- Up to 16 ppm monochrome, 4 ppm color
- Up to 2,400 x 600 dpi resolution
- Automatic duplexer efficient for two-sided printing
- 32 MB fast SDRAM memory, upgradeable to 288 MB
- Ethernet 10/100BaseTX networking; USB 1.1 and IEEE-1284 parallel interfaces
My deskjet 890c has seen better days, so I was looking for a fast printer with color capabilities and good quality print. For not much more than I paid for my last printer I got the speed, economy and quality of laser printing in my home office.
I have only had it for a few days, and have heard wildly different things about the last version of this printer that I thought I would share my experience with this printer after a few hundred pages.
I took advantage of the included network card and ran it into my siemens wireless router. I did have to call minolta to get it talking to the computer, but they answered after one menu and in one minute I was talking to a real live person. We reinstalled, synched up IP addresses and had it printing in about ten minutes. It prints beatifully, and you can print four full page photos in about the same time as my old inkjet. I think the page speed is accurate on this machine but with my old inkjet, it could take many times longer than the rated speed depending on what you are printing. The 2300 doesn''t seem to differentiate on what its printing the pages just spit out.
If its in energy saver, it does take maybe a minute to get the first page out, but its still faster than the first page out of my inkjet when printing invoices from quickbooks, etc. After its warmed up its pretty instantaneous. It does produce fan noise even when idle which some people may find distracting. It is probably noisier than an inkjet when printing, but its over a lot sooner.
I can''t speak for reliability, but I''m going to buy a 3 year onsite warranty plan that will run about 159.00 just in case.
I''m figuring that I will save money of consumables over my two tank inkjet, but I''m not really worried about that.
Monochrome print quality is as you would expect, awesome, no smudging, and a real professional look. Color is better than my old inkjet, but not significantly. Get a dedicated photo printer if that''s what you want. Full page photos off of my 1 megapixel camera are very decent. There is not a photo paper listed in the reccommended media so the point is moot. But the color does not seem to bleed when it gets wet.
I am not experiencing any buyer''s remorse with this purchase whatsoever. And thats after I practically begged the guy at staples business expo to sell me one.
Buy Konica Minolta magicolor 2300 DL Color Laser Printer Now
Here are my observations from in-box, through install, to printing:
1. Good packaging, solid handles on the box. The device weighs 60+ LBs and the handles made it easy to manuever into my NOC.
2. Packaging was simple and efficient, printer has about 10 strings of blue tape to stiffen the joins for shipping. As a nice touch, all the tape ends were dog-eared making removal simple an painless. The documentation also clearly describes all the loactions so this process is simple.
3. Plugged it in, and turned it on. It''s a little noisy but then my SUN Ultra 30 isn''t exactly quiet so it doesn''t bother me. I printed the configuration page and then the demo page and was delighted to see crisp, sharp output.
4. The printer comes installed with 32MB of RAM but the manual states that it will accept PC100 and PC133 SDRAM DIMM modules of either 128MB or 256MB. This is a great relief as I have an extra gig and I will put it good use now. The only drawback was that there is only one expansion slot available for upgrading the RAM. I have not done this yet, but the upgrade indicates that higher resolution printing will be available.
5. Network configuration was a breeze I let my dog handle it while I made coffee. He reported that you just use the menu to insert the IP, MASK and Gateway. He has trouble with CDROMs so I installed the software. The installation was clean and simple. I thought I was going to need to add the printer to the DNS server or hosts file but the installer detected the machine on the network and got everything installed. The network test page was printed next and everything came out fine. I could have let the cat do it but neither the dog or I trust him.
6. I did not test out the BOOTP or DHCP protocols so I cannot say what their functionality looks like, but if the rest of the process is any indication I am sure they are functional and easy to setup.
7. I also didn''t tryout the parallel port or USB connection either, so #6 applies to them as well.
8. The 2300 DL requires extra hardware to provide duplexing and it''s a little costy so if that is a necessity consider that into your cost matrix.
9. The provided paper hopper doesn''t appear to take more than about 200-225 pages of 24# paper. You can get another upgrade that provides 500 pages of media but its about as well.
