» Konica Minolta magicolor 3100 Color Laser Printer

Konica Minolta magicolor 3100 Color Laser Printer Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Does the job
Comment: I can't say what occurred with the previous reviewer. My guess
is he was referring to the 2200 (a much slower color printer)
or was driving the 3100 via a parallel cable.

I got the printer today and have printed just about everything
in sight, including 8.5x11 inch pictures (1536x2048x16 million
color digital camera images) in regular and fine quality mode.
Certainly it takes the printer longer to print these images,
but thats 15 seconds verses instantaineous. Note that I use
a 100bps ethernet to drive it.

The image quality looks great to me. I picked this printer
because if you add duplexing and a 500 sheet tray to their
lower end printer(the 2200), both options I need, you get
approximately the same total price as well as a printer that
is MUCH slower in color, has a fraction of the CPU speed and
does not do Postscript 3.

The 3100 DN is a win, and gives both a better price and smaller
size than the equivalent HP printer. The other printers in this
class all seemed to have 500 sheets, duplexing or networking
as various options.

Again I would ask the first reviewer to check if he has the
right printer and retract that if not. This printer does not
deserve that writeup at all.

1/2003 postscript:

Have been using this printer for 2 weeks now. This printer has
several features that are apparent only after examining the
unit, and deserve mention. First, it is very quick to come
online from a full energy save mode, about 1 minute. Second,
you can get full status on the printer by accessing the
built in web server (mentioned nowhere I could find in the
documentation), which gives an amazing number of statistics
on the printer, including bar graphs telling you how much
toner remains in each of the colors, how much life (in pages)
are left on each printer component, etc.
Finally, each of the parts that wear out in the printer, the
toner, transfer unit, imaging unit, fuser and feed roller are
user servicable units that can be simply unlatched and
replaced.
The local store discontinued this unit, but is still selling
a certain major brand name printer that is both more expensive
(if you include the same options), larger and, IMHO, uglier
than this printer.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: All the features at a low price
Comment: I bought this for home office use, and am more than impressed with the output quality. Photographs look as good as the originals, and the autmatic duplexing is terrific.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: so slow as to be unusable
Comment: After 3 weeks with helpful Minolta tech support staff I have discovered that it is normal and OK for this printer to take 12 minutes to print one 8' x 8' regular photograph at 300 dpi at the printer's lowest resolution. That is way too long to be practical in a business environment. I regret the purchase.

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