Product ReviewsPrinters
The JP-90 has to be one of the cutest and certainly the smallest printers I've ever seen. Clearly intended to be a companion to a portable PC, the JP-90 has the shape and size of a large house brick. Along with its size, the JP-90 has several other features that lend it to a life on the road. It has the ability to run from batteries. Ten alkaline cells last around 80 pages. For even more flexibility, you could choose from one of two optional rechargeable power packs: one based on NiCad which is good for around 80 pages (£37), the other NiMH, good for 140 pages (£70). You can even purchase a car cigar-lighter adaptor (£19), if you're desperate to feel productive in the M25 rush hour. The basic printer is a monochrome inkjet, but the model reviewed here includes the optional colour kit (£39). This is made up of a colour print head and ink, along with a driver diskette and case for whichever of the print heads isn't in the printer at any time. Every time you want to go from mono to colour printing, you have to swap the print head over. This is rather annoying but is just about acceptable for a portable printer. Apart from the irritation factor, the main problem with this approach comes when you want to print a page that includes black text and a colour chart. In that case, the printer creates the text by mixing the three colours. This results in text that's browny-black and is also an extremely expensive way of printing black text. Setting up is easy. The printer comes with a driver for both Windows 95 and Windows 3.1. The only complication is that you have to run a program on the floppy disk first that seems to select in which language the instructions will appear. Once this is done, Windows 95 recognises the printer and prompts you to insert the manufacturer's diskette. After a few moments the printer is installed. The print quality, especially in monochrome mode, is very good indeed. It puts my trusty Canon BJ-200ex to shame at The printer can handle up to 15 sheets of paper at a time. The feeding mechanism takes paper stacked up against the back of the open lid and pushes it past the print heads and up again in the same way as a typewriter. I was expecting this to result in paper curl, but there wasn't any I could detect. To install the colour option, all you have to do is use the supplied driver disk in the same way as for monochrome. The printer then appears as an Olichrome JP-90. The black print head is swapped for a colour one in a simple process, although the fragility of the head carrier gives some cause for concern for long-term usage. Colour quality is about average, but the JP-90 does cope surprisingly well with flesh tones in photographs, as well as the more usual coloured charts and graphs of a PowerPoint presentation. It did an excellent job of printing a full-page PowerPoint slide, despite taking more than ten minutes. Unlike many printers, the JP-90 lets you replace the ink cartridges independently of the print head. Olivetti has a series of packages for cartridge and print head replacement to suit both occasional and heavier users. This is most economical with the monochrome option, as when one of the colour modules runs out, you have to replace the lot. The basic black ink kit comprises a print head and three refill bottles. The print head can be refilled about 26 times before needing to be replaced. This kit will print around 280,000 characters, which is roughly 550 pages and costs £31.52. At around 6p per page this is quite expensive. However, you can then buy six ink bottle packs for £7.67 which will last up to 360,000 characters at just over 1p per page - until your print head needs replacing. Colour printing is much more expensive. The most economical option includes four 'tricolour' refills and a print head for £51.99. This will be good for around 300 pages at eight per cent coverage, or 17p per page. My rusty maths suggests that, at that rate, it will only last around 30-40 pages of full page colour PowerPoint slides, nearly £2 per page. Overall, however, this is a compact printer ideally suited to a life on the road next to your portable, although the price is a little high. Monochrome printing is quick, economical and of good quality on all paper types, and I'd stick to that apart from occasional, fairly light, colour use. By Kevin Partner SPECIFICATIONS:
300dpi inkjet printer, 3ppm, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 drivers included, battery or mains operated. Running costs: monochrome kit £31.52 for 550 pages, refills £7.67 for 700 pages, colour kit £51.99 for 300 pages at 8 per cent = 1.1p per page mono, 17p per page colour.
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