10. The size of the printer is pretty svelte but a little tall (especially if you get the extra media tray. The location of the network/power jacks is on the left side which seems a little odd and out of place it would be nicer if they were in the back out of view but that''s a pretty minor complaint. Overall the printer is attractive and professional looking (if that is of great concern in your buying decisions).
11. The front bezel seems to only lock in place at the top/middle. This leaves the lower part of the door a little loose and I would have liked it be a little more secure.
Overall
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This is a very good printer. It may be a little expensive for home users but if you want to get into good, quality color printing this is it. The output so far is almost picture quality. If you look closely you can detect a little of the jaggies but the increase it RAM should help. The HP competitive product was next to this one [in the store] and in side to side comparisons: was $ more expensive, didn''t have network connectivity out of the box, was slower, and print quality was slightly less.
Read Best Reviews of Konica Minolta magicolor 2300 DL Color Laser Printer Here
Laser printers are potentially superior to inkjets because of the laser''s unsmudgeable ink. However, for years the affordable laser printer with good resolution and good colors has been a mirage on the horizon. Finally, it has arrived as the Minolta Magicolor 2300 DL.
Can you tell that I am excited about this printer? I did not consider the companion printer, the 2300W, because of its lower resolution.
This sucker is heavy. It might be wise to get help before lifting it onto its table.
Installation was a bit rough. I''m on Windows ME, but the installation software did not offer a Windows ME option. I chose the closest, Windows 9x. You can also tell it which drive to install from, but why bother, it will just continue from where it started, right? Wrong. The software tried to read from my camera card reader and froze. I rebooted, restarted installation, and told it to install the Windows 9x driver from the CD drive. This worked.
I have downloaded the more recent driver from the Minolta web site but am in no hurry to install it because the driver that came with the printer has caused me no problems except the minor installation problems noted above. Note that I am *not* using this printer''s networking capabilities.
Looking at the pics of the tilted control panel, you might think that the LED position is adjustable, like on the Hewlett Packard Photosmart 7550. But the LED is firmly fixed and will remain at that same, exact tilt for the life of the printer. Comments by other reviewers that the LED is hard to read are NOT exaggerated. To read the light lettering, I need a flashlight.
In planning where you might put this printer, note that a corner would be inconvenient. You will need to access the 2300 from at least three, possibly all four sides: Front to use the control panel and replace the toner cartridges, left for the paper tray, right to clear paper jams (I''ve had none yet) or optionally install the duplexer, and back to access the motherboard if you add memory.
Another planning consideration is that this printer might not be a good choice for printing lots of small jobs. Hidden away in the back of the user''s guide, in the section on replacing the drum cartridge, is the statement that the drum cartridge does cleaning rotations after every job; therefore, lots of small jobs wear it out faster.
The user''s guide says that more memory improves resolution for large-coverage graphics, especially when combined with duplexing. So I bought a 256-MB PNY PC133 SDRAM DIMM from Amazon for one eighth the price charged by Minolta. Getting under the cover of the 2300 was easy enough. The memory socket was empty. (The on-board 32MB chip is somewhere else.) I seldom install memory and found this module stubbornly difficult to seat, but after gentle rocking it finally went in. When I printed a config page, the printer recognized the extra memory, for a grand total of 288 MB. Technically, I have now voided my warranty because the user''s guide says that''s what happens when you install an accessory not sold by Minolta. And the memory upgrade is listed under "Accessories". However, the memory installation instructions do not explicitly say that you must install Minolta''s.
Although I have not noticed improvement in the resolution, which I already liked, I have yet to run detailed comparisons with my dozen or so "before" samples.
Colors are about equal in quality to those of my Photosmart inkjet, except for one problem: Pure yellow becomes yellow-green. (Greens, however, look OK.) I ~hope~ that this is merely due to contaminated yellow toner and that the problem will disappear after I use up and replace the yellow cartridge. I don''t know about you, but I seldom need to print pure yellow. I plan to print such pages on the inkjet, then spray them with clear acrylic to discourage the smudge imp. This is good news--I still have a use for the inkjet and the coated paper that I bought for it.
