Not long ago, the only way a small-business owner could get high-quality, full-color marketing or presentation materials was to outsource them to a professional print shop -- waiting a considerable amount of time to spend a considerable amount of money. Today, however, you can do your own top-quality color printing without farming out the job or running out of funds. Case in point: the Xerox Phaser 8550DP solid-ink printer.
This successor to last year's Phaser 8400 uses the same solid-ink technology, with 60 percent fewer parts than the drums, belts, and rollers found in a typical four-pass color laser. The printhead delivers full-page, full-color prints in a single pass, with a short paper path.
Its chunky, crayon-like ink sticks can be stored conveniently and installed in minutes, simply by dropping the color-coded, shape-keyed cyan, magenta, yellow, and black modules into their respective slots under the printer's lid. You can top off the ink reservoirs any time, with no need to worry about running out of toner in the middle of a big print job, and none of the potential mess of toner or liquid ink cartridges.
Phasers Ready, Captain
The 8550DP has to be one of the easiest printers we've ever set up. Unpacking and preparing it produced only a fraction of the waste we normally see with new lasers. The printer's footprint is a bit larger then a standard laser printer's, but not enough to be objectionable, although it does weigh a hefty 70 pounds.
You can configure and manage the 8550DP in two ways, through either the front-panel LCD control menu or a browser-based console over your office LAN. Unlike too many printers we've tried, the Phaser's LCD menu is simple, bright, and easy to navigate; everything is laid out logically and the buttons are large and easy to identify.
At the heart of the Xerox is a 600MHz PowerPC RISC processor coupled with 256MB of RAM (upgradable to 1GB). Out of the box, the unit holds up to 625 sheets of paper (in a 100-sheet tray plus 525-sheet drawer), but you can add one or two more drawers for a maximum of 1,675 sheets. Automatic two-sided or duplex printing comes standard, and with a duty cycle of 85,000 pages per month, the 8550DP is a real workhorse. Both Ethernet and USB 2.0 interfaces are ready for connection, and Adobe PostScript 3 and PCL 5c emulation ensure compatibility with your software.
Quick and Easy
This is one fast printer. In its fastest or draft mode, the 8550DP can crank out up to 30 color or black pages per minute; standard, enhanced, and high-resolution/photo modes deliver 24, 16, and 10 ppm, respectively. The printer's native 600 dpi resolution is tweaked by Xerox's 2400 FinePoint image enhancement technology, and the company's TekColor Automatic Color Correction system offers extensive options to intelligently optimize the color of every element on a page.
Installing the printer on our network was a snap: We unpacked it, connected it to our network switch, loaded the ink sticks, and turned it on. After a one-time, 15-minute warmup, we were ready to assign the printer an IP address and load the driver onto our workstations using Xerox's CentreWare Internet Services application. CentreWare is a Web-based administrative tool used to configure and administer all aspects of the printer, including installing the driver on desktop PCs.
The Xerox Support Centre is another handy feature that lets you access the printer's tools, documentation, and utilities; check printer status; and configure e-mail alerts to notify you of problems. The Usage Analysis Tool lets administrators collect and analyze print-job data from multiple users, helpful for calculating billing for specific client jobs. To access the feature, you just open Internet Explorer and enter in the IP address you assigned to the printer. Once configured, the simple design and clarity of the printer driver settings mean that most people won't require much training.
With typical page coverage, Xerox says, solid ink sticks last for about for about 1,000 printed pages. You buy replacement color sticks in packs of three and black sticks in packs of six, with each pack costing around $80. Replacing all of the ink sticks, then, will cost you approximately $320 for roughly 3,000 color plus 3,000 black pages.
Looking Good
The Phaser's print quality, simply stated, is outstanding. The 8550 produces bright, vivid colors; shadows, gradients, and reflective surfaces look excellent. Using the 100-sheet Tray 1, which can handle up to 80-pound bond, we easily created some very professional-looking documents.
Color quality didn't fade a bit, and image quality was consistent on each and every job. Not only were the finished documents clean and dry the moment they finished printing, they were safe to handle with wet fingers -- you don't need to worry about your advertising message washing away if your flyers get caught in the rain.
At $1,299, no one would call the 8550DP inexpensive (although other models start at $899 for the 24- rather than 30-ppm, no-duplexing Phaser 8500N). Despite its cost, however, the Phaser is an exceptional value: It's simple to use, relatively cheap to maintain, and most importantly offers phenomenal print quality. If your workgroup or small office needs a professional-caliber graphics printer, the 8550DP deserves a very close look.
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Not long ago, the only way a small-business owner could get high-quality, full-color marketing or presentation materials was to outsource them to a professional print shop -- waiting a considerable amount of time to spend a considerable amount of money. Today, however, you can do your own top-quality color printing without farming out the job or running out of funds. Case in point: the 
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