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Entered CNET Catalog: 08/14/2002
SKU: 5250212-100-R
Manufacturer: Konica Minolta
Manufacturer description
Whether you've got a home business or just an office in your home, there's one thing you haven't got: a lot of space for a big laser printer! While that used to mean a trip to the mall just to print your sales proposal, or letter, or weekly report, your lack of space won't hold you back anymore. Now that the PagePro 1250W is here, your biggest challenge will be cleaning off a corner of your desktop. About the size of a toaster oven, but able to do so much more for your home business than make lunch, the PagePro 1250W fits easily into your space. At 17 pages per minute and with support for pages up to legal size, the PagePro 1250W delivers the right combination of printing speed and size for all needs. With USB and parallel interfaces, the PagePro 1250W makes it simple to print from any Microsoft Windows application. 1200 x 1200 dpi resolution is standard. Your documents will take on the professional appearance you're trying to project from your home office. Print on page sizes from 3" x 5" up to 8.5" x 14" and on thick stock, including envelopes. The PagePro 1250W can handle many different types of jobs. It's economical to own and inexpensive to operate. Choose a high-capacity toner cartridge for twice the printing and lower cost per page.Product summary
The good: Good print speed and quality; has both parallel and USB ports; top-notch phone support.
The bad: Incomplete documentation; loud.
The bottom line: Budget buyers, this personal laser printer will fit right in your home or small office.
CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 04/21/2003
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 Larger than your average personal laser. |
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With the output and input trays extended, the 1250W measures 15.4 by 16.1 by 14.6 inches, somewhat larger than the typical personal laser printer. Both trays fold up against the unit to save space when it's not in use, a nice feature for space-starved small offices. The printer weighs 18.74 pounds, so it isn't too heavy for most adults to move around.
The PagePro 1250W can connect to your PC via either a parallel or a USB 1.1 port. (We'd prefer the faster USB 2.0 standard that many lasers, including the Dell P1500 personal laser printer, support.) As usual, both ports reside on the back of the printer. There's no Ethernet port, either, but we wouldn't expect to see one in such a basic printer. The On/Off switch sits unobtrusively on the printer's left side.
 Supports both parallel and USB connections. |
 Goes easy on the controls. |
Like most personal laser printers, the PagePro has few controls. The uncluttered control panel, located to the right of the output tray, sports just two indicator lights--orange for Errors and green for Ready--and a button that lets you cancel or resume a print job. Unfortunately, the 1250W's sparse control panel is echoed by its limited memory.
The 1250W comes with 8MB of SDRAM installed, and it isn't upgradable, which would make it hard to fit this printer into an office that processes a lot of print jobs. It works with Windows 95 through XP; Mac users will have to look elsewhere.
The enclosed CD contains a printer driver, a useful link to Minolta's online help files, and another link to Minolta's online store. The driver includes a simple status display that offers page counts and pop-up warnings. But don't bother looking for the driver display if you are using the USB port with Windows 98 or NT 4.0--it won't be there, which is a minor inconvenience. In addition, the status utility won't load if you install the printer driver using Plug-and-Play (that is, by just plugging in the printer and letting it go from there); you will have to load the driver using the CD's setup program.
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 Separate drum and toner cartridges save dough. |
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As with many personal laser printers, the Minolta PagePro 1250W suffers from noisy printing. Although not overwhelmingly loud, this laser does let you know when it's printing, which can get annoying in small spaces.
For a personal laser, however, the 1250W delivers reasonable print speeds, especially if you consider that the PagePro is considerably less expensive than most laser printers in its class. In CNET Labs' text-printing test, the PagePro came in at 12.44 pages per minute (ppm), which is faster than the results from its sibling, the Minolta PagePro 1250E, which reached 11.9ppm, but it's slower than Brother's most recent personal laser, the HL-5040, which printed 13.9ppm. At 11.48ppm, the 1250W's score for graphics printing came in slightly under that of the PagePro 1250E (11.7ppm), but the 1250W's rating beat the Dell P1500 personal laser printer's 8ppm.