Text is crisp and dark. I definitely prefer it to the lighter text from my old IBM laser printer.
2300 output looks quite attractive on a bright-white 24-lb. laser paper such as Hewlett Packard laserjet paper. Unlike inkjet ink, laser ink/toner does not soak into plain 24-lb. paper, and it binds to a plain surface just fine. Indeed, the user''s guide warns that coated inkjet paper will damage the 2300. If you print on both sides, heavy-coverage graphics can cast a shadow on the opposite side of 24-lb. paper, but mainly when the reader lifts the page and lets light shine through from the other side, and I don''t think it''s enough to bother the reader. Next up the scale is Hewlett Packard 28-lb. "color laser" paper. Great White soft-gloss (coated on both sides) 32-lb. laser paper looks even nicer because of the glossy white spaces--for example, the margins. And if you print on both sides, it is more opaque. It is like the paper in an expensive coffee-table book. Adding to the opulent appearance is the delightful soft gloss of the 2300�s �ink� (if that is the correct term for fused toner). I cannot imagine any reason to use a heavy-gloss paper in this printer.
I plan to buy the duplexing attachment later, and after I install and use it, I will add a note here about that experience. I''ll also let you know whether the yellow-green problem persists or was a fluke.
TWO MONTHS LATER: The problem with the yellow was a fluke. It went away after about 200 pages. It may have been something used in sealing the toner bottle.
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I am wavering on the duplexer because of the high price and because it does not accept 28-lb. and 32-lb. paper, which I plan to use.
Want Konica Minolta magicolor 2300 DL Color Laser Printer Discount?
I just bought this printer last week, and have had a chance to look it over thoroughly and do quite a bit of printing.
The good:
If you want nice color prints and speedy b&w laser text output, you cant go wrong here. On regular white copier paper this produces better color prints than the Epson 700 and 800 series inkjets (my other two printers) did on special coated photo paper. The b&w text output is crisp and better than my last two monochrome lasers. This unit allows me to work from one printer, without compromise. It has a good range of connection options, ethernet, usb and parallel. As can be expected, hooking it up to a network is nothing short of rocket science so I can understand why some buyers would give a bad review based on that. But this printer is no different from any other network printer, the complexity is in the way microsoft does networking, not in the printer itself.
Color photos come out with a slight gloss to them...less than inkjets on coated paper...less than a real photo...but a nice shine. I hear there are some semi-gloss laser print papers that produce a better output. I dont have a need to spend money on that, these are good enough. I also hear that using superwhite (100+) copier/printer paper produces even better results. When I use up the rest of the case of 80 white I bought 2 years ago I''ll do that. If there is any question on output quality, I''m printing my wedding photos on it and the wife is very happy with them. Some reviewers have been upset that putting coated photo paper in them causes the paper to melt. Thats because you arent SUPPOSED to put coated inkjet photo paper into a laser printer. It says so in the manual, and it usually says so on the printer paper package. Read the manuals!
By the way, printing monochrome text pages in the "color" mode slows down the output to the same 4ppm as color prints. Make sure you default the printer to B&W output and change it to color only when you want it. Then it''ll step the printer up to the faster b&w print rate of 12-15ppm.
The bad, revealed:
Its loud and clunks a lot when printing as it has to change between four toner cartridges. Theres a fan that runs all the time. If this was in a small business environment and I had to sit within 5'' of it all day, I''d be unhappy. I use this at home. I turn it on, print my stuff, turn it off, no problems.
Speed is not as high as some other lasers. Hmm, it churns out four pages a minute in color and about 12-15 in black and white. Plenty fast enough for me...what are ya gonna do...print out 500 color prints an hour??
Many have maligned the ''design'' with regards to where the connections are. On mine, the connections are on the left side of the printer, at the back. Paper loads on the left side, just in front of the connections. So you cant slip this printer into a corner with the left side up against a wall. You cant put another printer within a foot of this one on the left side. Its a little ugly to look at the wires, and you cant turn it to put the wires on the back as this is where the paper goes. Kinda a dumb design. Had they put the paper feed on the opposite side, you could put the wired side to the back. I guess if you dont print an awful lot you could just stick 200 sheets of paper in it, turn it around and then pull it out to put more paper in. While its dumb to have done it this way, its not the end of the world for me.
