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Chris Walton

Laser printers are among those things we consider so much a part of every office and home - something so mind-numbingly reliable - that writing anything called a 'review' of one would seem silly.

 But, not all lasers are created equal, and there are some features that may make you want to look harder before laying your money down.

 The Minolta PagePro 20 is a black-and-white laser printer targeted at small workgroups. It can print on paper up to A3 size and has an Adobe Postscript 2 print engine rated at 20 pages per minute.

 Minolta claims its 'super-fine micro-toning system' allows the 600 dpi machine to create output comparable to 1,200 dpi machines.

 I could spend a lot of time explaining why this is not possible, but I will just say that the text is noticeably sharper than the 600 dpi machine I normally use.

 The PagePro 20's speed was noticeably faster than a 16-page-per-minute machine it temporarily replaced, although not so much it would cause the jaw to drop.

 There were a few rough edges which created problems. When I plugged the Minolta in and flipped the power on, I drew cries of protest from a co-worker.

 You see, the PagePro 20 is a heavy, well-built machine which looks and feels more robust than competing products. No feature illustrated this better than the jet-like exhaust fan which blasted enough air through the rear duct to cool a nuclear reactor, or perhaps even a 400 MHz Pentium II processor.

 Unaware of the wind-tunnel effect, I blasted the poor fellow with wind and noise that made the speed and the sharpness of the PagePro 20 seem unimportant.

 The colour PagePro was another story. Not only did it lack the PagePro's extraordinary ventilation system, but it also was quite snappy for a colour laser.

 Something many first-time users find surprising is the relatively slow print speeds of colour lasers.

 You have to remember that not only does a colour laser have to process images three to four times larger and more complicated than black-and-white versions, but it has to process the image through toner cartridges of yellow, magenta, cyan and black, rather than just a single black cartridge.

 I turned this printer over to the SCMP art department for testing and in the week they had it, hundreds of colour and black-and-white documents were put through it.

 The main complaint was with print speeds on complex postscript documents such as Adobe Illustrator files, which took 10 to 15 minutes to print via a 10Base-T connection. Other prints were slower than with a standard printer, but not so much so that most people would notice.

 To some extent, the spark colour lasers had 10 years ago when they were first released has been stolen by cheap, high-quality inkjets. Lasers still cannot match the photo quality of inkjets, but the built-in Postscript compatibility and the speed they offer give them advantages in the right situation.

 Lasers also lay down toner in a way that allows them to simulate the dot patterns used by printing presses, which can make them more useful for proofing than colour inkjets.

 The Minolta shows how far the quality of colour lasers has come in the past few years. Prints from it perhaps were not the best I have seen from a colour laser, but they were extremely good, especially with graphics.

 I think, most importantly, the quality is more than adequate for the average business document and the printer's speed means producing 50 reports with graphs and charts will be fairly painless.

 The only real complaint I can offer is with the lack of controls. With quality this good, Minolta should offer better control over half-toning and colour management.

 The PagePro 20 is a nice printer considering its reasonable cost of only $12,500. Two years ago, a 16-page-per-minute A4 machine cost about $17,000.

 The Colour PagePro is not the hottest ride on the block, but it is fast and at $23,000 is less than half what you would have paid for a colour laser two years ago.

 Keep in mind, however, that these prices do not include network cards, something that should be built into a black-and-white printer of the PagePro 20's calibre, as well as being built into every colour laser printer.



PagePro spurs comparison of printer features