Ultimately, however, when it comes to laser printing, output quality is paramount. Fortunately, the 1250W generated good-quality text overall, with crisp and clean lettering. Fair-to-middling graphics output suffered from occasional blurring, but it was passable enough for all but the most formal presentations.
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Laser printer speed (personal and workgroup) Pages per minute (Longer bars indicate better performance)
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Inkjet printer quality
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The Minolta PagePro 1250W's help documentation could use some assistance itself. The lone setup guide is written in four languages (English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese) in type that's so small that most people over the age of 30 will need a magnifying glass to read it. For some reason, the setup guide specifies how to install neither the ink cartridge nor the drum cartridge (nor does it even mention that you need to install them). To find that information, you must go to the user guide, which is available only on the included CD-ROM or online. The Web site offers drivers, FAQs, an answer base, and comprehensive documentation but no e-mail or chat-based tech support.
On the other hand, Minolta's phone support (available weekdays 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. CT) is faultless. When we called, we reached a technician immediately, and while we could tell that he was running through a script, he stuck with us until the problem was diagnosed. The standard one-year limited warranty includes parts and labor, assuming your problems result from normal use.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 User Rating: 
9/10
Excellent printer, perfect for my office needs.
Pros: sturdy, good speed, great looking documents
Cons: 20lb paper occasionally doublefeeds
User Rating: 
3/10
Not for high end use
Pros: Good Quality Printing
Cons: Frequent Jams
User Rating: 
2/10
Not very sturdy
Pros: Cheap and fast and compact
Cons: Toner is expensive and the drum fell apart, the tray broke and the printer is only 6 months old. Cannot feed anything but paper without jamming, does not feed form or envelopes or single checks without jamming.
User Rating: 2/10
Gears for paper feed wear down quickly.
Pros: Good price. Good output quality.
Cons: All of the Pros are negated by the fact thhat this printer wore out in less than a year. Gears in the paper feed started grinding and cost of fixing is greater than cost of buying new printer. Will not buy this brand again.
User Rating: 
1/10
Do not buy this printer!!!!!
Pros: Works great when it works.
Cons: Uses thin plastic strips to guide the paper around a 90 degree bend. Paper stuck together will suck the strips up and destroy them. Then the printer is no longer usable. I have worked in product design for over 20 years, and have never seen anything as ba
User Rating: 
8/10
decent printer; good service
Pros: fast printing, small size, responsive tech support, bought for $99 new on ebay
Cons: noisy during operation; expensive supplies
User Rating: 
7/10
Great Printer + Expensive Toner replacement
Pros: * Great printer for money * Fast and good quality printing * Easy to set-up
Cons: * Expensive toner replacement - almost costs more than the printer (ANY RECOMMENDATIONS WHERE TO BUY TONER???) * Does not allow you to enlarge an image - blow up an image 3-4-5X and print in panels.
User Rating: 3/10
DOES NOT WORK OVER NETWORK
Pros: This is a good fast printer. It comes out of stand by quickly.
Cons: This printer does not print over a network. The paper tray is bad.
User Rating: 
5/10
Great Printer for local printing
Pros: Cheap. I got it for $70 after rebates.
Cons: No matter how cheap, if I can't get it to work on the network, it was still money wasted. I've disabled bi-directional printing and still can't print. Jobs just sit in the queue forever. Off this same Netgear print server I used an HP 1100 with no trouble
User Rating: 
6/10
Great Printer for the Price!
Pros: 1. Excellent text print quality 2. Easy set-up 3. Compact design
Cons: 1. Paper loading is difficult to master to prevent printing crooked on page 2. Poor documentation
User Rating: 7/10
Excellent performance for price
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User Rating: 7/10
Thanks for the networking tips!!!
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