Size. Its very large, but its a tall thin printer. Takes up about the same desk space my old monochrome laser took up. Its also pretty heavy so if you have a dinky table, I''d find someplace else to put it.
The software. The software is weird. For starters its written in Java and installs Sun''s JavaVM on your machine all by itself without asking you if you want to do that. I didnt particularly. I also wonder what the rocket science is in writing an installer that isnt dependent on other software packages. But some people cant live with simplicity. The software was not able to perform an adequate network installation of the printer, I had to do it manually. I also had to hook up and connect the printer via USB before running the software, or the install bombs...usually printer software is installed first, so when you connect it windows can automatically recognize it. Even when connecting it first, windows wanted to install it and so did the setup program, so I had to exit the windows new hardware install. Goofy.
Printer memory. More unclear thinking on QMS/Minolta/Konica''s part. The printer comes with 32mb of installed memory. You can add more via a plain old fashioned pc100/pc133 DIMM, and I certainly have plenty of those lying around. Unfortunately for many, the printer wont print at full resolution in color without 64MB, and requires 256MB to do full page duplex printing. Fer cryin'' out loud, this old memory is something like $10 for 256MB in volume...whats the problem with loading up the printer at the factory? Of course, you have to remove 11 screws to get at the memory slot. This may explain why some reviewers said the printer wouldnt print a full page of color print.
The LCD display. Its not backlit. In a darker room, you cant read it. With light directly on the screen, you cant read it. With moderate to bright room lighting and looking at it indirectly or by shading it from direct light, its perfectly readable. Not really a huge problem, but one has to wonder what the impact of spending an extra five bucks on a backlit LCD display the size of your little finger would have been...?
I''d also have liked to install the latest drivers and software, but Konica/Minolta/QMS''s web site wasnt available/responding when I went there.
Non-PC support. I guess if you have a Mac or Linux machines, the drivers are lousy and the support isnt very good. I dont have either of those, so its not a problem for me.
No support for PCL/Postscript. These are ''printer languages'', PCL is from HP and postscript is Mac. This is a ''winprinter'' which means any windows application that prints through windows will work fine with it. If you have some godawful old home written application that writes PCL or Postscript straight to the printer, you''ll get gobbledegook output. I havent seen one of those kinds of apps in a very long time. Like ten years or more. If you''re running Word or Powerpoint or any other regular old windows app this is a big fat "so what?".
Bottom line: its pretty, its a little noisy when operating, it has some layout and engineering/design foibles, makes great prints, and is a very very good printer for a home user or small business user. For a small biz user, I''d make sure this sucker is away from the workers desks. Installation could be smoother, but its not a huge problem. If possible, get the printer with the high capacity cartridges installed rather than the starter cartridges. From what I''ve seen the printer can be bought with the high capacity cartridges for the same price as the four cartridges themselves. Which in a way makes it a disposable printer...why spend more to replace the cartridges, drum and waste toner cartridge when you can buy a whole new one and just sell or donate the old one?
Ironically, lower cost printers like the Okidata 5100 feature Color Postscript, PCL5, and hence is supported by almost every operating system out there, linux, unix, freebsd, os/2, windows, mac, macos-x.
The 2300, however, would qualify as a "winprinter" since it uses a proprietary page description language and protocol, to encode and send the page images from the pc to the printer.
There are beta-level linux drivers, created by a third party by reverse-engineering the proprietary page description protocol, but the capabilities of these experimental third party drivers do not come even close to the original proprietary drivers for windows provided by QMS.
In short: it''s a winprinter. If you want a standards-based printer that supports PCL5, Color Postscript, and works with any operating system, check out the Okidata 5100.
The predecessor, the QMS 2200 "Magicolor", is also a Winprinter (more appropiatelly, a "GDI printer", in the sense that it uses a proprietary protocol and the Windows Graphics Engine (Microsoft technology) inside the printer. AVOID THAT, get a real color printer with PCL5 and/or Color Postscript
