X-bit labs

Personal Laser Printers Roundup: Monochrome Printing (page 23)

Category: Other

by Vasily Melnik

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

Drivers and Settings

The driver interface and the way the settings are grouped on the tabs in differ from the other printers’ control panels, but it is easy enough to find what you need. The left and larger part of the window contains the various settings available while the right part shows a summary of the basic settings, each setting being a hyperlink. You can simply click the appropriate hyperlink to change the particular setting rather than search for it in the tabs and dialog windows.

On the first tab you can choose the number and order of copies, paper orientation, two-sided printing with the binding on the short or long edge, and the number and layout of pages per sheet of paper.

The Print Quality tab offers three presets: Best, Normal and Draft. The meaning of each preset is illustrated by the appropriate icon: Best is meant for printing black-and-white photographs; Normal is best for documents with text and business graphics (diagrams, charts, etc); and Draft is for printing simple black text. You can also select the print quality settings manually using the Custom button. You will be able to adjust the toner fill density and print resolution then. On the same tab you can enable the PictureGrade feature which means automatic correction of half-toning parameters depending on the contents of the printed page.

The additional print quality options include contrast and the size of the dithering matrix.