Product Reviews

A major feature of Kyocera mono laser printers that makes them stand out from the crowd is extremely low printing costs. The 18ppm FS-3700 (reviewed issue 29, p154) offered an incredibly low 0.4p per page, and the new 28ppm FS-7000 keeps in step with identical operating costs which are considerably lower than any of the competition can manage.

Considering the FS-7000 is a 28ppm printer, the main unit is quite compact, measuring 345 x 560 x 580mm (H x W x D). However, paper handling is limited to a 100-sheet multipurpose tray, so it comes supplied as standard with an extra 250mm high base unit with two 500-sheet drawers for paper sizes up to A3. This can be increased by adding up to two more trays (£475 each) for a total capacity of 3,100 pages.

Good design has always been a characteristic of Kyocera's printers and the FS-7000 is no exception. It stands out in a sea of bland, grey cubes, with gentle curves and a tidy control panel overhanging the main body. Unfortunately, the panel isn't the easiest to use, and the convoluted menu structure will require practice to understand.

The FS-7000 comes with a meagre 4Mb of memory, which isn't very much for a 28ppm printer. Fortunately, it's upgradable to 68Mb using standard 72-pin SIMMs, so it won't break the bank to add a bit more. A bidirectional parallel port and enhanced serial port are installed as standard, but network connection requires the optional EcoLINK card. The printer supplied for review already had the 10BaseT version fitted (£295).

Other options are a duplex unit (£490), which fits neatly underneath the main transfer unit and a large side-mounted stacker assembly (£1,839). The toner cartridge is easily accessed from beneath the top cover and is good for 25,000 sheets at five per cent coverage. It's the only consumable part of the printer, and costs just £100, hence the low price per page.

To test the Kyocera I connected it to a NetWare 4.1 network. The EcoLINK software is easy enough to install, and I had the

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printer networked in a matter of minutes. The unit was also supplied with 12Mb of memory, so I removed this first to see how the base configuration of 4Mb would fare during testing. It didn't do too well: a 28-page Word document with minimal formatting took 110 seconds, while the A3 version took 145 seconds. This equates to a disappointing 15ppm and 11.5ppm, compared with the 28ppm and 16ppm claimed by the manufacturer.

Unfortunately, even with the full 12Mb back in place, the FS-7000 couldn't quite manage its quoted speeds. This time, the A4 document took 75 seconds for a marked increase to 23ppm, and A3 speed jumped to 15ppm with the test document completed in 113 seconds. Bearing these figures in mind, I'd recommend an absolute minimum of 16Mb of memory if you want to realise the full potential of the FS-7000.

For a 600 « 600dpi printer, output quality for text printing is excellent. The Kyocera uses an enhancement technique called KIR (Kyocera image refinement), which can simulate resolutions of up to 2,400 x 600dpi by smoothing out ragged edges on curves and diagonals. Curiously, though, for graphics printing, particularly photographs, the FS-7000 was as disappointing as the FS-3700. Using the default driver settings, a full-page photographic image came out so dark as to be unusable. Fiddling around with the driver's density control produced clearer results, but even then print quality was marred by banding.

Kyocera's EcoLINK software allows the printer to be remotely managed over IPX or TCP/IP. For NetWare you can select either Novell Directory Services or binary modes and set up and assign print queues. Unfortunately, it's not as sophisticated as the software provided by Lexmark or Tektronix, as there's little else you can do. Users can't be assigned to print queues, and there's no performance monitoring or resource tracking on offer. If you're using TCP/IP, the printer can be reached using a Web browser just by entering its IP address, but once again the information provided is a pale shade of many other Web-enabled printers.

The closest competition to the FS-7000 comes from Rank Xerox's 32ppm Docuprint N32 (reviewed issue 40, p165). At £2,408, it's almost the same price, but has a much better standard specification including 28Mb of memory, an Ethernet network card and PostScript Level 2 emulation. Getting the Kyocera to a similar level of features will bring the asking price to around £3,000, and although running costs are just a third of those for the Docuprint, the FS-7000 will only start to save you money roughly 80,000 pages after you've bought it.