Summing up
Perfect for SME companies requiring an all-in-one solution.
Plus: Unlimited connectivity between devices, support for multiple operating systems.
Minus: Poor document naming conventions, difficulty scanning directly to PC.
Contact: www.konicaminoltasa.com
Price: R 34 672 excluding VAT
Specifications:
All-in-one print, copy, scan and fax
A4 with 24ppm colour
A4 with 24ppm monochrome
Copy resolution of 600 x 600dpi
Variety of Windows, Mac OS and Linux operating systems supported
Paper capacity of 250 sheets standard, with 100-sheet manual feed loader. Upgradeable to 850 sheets
Dimensions 539 x 590 x 578 mm
Self-proclaimed compact communication specialist for colour and black-and-white, the Konica Minolta BizHub C20 seems to fulfil its promise of all-in-one capacity - a role perfectly aligned towards the small to medium-size enterprise (SME) market.
The C20 comes with a quick-guide outlining the features the all-in-one device supports, and a DVD containing the required drivers and multilingual manuals.
It was interesting to see that it includes drivers for Mac OS in addition to specific Linux distributions, making it truly a platform-independent solution. My only complaint with the manuals was the poor naming convention used, leaving me wondering which document I was meant to open in order to get the information I needed.
Supporting both colour and black-and-white A4 printing and copying at 600 x 600dpi, the all-in-one device prints up to 24 pages per minute, with the standard paper tray holding 250 pages. A 100-page manual page feeder allows for increased page support, while companies seeking larger paper-capacity usage will be happy to know the lower paper feeder can be purchased to increase total capacity to 850 sheets.
Multiple support
The highlight of the C20 is its ability to connect to the local network, USB connections, and removable media. When printing from removable media, the C20 natively supports a variety of formats including Postscript 3 and PCL 6, Microsoft's XPS specification, PDF, TIFF, JPG and PNG.
Half-duplex (one side of the page) and full-duplex (both sides of the page) printing and copying, as well as 2-in-1 and 4-in-1 functionality allows for pages to be combined together on a single sheet to save paper.
Scanning is also a simple process, as the C20 supports using the computer's TWAIN or WIA scanning drivers, in addition to scan-to-e-mail, scan-to-SMB, scan-to-FTP, and scan-to-USB.
However, my experience while using Windows 2000 was less than stellar, as I had to manually open the imaging software that comes with Windows 2000 and manually invoke the TWAIN driver to retrieve my scans, rather than being able to simply scan to my PC.
In summary: The BizHub C20, once configured properly, is a powerful all-in-one printing solution that seamlessly integrates with computer networks. Given its ability to print from multiple devices not connected to the local network, the ability to scan documents to a variety of locations, and a firm upgrade path, the BizHub C20 suits the business needs of SMEs looking for a robust all-in-one solution.
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