" At the time Xerox really meant "photocopier" " And Phaser meant a Tektronix phase change wax-ink printer :(
Erik Goldoff IT Consultant Systems, Networks, & Security ' Security is an ongoing process, not a one time event ! ' -----Original Message----- From: James Hill [mailto:falc...@gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2012 6:41 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Xerox Phaser 6280 DN review I mentioned Xerox Phaser 3428's and 3435's in one of those discussions and I stand by what I said then. As good as the trusty HP Laserjet 4000/4050 imo. Glad to hear one of their other models is solid as well. At the time Xerox really meant "photocopier" here so we hadn't even considered them for A4 printing. But they were recommended by a print broker at the time and after trialling a couple of units we went ahead. -----Original Message----- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, 24 March 2012 1:48 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Xerox Phaser 6280 DN review This is in response to some recent discussion around printer brands/models. We have purchased three Xerox Phaser 6280 DN units over the past few years. They are way overkill for our expected print volume, but they were the cheapest, smallest thing I could find that didn't obviously suck. http://www.office.xerox.com/printers/color-printers/phaser-6280/enus.html The 6280 is also available in an MFD variant, of which I know nothing beyond its existence, but from the web site picture, appears to be the same printer with a scan deck bolted on top (like most MFD lasers these days). These are single-pass color laser printers. 600 DPI. Duplex. USB, Ethernet. PCL5, PCL6 (AKA PCL-XL), PostScript 3. Drivers (or equivalent) are offered for Windows, as well as Mac OS X, Linux (CUPS), and AS/400 (!?). 1-year on-site warranty. Network protocols included in the marketing brochure (possibly also the product) are: Print: LPR; raw TCP ("Port 9100"); SMB; FTP; IPP Transport: IP; IPX; NetBEUI Management: SNMP; HTTP; SMTP; Telent Discovery: mDNS; WSD Stock paper supplies are the 250 sheet main drawer and a fold-down 150 sheet bypass tray ("Multi-Purpose Tray", or "MPT"). An optional 550 sheet stack-on drawer is advertised. Stock RAM is 256 MB. Max RAM advertised as 1.25 GB. A hard disk drive kit is advertised. The main consumables are four print cartridges (CMYK), each combining toner supply and photo-drum. Available in two sizes (page count capacities). The high-cap black is rated at 7000 pages; the high-cap color, 5900 pages. Using CDW's prices, I worked it out to $0.14/page, which seems typical for machines of this type. Long-life consumables would be the fuser and transfer unit (belt); both rated at 100K pages. Tech information available to me is excellent by contemporary standards. The manual covers the basics for installation, usage, maintenance, and diagnostics. Coverage of more advanced topics for drivers and the embedded network controller/server/thingy is minimal in the manual, but the online help for both is mostly complete. The website knowledge base details a lot of diagnostic/repair procedures. Illustrations/pictures are clear. *Well-written English*, which counts for a lot (Konica, I'm looking at you). There are still a few "mystery settings" if you dig deep enough. (Do I want "Account Mode" to be "User" or "Administrator"? (I eventually decided "Manage Account" should be unchecked, and "Account Mode" should be "User". Seems to work for us. My best guess is that the other settings are used if you want stricter print accounting (such as password printing or control panel lockout).)) Speed is very good. In my testing: Around 25 pages/minute (color, single-sided). FPO (first page out) is <13 seconds from warm standby, <38 seconds from a cold start, <1:27 for first-power-on after out-of-box, with all new cartridges. Opening the cover and/or re-seating print cartridges triggers a "calibration" cycle, but it's typically < 6 seconds. Network thingy takes 45 seconds to become ready after reboot or cold start. That might be due to our use of DHCP; did not test with static IP address. But it means the print engine is usually ready to print well before the controller can accept jobs. OTOH, since we usually never power off our printers, this is rarely an issue for us. The duplexer is of the reversing type (spits the page most of the way out, then pulls it back in). That means duplexing is slower than a forward-only duplexer. However, it is good enough to start printing side 1 of page N+1 while recycling page N to print side 2. Windows drivers are available in model-specific or "GPD" (Global Print Driver) variants. Each of those are available in PCL5, PCL6, or PostScript variants. The models-specific stuff is small (1 to 4 MB); the GPD is 33 MB. I went with the model-specific driver. The PCL drivers generated much smaller print jobs, which printed much faster, vs PostScript. I have found to be typical with contemporary printers. I see PostScript as a desirable compatibility feature, but not the ideal PDL. (For our needs. YMMV.) I tried printing a 4 page, color-heavy, bitmap-heavy, non-optimal, PDF from our marketing department. (In other words, typical.) With the PCL driver, it created a 16 MB job, which took about 3 minutes to print (from clicking "OK" in the UI to last-page-out). With the PostScript driver, page 2 came out slightly after six minutes, at which point I got tired of waiting and killed the job. The PCL driver printed the Gernot Hoffmann 220 LPI test page in < 50 seconds, when rasterized on the printer. If rasterized in Adobe Reader, <30 seconds. This is with the model-specific PCL6 driver for Windows. Did not test PostScript driver on this. The front panel is fairly good. Display: Backlit character-cell dot-matrix LCD. Not as nice as some of the full-color high-res jobs you see these days, but reasonably easy-to-read and gets the job done. Buttons: Four-way arrow, OK, Menu, Cancel, Wake. The Wake button lights when it goes into sleep (power save); the display and other buttons are non-functional in sleep. Press the Wake button, or send a print job, and it will quickly become ready. You can configure a variety of things from the front panel You can have it beep for everything, or just errors, or nothing, or several other options. You can have the front panel prompt for paper size and type whenever the MPT is loaded, which is a nice touch for those who don't understand driver settings. The web UI is reasonable. It needs JavaScript. No Java or cookies. You can configure an admin username/password, at which point you need to HTTP auth before you can change things. The print driver as a "Printer Status" button which will open the web UI from the printer properties, which is handy. It only wants a reboot on a couple things (change in IP, enable/disable protocols, IIRC). The web UI provides a job history which includes date, time, interface, username, hostname, job name, pages, and result. The username is the user who submitted the job, and the hostname is their workstation, despite the fact that we route all print jobs through a Windows server, so it must get that info from PJL/PCL or something. Interface is always "Port 9100" for us. This information is readable to anyone who can get to the web UI, even if a password is set. I do not know if it this is exposed via SNMP or otherwise. Physically, all access to innards (except PCB/RAM/HDD) is through the front panel. Press a button on the side to release; door swings out and down. All four print cartridges are easily accessible directly ahead. The transfer belt assembly is on the door panel; the duplexer assembly is under that. The fuser assembly is at the top. All parts are *very* easy to remove/replace. No tools. For any given assembly, release one or two catches, and it will pull/swing out. Fits back in easily, and alignment is obvious and keyed. Electrical connections plug in/out automatically. Not only does this make repair easier, it makes clearing bad paper jams a breeze. It's a a beautiful thing, and a far cry from some of the recent HP abominations. (To clear many jams from the LaserJet P2015's bypass feed, you have to disassemble the printer down to the base frame. To clear jams from the LaserJet 3380 AIO's fuser, you have to remove the scan deck (16 screws, 3 cables). Both procedures take an hour plus.) Physically, the 6280 is somewhat large. 19 high, 16 wide, 18 deep (inches). Not including clearances for ventilation or opening doors/drawers. We've had almost zero paper jams. No breakdowns or other weirdness. Admittedly our volume is low, but the HP Color LaserJets which preceded these were a constant source of trouble. Highly recommended for suitable applications. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
