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#1
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Oki C5100n initial impressions
Follow up after a little more work with this printer: Two flaw found, and
another positive: 1. My first print after an extended power save (overnight) shows a ghosting issue. It appears the engine has a problem producing a clean page on the first try. Perhaps not enough warm up? It's a minor annoyance. Not sure what the issue is, but I plan to discuss this with Oki support. 2. The bypass tray is slightly hard to open. 3. The bypass tray design, other than being a little sticky when trying to open it, is excellent. I fed #9 size envelopes through it, and they came out aligned perfectly. The bypass feed mechasim operates smoothly. What a joy! Rich |
#2
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Rich -
Appreciate your comments on this. I am evaluating several printers and am seriously considering the c5100/c5300 solution. The quality of the images and the pop of the color really stand out in my opinion. "Rich Stern" wrote in message ... I just purchased an Oki C5100n. There is a general lack of user feedback on the net about this machine, so I figured I would publish my initial impressions. I needed a replacement for an old Epson Actionlaser 1100 (it faithfully printed thousands of pages over the last six or seven years, but misfeeds finally wore me down). I wanted an ethernet capable printer to service several PCs in my home office. When I looked at monochrome network printers, they weren't signficantly less money than color desktop lasers with ethernet. I have some potential applications for color printing, so I decided to focus on color lasers. My volume is relatively low, so cost per page was not a critical factor in my decision. I read some reviews at the Printer Showcase web site (printershowcase.com). Their "editors choice" was the Oki c5300n. The C5100n and C5300n have the same print engine. The C5100n is strictly a Windows compatible machine. The C5300n adds Postscript and PCL capability, making it suitable for Mac and *nix users. I don't have anything but XP and 98 running, and don't expect to have anything but Windows on my LAN. The Printer Showcase review frowned on the c5100n's print quality for images, so that had me concerned, since my color printing need is primarily 640x480 to 1280x960 JPGs. I decided I needed a comparison test using my images. The C5100n and C5300n were on display at the local MicroCenter store. The sample output from both machines looked very good. I brought along a disk with some of the JPG images I would be printing, but the technician at Microcenter was out, and the saleperson said that it would take some time before he returned to hook up a laptop to the Oki printers. I explained my image printing concerns to the saleperson, who went on to say that I could bring the C5100n back and exchange it for the C5300n, paying only the difference, if I was disatisfied with the print quality. Couldn't quibble with that, so I took the plunge and purchased the C5100n. Back at my office, I unpacked the C5100n and followed the instructions for installing the toner cartridges. The instructions for physcial unpacking and installing the cartridges were slightly sparse, but reasonable. Everything went smoothly and I had the printer ready to go in about fifteen minutes. I plugged the printer into a 10/100 hub on my network, and powered it up. The printer went through a series of self-calibration excercises that took several minutes. I then printed the system information page via the printer's LCD display and control panel. The output showed that the printer had successfully been assigned a DHCP address by my router. I printed a sample color page via the control panel, which came out looking good. Next, I installed the drivers from the included CD to two machines: An XP Home laptop, and a Win 98 SE desktop. Both installs went smoothly. I only had to specify the IP address of the printer and select a name for the printer on the network. The printer worked from both machines on the first test. I printed JPGs, BMPs, GIFs, PDFs, and various documents from a variety of applications, including Fireworks, Adobe Acrobat, Word, the XP Picture/Fax viewer, IE 6, among others. The results were outstanding. The output was consistently excellent on everything I printed. Images looked great. So much for the Printer Showcase review. This is the closest thing to WYSIWYG I have seen in 25 years of computing. If you can live with Windows only printing, the C5100n is all that is necessary. The C5300n would be overkill. Physically, the machine is slightly loud when printing, hums at a normal office equipment (cooling fan) level when waiting for the next print job, and silent when in power save mode. Output speed is excellent. Typical document pages fly out of the thing at what I perceive is close to the rated speed of 20ppm. Color pages also come out quickly. Warm up for first print from power save seems to be a bit long, but that doesn't bother me. The paper tray works well. Haven't tried the bypass feed yet. Time will tell on reliability. I've had other Oki printers over the years, and they've been workhorses. I hope this machine proves as reliable. The C5100n comes with 32MB of ram (versus 64MB for the C5300n). I may add more, but after throwing a lot of documents and graphics at the thing, I don't see the need. Price was $799 (regularly $899) and there was a $100 rebate, so final cost was $699 plus tax. Remarkable. Less than a decade ago, the Tektronics Phaser was the big hit in color office printing, costing (and weighing) about ten times as much. Things change! If you are debating dekstop color lasers machines, as I was, the C5100n looks to be money well spent. If you are purely a Windows user, no need to spend on the C5300n. I'll post some updates on reliability and consistency as I do real work with this thing. Rich |
#3
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Doug, glad you found the info helpful.
