Kyocera 2160 - page 19

ter 500-sheet standard supply.You can, however, add up

to two more500-sheet paper trays for both, for a more-

than-respectable total of 1,250 or 1,600 sheets, respective-

ly.The output tray holds the usual 250 sheets. The basic

tray is letter-size only,but the add-on trays support legal-

size paper. Automatic duplexing is an option. These

printers support 110lb. index stock, and you can print on

avariety of specialty stocks (transparencies, labels, and

envelopes).

Konica Minolta is proud of the ergonomic design of

these printers. The series has easy-to-replace toner car-

tridges, and the starter cartridges (half the capacity of the

normal ones) come pre-installed. It has nice controls for

checking toner and paper levels from the front panel.

Likemost printers,they have a Web-based administrative

server, in this case called PageScope. They also come

with several color-matching and management systems.

Per-page costs are acceptable for low-cost printers.

Color pages cost about 10¢, and black-and-white pages

around 1.5¢. Those aren’t great bargains. Our prices are

based on the “toner value kit” option, which reduces

prices if you buy all three color cartridges at once.

You should checkout competitorslikethe Lexmark

C770n, Xerox Phaser 6300 family, Hewlett-Packard

Color LaserJet 3800 family, and the OKI Printing

Solutions C5500n to see models thatoffer comparable

speeds plus a few more features.

This is an elegant design for Konica Minolta, and a

good deal in price.The question is whether users will be

willing to forego PostScript in a high-capacity,high-speed

workgroup office printer. Certainly this will not suit

graphics and page-layout users,but it makes sense for the

business market.

Chart entries — page 87

Konica Minolta magicolor 5450

27ppm full color

27ppm black & white

Sum-up: Expanded features built on a fast and reliable plat-

form.

While similar to the magicolor 5430 DL and 5440 DL

(documented above), this model, the magicolor 5450, is

more capable. The speed of the machine (27ppm) is the

same as that of the 5440 DL, but this $1,499 printer

comes fully equipped for serious work.

First of all, it adds PostScript to the mix. That was the

one notable lacking feature with the other models,at least

for some users. To handle more complex jobs, such as

those from PostScript-generating programs like Quark

XPress, this model has a much more powerful processor,

at 667MHz. In addition, memory is much more robust,

at 256MB to begin with and expandable to a full gigabyte

(1,024MB). Furthermore, there is a 40GB hard drive

available as an option.

Connectivity, as with the other models in this series,

consists of both USB and Ethernet ports. PCL and

PostScript are included.

Paper handling is more extensive than with the 5430

DL and 5440 DL models. There is a 100-sheet bypass

tray and a 500-sheet standard tray to start with. Then you

can add one or two optional trays for a total of up to

1,600 sheets. Unfortunately,there is only a 250-sheet out-

put tray, somewhat limiting the usefulness of all this

input capacity.Heavy-duty card stock can be handled by

the printer.

Page costs are the same as the other 5400 series printers.

That is, color pages run at about 10¢ and black printing

costs around 1.5¢. That’squite high for printers this fast

and this expensive.

While this is a fine printer, we think that there are oth-

ers than can compete with it at a significantly lower price.

You might want to consider, for example, the Xerox

Phaser 6300N or Lexmark C770n, which offer similar

features at a lower cost.

Chart entry — page 87

Better Buys for Business

Konica Minolta magicolor 5400 series

Consumables costs at-a-glance

Price

Yield

Full-color cost per page

Black-and-whitecost per page

Black toner - high capacity $149.99 12,000 $ 0.012 $ 0.012

Cyan toner - high capacity $339.99 12,000 $ 0.028 N/A

Magenta toner - high capacity $339.99 12,000 $ 0.028 N/A

Yellow toner - high capacity $339.99 12,000 $ 0.028 N/A

Transfer belt/black $299.00 120,000 $ 0.002 $ 0.002

2nd transfer roller $39.00 120,000 $ 0.000 $ 0.000

TOTAL PER-PAGE COSTS

$0.100 $ 0.015

10.03 1.50

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