Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
54 of 55 people found the following review helpful.
A lot of printer for the money
By A small business owner in PA
My deskjet 890c has seen better days, so I was looking for a fast printer with color capabilities and good quality print. For not much more than I paid for my last printer I got the speed, economy and quality of laser printing in my home office.
I have only had it for a few days, and have heard wildly different things about the last version of this printer that I thought I would share my experience with this printer after a few hundred pages.
I took advantage of the included network card and ran it into my siemens wireless router. I did have to call minolta to get it talking to the computer, but they answered after one menu and in one minute I was talking to a real live person. We reinstalled, synched up IP addresses and had it printing in about ten minutes. It prints beatifully, and you can print four full page photos in about the same time as my old inkjet. I think the page speed is accurate on this machine but with my old inkjet, it could take many times longer than the rated speed depending on what you are printing. The 2300 doesn't seem to differentiate on what its printing the pages just spit out.
If its in energy saver, it does take maybe a minute to get the first page out, but its still faster than the first page out of my inkjet when printing invoices from quickbooks, etc. After its warmed up its pretty instantaneous. It does produce fan noise even when idle which some people may find distracting. It is probably noisier than an inkjet when printing, but its over a lot sooner.
I can't speak for reliability, but I'm going to buy a 3 year onsite warranty plan that will run about 159.00 just in case.
I'm figuring that I will save money of consumables over my two tank inkjet, but I'm not really worried about that.
Monochrome print quality is as you would expect, awesome, no smudging, and a real professional look. Color is better than my old inkjet, but not significantly. Get a dedicated photo printer if that's what you want. Full page photos off of my 1 megapixel camera are very decent. There is not a photo paper listed in the reccommended media so the point is moot. But the color does not seem to bleed when it gets wet.
I am not experiencing any buyer's remorse with this purchase whatsoever. And thats after I practically begged the guy at staples business expo to sell me one.
37 of 37 people found the following review helpful.
Great Printer, Great Price
By D. Holland
Here are my observations from in-box, through install, to printing:
1. Good packaging, solid handles on the box. The device weighs 60+ LBs and the handles made it easy to manuever into my NOC.
2. Packaging was simple and efficient, printer has about 10 strings of blue tape to stiffen the joins for shipping. As a nice touch, all the tape ends were dog-eared making removal simple an painless. The documentation also clearly describes all the loactions so this process is simple.
3. Plugged it in, and turned it on. It's a little noisy but then my SUN Ultra 30 isn't exactly quiet so it doesn't bother me. I printed the configuration page and then the demo page and was delighted to see crisp, sharp output.
4. The printer comes installed with 32MB of RAM but the manual states that it will accept PC100 and PC133 SDRAM DIMM modules of either 128MB or 256MB. This is a great relief as I have an extra gig and I will put it good use now. The only drawback was that there is only one expansion slot available for upgrading the RAM. I have not done this yet, but the upgrade indicates that higher resolution printing will be available.
5. Network configuration was a breeze - I let my dog handle it while I made coffee. He reported that you just use the menu to insert the IP, MASK and Gateway. He has trouble with CDROMs so I installed the software. The installation was clean and simple. I thought I was going to need to add the printer to the DNS server or hosts file but the installer detected the machine on the network and got everything installed. The network test page was printed next and everything came out fine. I could have let the cat do it but neither the dog or I trust him.
6. I did not test out the BOOTP or DHCP protocols so I cannot say what their functionality looks like, but if the rest of the process is any indication I am sure they are functional and easy to setup.
7. I also didn't tryout the parallel port or USB connection either, so #6 applies to them as well.
8. The 2300 DL requires extra hardware to provide duplexing and it's a little costy so if that is a necessity consider that into your cost matrix.
9. The provided paper hopper doesn't appear to take more than about 200-225 pages of 24# paper. You can get another upgrade that provides 500 pages of media but its about as well.
10. The size of the printer is pretty svelte but a little tall (especially if you get the extra media tray. The location of the network/power jacks is on the left side which seems a little odd and out of place - it would be nicer if they were in the back out of view but that's a pretty minor complaint. Overall the printer is attractive and professional looking (if that is of great concern in your buying decisions).
11. The front bezel seems to only lock in place at the top/middle. This leaves the lower part of the door a little loose and I would have liked it be a little more secure.
Overall
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This is a very good printer. It may be a little expensive for home users but if you want to get into good, quality color printing this is it. The output so far is almost picture quality. If you look closely you can detect a little of the jaggies but the increase it RAM should help. The HP competitive product was next to this one [in the store] and in side to side comparisons: was $ more expensive, didn't have network connectivity out of the box, was slower, and print quality was slightly less.
46 of 48 people found the following review helpful.
Almost Perfect
By C. Wagner
Laser printers are potentially superior to inkjets because of the laser's unsmudgeable ink. However, for years the affordable laser printer with good resolution and good colors has been a mirage on the horizon. Finally, it has arrived as the Minolta Magicolor 2300 DL.
Can you tell that I am excited about this printer? I did not consider the companion printer, the 2300W, because of its lower resolution.
This sucker is heavy. It might be wise to get help before lifting it onto its table.
Installation was a bit rough. I'm on Windows ME, but the installation software did not offer a Windows ME option. I chose the closest, Windows 9x. You can also tell it which drive to install from, but why bother, it will just continue from where it started, right? Wrong. The software tried to read from my camera card reader and froze. I rebooted, restarted installation, and told it to install the Windows 9x driver from the CD drive. This worked.
I have downloaded the more recent driver from the Minolta web site but am in no hurry to install it because the driver that came with the printer has caused me no problems except the minor installation problems noted above. Note that I am *not* using this printer's networking capabilities.
Looking at the pics of the tilted control panel, you might think that the LED position is adjustable, like on the Hewlett Packard Photosmart 7550. But the LED is firmly fixed and will remain at that same, exact tilt for the life of the printer. Comments by other reviewers that the LED is hard to read are NOT exaggerated. To read the light lettering, I need a flashlight.
In planning where you might put this printer, note that a corner would be inconvenient. You will need to access the 2300 from at least three, possibly all four sides: Front to use the control panel and replace the toner cartridges, left for the paper tray, right to clear paper jams (I've had none yet) or optionally install the duplexer, and back to access the motherboard if you add memory.
Another planning consideration is that this printer might not be a good choice for printing lots of small jobs. Hidden away in the back of the user's guide, in the section on replacing the drum cartridge, is the statement that the drum cartridge does cleaning rotations after every job; therefore, lots of small jobs wear it out faster.
The user's guide says that more memory improves resolution for large-coverage graphics, especially when combined with duplexing. So I bought a 256-MB PNY PC133 SDRAM DIMM from Amazon for one eighth the price charged by Minolta. Getting under the cover of the 2300 was easy enough. The memory socket was empty. (The on-board 32MB chip is somewhere else.) I seldom install memory and found this module stubbornly difficult to seat, but after gentle rocking it finally went in. When I printed a config page, the printer recognized the extra memory, for a grand total of 288 MB. Technically, I have now voided my warranty because the user's guide says that's what happens when you install an accessory not sold by Minolta. And the memory upgrade is listed under "Accessories". However, the memory installation instructions do not explicitly say that you must install Minolta's.
Although I have not noticed improvement in the resolution, which I already liked, I have yet to run detailed comparisons with my dozen or so "before" samples.
Colors are about equal in quality to those of my Photosmart inkjet, except for one problem: Pure yellow becomes yellow-green. (Greens, however, look OK.) I ~hope~ that this is merely due to contaminated yellow toner and that the problem will disappear after I use up and replace the yellow cartridge. I don't know about you, but I seldom need to print pure yellow. I plan to print such pages on the inkjet, then spray them with clear acrylic to discourage the smudge imp. This is good news--I still have a use for the inkjet and the coated paper that I bought for it.
Text is crisp and dark. I definitely prefer it to the lighter text from my old IBM laser printer.
2300 output looks quite attractive on a bright-white 24-lb. laser paper such as Hewlett Packard laserjet paper. Unlike inkjet ink, laser ink/toner does not soak into plain 24-lb. paper, and it binds to a plain surface just fine. Indeed, the user's guide warns that coated inkjet paper will damage the 2300. If you print on both sides, heavy-coverage graphics can cast a shadow on the opposite side of 24-lb. paper, but mainly when the reader lifts the page and lets light shine through from the other side, and I don't think it's enough to bother the reader. Next up the scale is Hewlett Packard 28-lb. "color laser" paper. Great White soft-gloss (coated on both sides) 32-lb. laser paper looks even nicer because of the glossy white spaces--for example, the margins. And if you print on both sides, it is more opaque. It is like the paper in an expensive coffee-table book. Adding to the opulent appearance is the delightful soft gloss of the 2300�s �ink� (if that is the correct term for fused toner). I cannot imagine any reason to use a heavy-gloss paper in this printer.
I plan to buy the duplexing attachment later, and after I install and use it, I will add a note here about that experience. I'll also let you know whether the yellow-green problem persists or was a fluke.
TWO MONTHS LATER: The problem with the yellow was a fluke. It went away after about 200 pages. It may have been something used in sealing the toner bottle.
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I am wavering on the duplexer because of the high price and because it does not accept 28-lb. and 32-lb. paper, which I plan to use.
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Stopped working in less than 3 months
HP Business Inkjet 2300dtn product