Follow up on the ghosting problem: The problem was very consistent, so I went to OKI's support site and sent them an email regarding the problem. They sent a reply back asking me to call one of their color specialists via an 800 number, which I did. The specialist diagnosed the problem as a faulty fuser unit. OKI overnighted me a new one, and the problem is now resolved. I didn't even ask for overnight shipping. Quality of service was excellent. Phone call was handled fast, courteously, and professionally, and best of all, problem solved. Printer runs perfectly now on every print regardless of length of time in power save mode. I am a happy camper. "Big Rhino" wrote in message y.com... Rich - Appreciate your comments on this. I am evaluating several printers and am seriously considering the c5100/c5300 solution. The quality of the images and the pop of the color really stand out in my opinion. "Rich Stern" wrote in message ... I just purchased an Oki C5100n. There is a general lack of user feedback on the net about this machine, so I figured I would publish my initial impressions. I needed a replacement for an old Epson Actionlaser 1100 (it faithfully printed thousands of pages over the last six or seven years, but misfeeds finally wore me down). I wanted an ethernet capable printer to service several PCs in my home office. When I looked at monochrome network printers, they weren't signficantly less money than color desktop lasers with ethernet. I have some potential applications for color printing, so I decided to focus on color lasers. My volume is relatively low, so cost per page was not a critical factor in my decision. I read some reviews at the Printer Showcase web site (printershowcase.com). Their "editors choice" was the Oki c5300n. The C5100n and C5300n have the same print engine. The C5100n is strictly a Windows compatible machine. The C5300n adds Postscript and PCL capability, making it suitable for Mac and *nix users. I don't have anything but XP and 98 running, and don't expect to have anything but Windows on my LAN. The Printer Showcase review frowned on the c5100n's print quality for images, so that had me concerned, since my color printing need is primarily 640x480 to 1280x960 JPGs. I decided I needed a comparison test using my images. The C5100n and C5300n were on display at the local MicroCenter store. The sample output from both machines looked very good. I brought along a disk with some of the JPG images I would be printing, but the technician at Microcenter was out, and the saleperson said that it would take some time before he returned to hook up a laptop to the Oki printers. I explained my image printing concerns to the saleperson, who went on to say that I could bring the C5100n back and exchange it for the C5300n, paying only the difference, if I was disatisfied with the print quality. Couldn't quibble with that, so I took the plunge and purchased the C5100n. Back at my office, I unpacked the C5100n and followed the instructions for installing the toner cartridges. The instructions for physcial unpacking and installing the cartridges were slightly sparse, but reasonable. Everything went smoothly and I had the printer ready to go in about fifteen minutes. I plugged the printer into a 10/100 hub on my network, and powered it up. The printer went through a series of self-calibration excercises that took several minutes. I then printed the system information page via the printer's LCD display and control panel. The output showed that the printer had successfully been assigned a DHCP address by my router. I printed a sample color page via the control panel, which came out looking good. Next, I installed the drivers from the included CD to two machines: An XP Home laptop, and a Win 98 SE desktop. Both installs went smoothly. I only had to specify the IP address of the printer and select a name for the printer on the network. The printer worked from both machines on the first test. I printed JPGs, BMPs, GIFs, PDFs, and various documents from a variety of applications, including Fireworks, Adobe Acrobat, Word, the XP Picture/Fax viewer, IE 6, among others. The results were outstanding. The output was consistently excellent on everything I printed. Images looked great. So much for the Printer Showcase review. This is the closest thing to WYSIWYG I have seen in 25 years of computing. If you can live with Windows only printing, the C5100n is all that is necessary. The C5300n would be overkill. Physically, the machine is slightly loud when printing, hums at a normal office equipment (cooling fan) level when waiting for the next print job, and silent when in power save mode. Output speed is excellent. Typical document pages fly out of the thing at what I perceive is close to the rated speed of 20ppm. Color pages also come out quickly. Warm up for first print from power save seems to be a bit long, but that doesn't bother me. The paper tray works well. Haven't tried the bypass feed yet. Time will tell on reliability. I've had other Oki printers over the years, and they've been workhorses. I hope this machine proves as reliable. The C5100n comes with 32MB of ram (versus 64MB for the C5300n). I may add more, but after throwing a lot of documents and graphics at the thing, I don't see the need. Price was $799 (regularly $899) and there was a $100 rebate, so final cost was $699 plus tax. Remarkable. Less than a decade ago, the Tektronics Phaser was the big hit in color office printing, costing (and weighing) about ten times as much. Things change! If you are debating dekstop color lasers machines, as I was, the C5100n looks to be money well spent. If you are purely a Windows user, no need to spend on the C5300n. I'll post some updates on reliability and consistency as I do real work with this thing. Rich |
#4
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