The Lexmark 1000 Color Jetprinter started irritating me when I unpacked it, because it came with a standard thick printer cable. I suppose I should be grateful – colleagues reviewing other Lexmark printers didn’t get any cables. This is rather like selling a toaster without a plug, only worse, as a printer cable costs a lot more than a plug.
But getting a thick, clunky parallel cable meant the printer doesn’t have a universal serial bus (USB) port. A peripheral designed to be USB- compatible can be strung in daisy chains with other peripherals.
But there are good things about this printer, simplicity being one of them. The instructions for setting it up are very clear. The printer itself is free of obscure little buttons saying “online”, “offline”. All it has is a paper-feed button. The software interface that comes with it is simple, clear and easy to install – for the most part. It even shows you the level of the ink while you’re printing and, judging from my experience, it seems a cartridge would last a long time, unless you’re constantly printing solid colour.
Once again, however, technological parochialism rears its ugly head when you come to installation. The Lexmark software is like make-up for people – fine if you’re white. But what if you’re black, coloured, or, God forbid, don’t use Microsoft Windows? No software for other operating systems, Linux, OS/2 or even Macintosh accompanied this printer.
And then I tried to print. Which was easy enough. Really easy. The paper feeder, for which one really should be grateful on a low-cost printer, takes about 12 sheets of A4 paper, less than advertised but still respectable.
The absence of buttons on the device itself made it impossible to forget to turn it on, or something typically silly like that, so I could really take my time to enjoy watching it actually print.
And boy, oh boy, does it take its time. Something in the order of four minutes a page. On the bright side, though, you can put it in fast-draft mode and cut that to an exhiliratingly swift two minutes a page. And the draft quality is just a tad less black than the real McCoy.
To be fair, I was supplied with a colour ink cartridge, which does not include black ink, forcing the poor crippled device to create black by overprinting red, blue and yellow, until at a microscopic level the type probably looks like a nursery school art project – colours muddied until indistinguishable.
At a normal level, however, the type quality is just dandy – I have no complaints, except that it takes so darn long. Even if it was three times faster with a black ink cartridge, it would still be slow. Nor do I want to have to change ink cartridges every time I change my mind about whether speed or colour is my priority.
The colour printing of images, by the way, is fine. Two years ago, it would have been impressive. It’s hardly photographic quality, but good enough for most office documents or school projects.
I have another complaint. Perhaps it should be directed at the creators of word processors and Windows, rather, but here goes. Since the printer ejects the completed sheets face-up, they end up with page three on top of two on top of one, rather than the other way around, which meant I had to reverse the page order once I had finished printing a document.
Aha, I thought, what if I printed backwards, page three to one, rather than one to three? But the damned machines would not allow me this tactic.
Allowing one to do this should be really simple, as should developing options for printing alternate pages, so that the resulting stack of paper can be turned around and fed through the printer again, with the result that both sides of the paper is used.
Do I have a printer? No. Do I want this printer? No. Would I be excited if someone gave it to me for free? Heaven save my ungrateful soul – but no. The packaging trumpets 600 x 600 dots per inch, banner printing, a small footprint and ease of use. All these thing are true.
Perhaps it’s fine if you’re just after a printer for the kids, or if your doctor has told you to slow down. Otherwise, preserve your sanity and buy something faster. c PCReview Online: v