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Entered CNET Catalog: 07/09/2002
SKU: 0039281031359
Manufacturer: Konica Minolta
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Manufacturer description
The PagePro 1250E has been designed to offer you fast, high-quality printing which you can rely on, at an affordable price. It brings you the compatibility of big office printers in a small package, which can sit on your desk where you need it. The PagePro 1250E's small size allows you to keep it on your desk, ready to print, without it getting in the way. When you need it, the PagePro 1250E will speed through your lengthy documents, at up to 16 pages per minute. Or if you want to print single sheets, a first print out time of less than 15 seconds will not keep you waiting too long, even when you are in a hurry. The PagePro 1250E has been engineered to produce outstanding quality 1200 x 1200 DPI prints, with razor sharp text and smooth graphics. The well-detailed printouts are suitable for use in all professional business applications including reports, correspondence and presentations. With a low printer cost, high capacity toner cartridges (which don't need frequent replacement) and plain paper printing, owning and running a PagePro 1250E is not an extravagance, it is a tool for constant use. The PagePro 1250E has been extensively tested and certified by Microsoft to be fully compatible with the latest Microsoft Windows operating systems. It also supports Microsoft Plug and Play to make its installation quick and simple via either your PC's Parallel or USB interfaces for full laser speed printing. Finally, to maximize the return on your investment, you can also share the printer amongst members of your workgroup with Microsoft Windows printer sharing. If you're an Apple Macintosh user you too can take advantage of the PagePro 1250E. The PagePro 1250E is easily connected using your Macintosh's USB port, and printed to as a PostScript compatible printer.Product summary
The good: Comes with extra paper trays, networking, and copier/scanner attachment; low price; highly adjustable drivers; decent print speeds and text-printing quality.
The bad: Clunky design; mediocre graphics-printing quality; installation process is somewhat confusing.
The bottom line: Despite a few shortcomings, the Minolta PagePro 1250E is an affordable, reasonably fast laser printer that will grow with your business.
Average user rating: 0 stars Not yet available
CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 02/06/2003
 Easy ink installation. |
 Connects via both USB and parallel. |
Luckily for cross-platform offices, the printer is compatible with both Windows and Macintosh operating systems, and it has both USB and parallel-port connections, though cables are not included. Setting up the printer via the USB or parallel connections on Windows XP requires only that you plug in the cable. In less than a minute, we were up and running, ready to print.
If the installation fails or you don't have XP, you'll need to use the included install CD, which you'll find geared more toward experienced or IT types than newbies. Whereas personal inkjet setups generally have an animated protocol that walks you through plugging in the printer, installing the inks and software, and learning basic printing procedures, the Minolta PagePro 1250E's is somewhat cryptic. First, you must specify which port to use (choosing from a number of COM and USB options), after which the program asks you which driver you want--but doesn't explain the difference between PCL5e, PCL6, or PostScript. At one point, the software asks you to select which paper tray you're installing, but the only choice (again, with no explanation) is Tray 2. Granted, the Minolta PagePro 1250E is not designed for the same market as personal inkjets, but even business-printer install CDs need a little attention from the usability test team.
Out of the box, the Minolta PagePro 1250E's paper-handling capabilities are somewhat limited, especially for a small-business-oriented laser printer. Its input tray holds only 250 sheets, and its output tray takes an average 100 sheets. However, Minolta makes an excellent range of accessories for the PagePro 1250E, so the printer is a good choice for growing businesses. For example, $149 buys you a 500-sheet input tray that snaps on to the bottom of the printer, and a 20-sheet face-up output tray option ($19) is ideal for print jobs on heavy paper. For $399, you get a digital copier/scanner attachment, and you can even network the printer via third-party Bluetooth, 802.11b, and Ethernet devices (find a list of models on Minolta's Web site).
 Robust, yet limited, paper handling. |
 Detachable paper trays. |
The PagePro 1250E comes with 16MB of RAM--a good amount for such an inexpensive printer--but 64MB and 128MB upgrades will run you $149 and $279, respectively. The PagePro 1250E's 75MHz PowerPC processor doesn't run as fast as that of the Xerox Phaser 4400 (which costs twice as much), but the PagePro 1250E ran only slightly slower, according to our speed tests (see the Performance section). The printer also supports PCL5e, PCL6, and PostScript Level 2 print languages.
Minolta's print drivers are easy to navigate and offer an unusual number of quality settings for a laser printer. The three tabs (Paper, Page Layout, and Quality) contain the usual settings, such as paper size, manual duplexing, and resolution (choose between 600x600dpi and 1,200x1,200dpi), but the Quality tab also includes Photo Enhance and Fine Art designations, as well as a toner density control that lets you adjust from extralight to extradark. These alterations appear to improve the graphics quality, which our tests showed to be less than stellar on the default setting (see the Performance section).
The PagePro 1250E's ink consumption is well in line with the norm for laser printers. The 3,000-page toner cartridge costs $78, for an average of 2.6 cents per page, and the high-capacity, 6,000-page toner costs $126, which takes the average cost per page down to 2.1 cents.
The Minolta PagePro 1250E didn't set any performance records, but it did a solid job overall on print speed and quality. In CNET Labs' tests, the 1250E's text looked as crisp, clear, and dark as that of most laser printers. But odd, extraneous noise on text (mostly visible upon close scrutiny of serif font italics) earned this printer a good, rather than excellent, rating. Blah graphics didn't help any, either. Though line drawings appeared sharp and crisp, the printer had trouble distinguishing between shades of gray. Because of this, the photo elements of our test document looked very dark, the gray-to-black end of the shaded elements appeared compressed, and there was visible vertical banding along the horizontal gradient element. Fortunately, the PagePro1250E's drivers offer a number of fine-tuning options for graphics, and tweaking these improved the graphics quality somewhat.
Laser printer quality
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The PagePro 1250E performed at solidly respectable speeds. Its 11.9 pages per minute (ppm) on text and 11.6ppm on graphics fell in between the scores of faster business lasers such as the Xerox Phaser 4400 and slower printers such as the Samsung ML-1450.
| Laser printer speed Pages per minute; longer bars indicate better performance
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The included installation CD features an extensive user guide that explains how to set up, use, and network the printer, as well as how to troubleshoot basic problems. Also on the CD is a page of tech-support contact information; links to the Minolta Web site; and a direct link to an online store where you can buy new toners, drums, and additional trays. Minolta's Web site offers the latest drivers for download, links to buy options and consumables, documentation, and technical specs. The site also features e-mail tech support and the Minolta Answer Base, where you can ask a question or describe a problem and get tailored answers.
Minolta covers the PagePro 1250E with an industry-standard one-year warranty. Small businesses that need more protection can extend the warranty up to five years for $59 per year.
Toll-free phone tech support runs Monday through Friday between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. CT. A test call yielded a live technician in about 1.5 minutes. He was friendly and courteous, easily solving our simple technical problem in a matter of minutes.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 User Rating: 
4/10
they don't last too long
Pros: We've had several of these in the company I work for, and they're nice at first, but after about a year (40,000 pages) they seem to wear out, needing the very expensive replacement drums and such. I think they tend to run a little too hot and hence burn o
Cons:
Review:
User Rating: 
10/10
VERY AFFORDABLE PRINTER
Pros: You canīt count the time since you press print button to the 1250E starts printing. Itīs robust, ideal for office work. With an external print server you can use it with linux and most unix systems. It has a good printing performance for both text and gra
Cons: The default printer configuration is not the required in most office scenarios since the paper size error detection is enabled and the restart after error option is disabled. So a little configuration is required. The setup process is awful for newbies.
Review:
