Printing in the fast lane

ITWeb has been working for several months with the LexmarkOptra S 1250 network printer, the smallest member of the Optra family, in a real production environment. With its modest 12 pages per minute print speed but excellent 1 200 x 1 200dpi print resolution, the printer has made a huge difference in our paper-full office life.

Encouraged by the 1250 experience, we test-drove the most luxurious model in the family - the Lexmark Optra Se 3455, which was released only a few months ago.

Equipped with a 167MHz NEC RISC processor and 8MB of RAM, the printer churns out 34 pages per minute, with 12 seconds start-up time, handling the heaviest printing traffic with ease. Most importantly, this lightening speed doesn't affect Optra's print quality - the printer delivers superb-looking pages with charts, graphs, diagrams and even black-and-white pictures.

Testing a print racing champion is not a simple task and the first priority was to stock up on stationery. With its standard paper capacity of 1 250 sheets, spread across three trays, the 3455n devours reams of paper. Plus, there's an optional 2 000-sheet drawer.

The Optra Se 3455n is a serious business printer designed for very busy departments and each of its features is characterised by big numbers. The printer can churn out 150 000 pages per month and, quite appropriately, ships with a giant 23 000 page print cartridge.

A few subtle technology details, such as drop-in loading and optical sensors which automatically detect paper size and when the printer is about to run out of paper, allow operators to maintain the printer with minimal intervention.

Optra Se 3455n is a heavy-duty network printer. It ships with an Ethernet 10/100base internal printer server called MarkNet with support for all major networking environments.

The MarkNet server can be plugged into Novell IPX/SPX (including full Network Directory Service support), AppleTalk and TCP/IP networks, or it can use its own native communications language called LEXLink.

The printer works equally well in client/server and peer-to-peer network set-ups. We didn't need Windows NT server to install the printer in one of our departments - Windows 95 served perfectly.

What really makes the Optra special is its MarkVision set up and management software. It allows a network administrator to control and monitor one or more printers attached to a PC, to a local network or even to a WAN, creating a real printer administration paradise.

If there is such a thing as zero management printing, then Lexmark has come very close to achieving it. One can fill the Optra with paper and almost forget about it.

Users can view information about the printer, including trays and toner cartridge capacity, change printer settings or resolve alert conditions directly from their PCs. They no longer have to go to the printer to do anything except the legwork of collecting printouts.

Setting up the new printer for the whole department is a quick and efficient operation regardless of the department's size. All it takes is to install MarkVision on a server or a workstation and to send e-mails to employees with the instruction to add a new printer.

Mapping a new printer is as easy as mapping a new network drive - the administrator doesn't need to spend even a minute on a workstation. Not only will MarkVision install automatically, it will also update printer drivers as soon as the new version appears on the server.

Setting up more than one printer is also an efficient and pleasant operation. After you install MarkVision on a server and set-up one printer, you can set-up and configure multiple printers and their adapters remotely, with no more than a click of the mouse.

If there were such a thing as printer roll-out speed race, Lexmark would certainly be the favourite contender. MarkVision sets the Optra family apart from its competition.

We also liked Optra's print job management functionality. Unlike many other printers, which don't allow you to cancel the current job and stubbornly proceed to print all 500 pages you sent to the printer by mistake, MarkVision allows you to cancel both current printing jobs and jobs in the queue.

The Optra family sports many other useful and nice-to-have features such as the ability to print incoming faxes, and create and store overlays with company logos, watermarks and other stationery information in the printer's memory.

MarkVision comes in versions for all flavours of Windows client and server software, OS/2 Warp, Mac OS and Unix. Lexmark says MarkVision automatically integrates into all major network management applications, including CA Unicenter for NT, HPOpenView, IBMNetView, Novell ManageWise and NWAdmin, and Tivoli.

Leaders in the industry often steal all the limelight, and Lexmark has had a hard time dealing with Hewlett-Packard's dominant market share. Hewlett-Packard has been a synonym for laser printers, and for many people a laser printer and an HP is more or less the same.

It pays off, however, to take a look at the guys coming second in the race. They work exceptionally hard to catch up with market leaders and their only bet is technology excellence and greater value for money. I admit that I used to be one of the "HP-or-nothing" technology prejudiced. Next time I buy a laser printer, I'll think twice.

Lexmark is represented locally by Venture Computer.