X-bit labs

Personal Laser Printers Roundup: Monochrome Printing (page 21)

Category: Other

by Vasily Melnik

[ 01/19/2006 | 06:23 PM ]

Lexmark E230

Design and Ergonomics

This is the largest and heaviest printer among all included in this review and its massive black case won’t adorn your work desk. It looks as if hewn out of a lump of black granite, raising some involuntary associations with a coffin, so I guess it should be put on a separate stand and shoved somewhere away from sight. Yet this giant is the only personal laser printer to support PCL (in emulation mode, of course). The rest of the printers only have GDI drivers. So if you need PCL support but don’t have enough money to buy a midrange device, you have to put up with the gloomy appearance of this machine.

The user will only interact with the front panel. It has control buttons, a manual feed slot, and output and input paper trays.

If you are about to print out a big number of pages, you may want to flip down the support so that the printouts wouldn’t slide off.

The control panel consists of a block of LED indicators and two buttons (Power On/Off and Cancel). Here’s what the indicators mean:

• Ready
• Cartridge and/or photo-drum depleted
• No paper
• Paper stuck
• Other error

The per-sheet manual feed slot has independent guides that can be set for a particular paper size. The guides are rather stiff but can be adjusted in a wide range. The input tray is wholly hidden in the case and is located at the very bottom.