows XP or Windows Vista 32 or 64 bit operating systems is a snap. A plug & play process with no intervention required on your part. Yes, Windows Vista 64-bit edition supports and has drivers for this printer.
You can upgrade this printer to support Ethernet, networked connections as well as support for Double-Sided printing. (Note that the cleaning routines for this printer use an pre-included double-sided, cleaning routine that keeps the printer in top performance.)
When first powered up, the printer makes clicking and clacking noises, and its 3 or so built in speakers beep in a surround sound type of effect. Then the word, XEROX scrolls across the LCD display and the display lights up in a bright green color. The fan turns on its normal, rhythmic pumping, thump, thump sound. Its heaters turn on and off repeatedly to melt the solid ink sticks and gradually fade from consuming power within a minute or two. You cannot move this printer when plugged in or otherwise you may spill melted ink inside the unit. Follow the Power Down instructions before moving the printer.
Your pristine, solid-ink is ready. Ready for being exquisitely applied, as you specified, to your paper. An ink that doesn't smear or lose its sheen ...not even when you try to scratch it with your thumbnail. It won't come off! Looks so...professional! Great!
What's even greater is that if you would like to print a copy of your favorite recipe off the Internet, you can keep this copy near you as you work because the waxy print will not smudge if you happen to get it wet when something splashes on it from the mixing bowl! Just wipe it off, and the print is still clear & readable.
Your print driver loads with the "Enhanced" color printing option selected. This is excellent for printing photos, spreadsheets, and word documents such as bills and sales flyers, although there is one setting higher for printing higher resolution photographs. (I can't imagine.)
The driver has advanced options for printing translucent watermarks on your documents, however the "Image smoothing" option is the only additional, advanced option, that I or we use.
The printers drop-down, tray 1, holds around 12 envelopes at a time. After warm-up, when you place size #10 envelopes in the tray, the printer senses this, and then the display reads "A6 Plain Paper - Change?" Then one selects change and "#10 envelope" appears. I select this, and "Plain Paper" appears, and I select this, and I'm done and ready to print invoices and envelopes, the printer printing each from the appropriate printer tray. I use the Microsoft's Word 2007 program and know that previous versions of Word such as Word 97 and Word from Office Premium 2000, works fine, too.
The main tray, tray 2, holds up to a full 500 sheet paper package, plus a little more, 125 sheets, so you don't have to run completely out of paper before adding more.
Both printer trays accept card-stock as well as glossy papers. Be sure to select which special paper you are printing on from your printer driver's option's tab.
The print quality is that of the original Tektronix Solid Ink printers I was accustomed to using at Sears, in Hoffman Estates, IL. Walt Disney would have loved this printer. The XEROX Phaser 8400 printer lays down a finish as smooth and as shiny as glass, on cheap, inexpensive plain paper. The ink doesn't run when wet, nor has it melted when left in my hot car parked in South Florida. I wouldn't venture lay a document down on the hot dashboard, however, and when pressed between two laminated sheets of plastic, the ink can smear slightly if heated too much, but not to an extent where its unreadable or unacceptable. In fact, it's a rather cool effect.
I've had this printer for almost three years now, (0riginally purchased on February 22, 2005 from Ebuyer.Com, now an England-based company.) and just love it.
The print has been consistently clear and sharp, except for one time, about two months ago. The colors were not consistent across the width of the page. The initial cleaning routine that comes on automatically during a start-up from power off, fixed it. No trouble since.
When paper feeding problems appeared, approximately three months ago, the print routine that fixes print-smears corrected this. Additionally afterwards, you can run a paper-path test from either tray 1 or tray 2. No trouble since. Print quality is wonderfully professional and glossy, on just plain paper. For small business, it makes you look fantastic. For printing pictures for your family, it gives Kodak a run for its money printing glossy prints, on plain paper, or card stock. Printing pictures on transparent slides and regular or glossy Kodak paper is also supported, and the prints and transparencies turn out perfectly, with shine upon shine.
Now...
Possible Concern(s):
1. For people living in areas with frequent power outages.
This printer can consume an excessive amount of ink in these areas since the printer will automatically clean itself when powered completely down. Therefore, Xerox recommends that it's best to leave this printer in standby mode, which is virtually the same as it being off, except that the memory is always on. As a solution, we do have this printer hooked up to an APC 800 Heavy Duty power-backup supply. This has eliminated this concern for us.
Since the start-up routine of the printer consumes quite a bit of power, it will overload your APC backup for about two minutes. Then, the overload is automatically corrected. If you do this, your battery in your backup will need to be replaced every two years, and its best to turn your alarms to "off". Note this is not recommended by the manufacturer. For us, living in hurricane-riddled South Florida, its a workable solution that saves us money on ink.
2. We never have had any real problems with this Xerox printer, and when we do, its automated print cleaning routines restore it to like new condition. However, NEVER interrupt the power or switch the unit off when it is in the middle of initializing. One can hear the printer initializing by the clicks and buzzes it makes while doing so. Interrupting the power during this time can get the sequence of events with the printer's print-head and its associated wiper arm out-of-sorts, which causes the printer to stop dead while it continues to burp up a persistent error code.
The only way to fix this condition is to verify the error code on the Internet using Google, and to remove the top, front, and side panel's from the printer. You must then turn a pulley by hand while holding the wiper away from the print-head. Then, you'll see the print-head drop to its normal position and the printer works like new again after this manual, re-synchronization technique. (Of course, this happened to us, but it was surprisingly easy to fix.) So, beware, if you are not of a self-fix-it savvy type. XEROX will come to your home to repair the printer, although if it's out of warranty, I am not sure how much this would cost.
End of concerns
Quick summary
Currently, replacement Solid-Ink stix can cost significantly less than when we first purchased the printer in the First Quarter of 2005. Now, one can obtain this wonderful ink for as low as $59.99 for a set of 3. This, as of August, 2007. The oil for the printer's drum comes in a maintenance kit that lasts about 3 years, and costs $104.99 for 10,000 pages. For extremely heavy printer use, one can buy a larger kit that costs $152.99, good for 30,000 pages.
Please experience this printer. There is a solution out there to make you completely comfortable and happy...without the mess but with all of the shine.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 950.00
Operating System: Windows
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DenimDude
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Location: Boca Raton, FL USA
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