Konica Minolta Magicolor 1650EN Color Laser Printer Save 20% off

• Ultra compact and lightweight
• Designed to network with a variety of operating systems
• 9600 x 600dpi maximum print resolution
• 20ppm black and white print speed; 5ppm color
• 256MB standard memory

I purchased this laser printer after doing a fair bit of research on what is the most economical printer, with a good rating AND a network link. It was also important that the printer would work on Mac, Linux and Windows platform. This printer was what floated to the top. The built-in NIC is very useful just plugin the power cord, a network cable and turn it on on either the Mac or Windows 7, the printer is detected as a network printer automatically when adding a new printer. No drivers needed. Truly plug and play on both the Mac and Windows.

The unit itself is very quiet when in its power saving mode, with the only indication that its on being a blue light on the front panel. While printing, the unit is certainly louder but still enough to maintain a conversation at a reasonable level. I haven''t truly tested to see if I can get 5 ppm colour or 20ppm B/W, but I have noticed that from power-up to print it takes about 15-30 seconds and less than 10 seconds from sleep; neither numbers being an issue for me. Its a small unit that tucks away in a corner of the room nicely, and its tray takes a full stack of office paper. The one thing that would make this fantastic would be a duplexer unit. This is sold as an option for this model, however, the price nearly doubles.

To address some of the previous reviews, where Konica-Minolta stopped supporting the printer by no longer providing printer driver updates, I should say that for this particular printer, configured as a network printer through the LAN port, I can''t see this being a problem. Both on the Mac system as well as on Windows 7, the printer is recognised as a Postscript printer, meaning that the drivers are Windows'' generic built-in. I have never been a fan of using a vendor''s own print driver since they tend to add a lot of cruft and little value (having not installed the vendor driver I wouldn''t know if this is the case here), but I for one am hard pressed to see what difference the vendor driver provides over the PS one, and am of the mindset that there is none. So I don''t think planned obsolescence on KM''s part might not hit the 1650EN quite so hard. Just some food for thought...

In short, for under $200, you will have trouble finding a laser printer with this economy, durability and a network connection.

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We run several different operating systems in my house, and getting a printer which can support all of them is a challenge sometimes. This printer fit right in without any trouble. I had the printer unboxed, on the network, and printing from my Linux machine within half an hour, including time to deal with a broken software issue on the Linux machine.

The best bit: because of the Postscript print engine, and Konica-Minolta having the good sense to include Postscript Printer Description (PPD) files, the drivers shipped with the machine worked perfectly on my Linux computer. If you''ve ever set up a Linux printer, you know that just never happens.

If you have a simple network, this printer is probably plug and play. With absolutely no configuration on my part my main desktop was able to connect to the printer and print.

If you buy a network printer though, there''s a good chance that you want to tweak your setup just a little bit. It was really easy to assign a network address of my choosing instead of an automatic address. I entered that address into my name server, and then it was trivial to connect to the printer from any machine on my network, by entering a printer server host of magicolor1650 (the host name I entered in the name server).

It really doesn''t get easier than this. I''ve been setting up home networks for 15 years, and this is the easiest printer installation I''ve ever had. Plug it in, tell the network about it, tell the computers about it, and it just works. That just never happens.

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I got this color laser printer to replace a Samsung CLP-315W which was junk (I reviewed it too). The 1650EN is connected via ethernet to a network of Macintosh computers. It has a nice small footprint. It is very quiet in sleep mode, mostly quiet between printing and sleep mode, and somewhat noisy when printing but don''t chalk that up as a complaint. The print output is fantastic. The toner cost per print is above average but as it''s not our primary laser printer, it doesn''t get much of a workout on any given day. For such a small unit, the print speed isn''t bad; grayscale output is a little quicker. I give Ease of Setup 3 stars, perhaps unfairly, but only because the company does not do a good job of updating printer drivers for Mac OS X upgrades--it took K-M not less than a couple of months to put out a beta driver for Snow Leopard (OS X v10.6) after its release by Apple, and figuring out which driver(s) to use/install is somewhat confusing. Anyway we got the beta to work and have not had any problems with it. I would buy one of these again.

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This is the second model of Konica Minolta laser printers that I have purchased in recent years. I am very satisfied with the Konica Minolta brand. Laser printers are great because the toner is much more affordable than constantly having to pay for ink cartridges. Also, laser doesn''t "bleed" if water droplets get on the copy. The 1650EN printer is smaller than my previous printer, which is definitely a plus factor. It provides good, sharp color printing for an affordable cost. The only drawback to the printer is that it is not very fast.

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I was about to order another color laser printer in this price category, but wanted to get some opinions from friends who might have some experience with laser printers in the home, and I am glad I did. This printer was recommended by a friend whose opinions I trust. He told me that he had been using his 1650EN in a home network environment for almost three years without any negative incidents. From my own past experiences in the computer business, I saw this as a refreshing alternative to the units that often came into our repair shop having a far more common name in laser printer technology.

For the price, I can''t imagine anyone would have any complaints about this printer; the print quality in both text and color graphics is excellent. Printer set-up couldn''t have been easier on my Mac network; I didn''t even bother with either of the two discs that came with the printer, I just downloaded the latest drivers from the Konica-Minolta site. I would, though, have to say that there is at least one shortcoming to the printer that should have been addressed some time during its present life span: a user cannot upgrade its relatively small amount of on-board RAM. This would certainly be useful when dealing with higher definition photoshop projects. The print speed suffers a bit too here, but is satisfactory when printing text. Also, now that wireless networks are all the rage, the 1650EN shows itself to be a little long in the tooth since several newer competing models in this price range do offer the wireless connection feature. I would guess that this will appear in the printer that replaces this one in a future K-M lineup.

In all, I expect this printer to last me for several years at my current print demand levels, and would recommend it to anyone who wants a modestly-priced color laser printer for the home.