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Entire Contents © 2006 Prog
ressiv
e Business Pub
lications
.
Copying of Pages Prohibited.To Order: 800 247 2185 or www.betterbuys.com
ter 500-sheet standard supply. You can, however, add up
to two mor
e 500-sheet paper trays for both, for a more-
than-respectable total of 1,250 or 1,600 sheets, respective-
ly. The output tray holds the usual 250 sheets. The basic
tray is letter-size only, but the add-on trays support legal-
siz
e paper. Automatic duple
xing is an option. These
printers support 110lb. index stock, and you can print on
a variety of specialty stocks (transparencies, labels, and
envelopes).
Konica Minolta is proud of the ergonomic design of
these printers. The series has easy-to-replace toner car-
tridges, and the starter cartridges (half the capacity of the
normal ones) come pre-installed. It has nice controls for
checking toner and paper levels from the front panel.
Lik
e most printer
s
,
they have a Web-based administrative
ser
ver, in this case called PageScope. They also come
with several color-matching and management systems.
Per-page costs are acceptable for low-cost printers.
Color pages cost about 10¢, and black-and-white pages
around 1.5¢. Those aren’t great bargains. Our prices are
based on the “toner v
alue kit”
option,
which reduces
prices if you buy all three color cartridges at once.
Y
ou should c
hec
k out competitor
s lik
e the Le
xmar
k
C770n, Xerox Phaser 6300 family, Hewlett-Packard
Color LaserJet 3800 family, and the OKI Printing
Solutions C5500n to see models tha
t of
fer comparable
speeds plus a few more features.
This is an elegant design for Konica Minolta, and a
g
ood deal in price
.
T
he question is w
hether user
s will be
willing to forego PostScript in a high-capacity, high-speed
workgroup office printer. Certainly this will not suit
graphics and page-layout users, but it makes sense for the
business market.
Chart entries — page 87
Konica Minolta magicolor 5450
27ppm full color
27ppm black & white
Sum-up: Expanded features built on a fast and reliable plat-
form.
While similar to the magicolor 5430 DL and 5440 DL
(documented above), this model, the magicolor 5450, is
more capable. The speed of the machine (27ppm) is the
same as that of the 5440 DL, but this $1,499 printer
comes fully equipped for serious work.
First of all, it adds PostScript to the mix. That was the
one notable lacking feature with the other models, at least
for some users. To handle more complex jobs, such as
those fr
om P
ostScript-generating programs like Quark
XPress, this model has a much more powerful processor,
at 667MHz. In ad
dition, memory is much more robust,
at 256MB to begin with and expandable to a full gigabyte
(1,024MB). Furthermore, there is a 40GB hard drive
available as an option.
Connectivity, as with the other models in this series,
consists of both USB and Ethernet ports. PCL and
PostScript are included.
Paper handling is mor
e extensive than with the 5430
DL and 5440 DL models. There is a 100-sheet bypass
tray and a 500-sheet standard tray to start with. Then you
can ad
d one or two optional trays for a total of up to
1,600 sheets. Unfortunately, there is only a 250-sheet out-
put tray, somewhat limiting the usefulness of all this
input capacity. Heavy-duty card stock can be handled by
the printer.
P
age costs are the same as the other 5400 series printers.
That is, color pages run at about 10¢ and black printing
costs ar
ound 1.5¢.
T
ha
t’
s quite high f
or printer
s this fast
and this e
xpensi
v
e
.
While this is a fine printer, we think that there are oth-
ers than can compete with it at a significantly lower price.
You might want to consider, for example, the Xerox
Phaser 6300N or Lexmark C770n, which offer similar
f
ea
tur
es a
t a lo
wer cost.
Chart entry — page 87
Better Buys for Business
Konica Minolta magicolor 5400 series
Consumables costs at-a-glance
Price
Yield
Full-color cost per page
Black-and-white cost per page
Black toner - high capacity $149.99 12,000 $ 0.012 $ 0.012
Cyan toner - high capacity $339.99 12,000 $ 0.028 N/A
Ma
g
enta toner - high capacity
$339.99 12,000 $ 0.028 N/A
Y
ellow toner - high capacity
$339.99 12,000 $ 0.028 N/A
Transfer belt/black $299.00 120,000 $ 0.002 $ 0.002
2nd transfer roller $39.00 120,000 $ 0.000 $ 0.000
TOTAL PER-PAGE COSTS
$ 0.100 $ 0.015
10.03 1.50
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