MaximumPC 2004 04

THIS MONTH: Color Printers!

P

DAs were once nothing but electronic organizers,

but they ultimately grew into do-everything wire-

less devices, complete with web browsing, e-mail

support, and even modest cell phone capabilities. Cell

phones, meanwhile, started out as mere mobile tele-

phones, but are now meeting the most satile PDAs

halfway.

Ericsson brought the first such “smartphone” to the

U.S. in the form of the R380, which uses a customized

version of smartphone concept, Nextel loads Java-based

PDA apps into a Motorola phone. These apps are authored

in the Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) programming lan-

guage, which offers handhelds compatibility with any

device that runs one of the

burgeoning varieties of Java. Let’s have a look at the two

competing phones to see which one packs the most fea-

tures into the smallest space.

—ROB PRATT

EPSON STYLUS COLOR 2200

Head 2 Head A showdown among natural PC competitors

I

t’s simple. If you want to print high-quality photographs,

you want an inkjet printer. If you need a fast workhorse

printer that produces sharp, beautiful text, you need a

laser printer. The problem is, we all want both, but few of

us are willing to purchase (and make room for) both kinds

of printers to meet both kinds of needs. So most folks opt

for inexpensive inkjets that offer photorealistic printing on

special paper, and can still print out a few sheets of decent-

looking text when there’s a hostage crisis at the local Kinko’s.

Konica Minolta’s Magicolor 2300W may help tilt the bal-

ance in favor of laser printers, however. With extremely fast

full-color printing, crisp laser-printed text, and a shockingly

low street price of $700 (not including the current $

rebate), there’s good reason to re-evaluate what each type of

printer has to offer.

So how does this upstart color laser printer stack up

against a tried-and-true inkjet? Let’s find out.

—LOGAN DECKER

Photo quality: Hmm... vibrant, photorealistic prints on glossy paper via inkjet

vs. grainy prints on standard laser-printer paper? It’s no contest. The Stylus

Color 2200 produces the best looking photo prints—including borderless

prints—we’ve ever seen on a sub-$1,000 printer. Only gray-scale photos dis-

appointed us, showing some banding in gradients, but this can easily be rem-

edied with an optional matte-black ink cartridge intended for black and white

photos. Winner: Stylus Color 2200

Cost per print: Full color photos on glossy photo paper will

run you about 93 cents a sheet. And that’s a fairly low figure

considering that this was calculated at 5 percent coverage

per color—most photographs will average higher color, and

thus higher cost. Winner: Magicolor 2300W

20 MAXIMUMPC APRIL 2004

Features: The Stylus

Color includes a paper

roll adapter and inte-

grated cutter, so you

can queue up images

and batch print them

during lunch or fire

drills. You can feed

paper sizes from enve-

lopes all the way up

to 13x19-inch sheets.

Unfortunately, the

printer lacks a network

interface. Winner:

Stylus Color 2200

Speed: No surprises here, except that the Stylus Color

2200 is pokey even by inkjet standards. Printing a full

page of text at 360dpi took 29 seconds. Increasing the

resolution to 720dpi ballooned the time to a lengthy

2:36 (min:sec). A five-page Acrobat document with

illustrations took 4:19 (720dpi). But the kicker is this:

A full-bleed 8.5x11-inch color photograph at the best

photo quality setting (2880x1440dpi) took a whopping

24:20. Winner: Magicolor 2300W

You’ll get dazzling, I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-butter

color prints from the Stylus Color 2200.

JETSONS

JETSAM

You’ll pay a premium for the privilege, and you’ll

wait a long time for it, too.

$700, http://www.epson.com

MAXIMUMPC VERDICT 9

Murky and grey,

the text quality

from the Stylus

Color 2200 on

plain paper

(shown here at

5-point type) is

unacceptable

for anything but

laundry lists and

ransom notes.

Even our persnickety

staff photographer

Mark Madeo gasped

at some of our test

images; amazingly,

shadowy areas retain

their detail.

Text quality: While still better than dot matrix

printers or rubber stamps, text output from the

Stylus Color 2200 on plain paper is abysmal.

The culprit is dot gain—the tendency for ink to

spread out after it hits the paper. As a result,

even with “black-ink only” selected, our test

text looked gray and dull. Epson doesn’t rec-

ommend the 2200 as a dedicated text printer.

We don’t either. Winner: Magicolor 2300W