Product Reviews

QMS has a reputation for offering low-cost workgroup printers, and its new DeskLaser 2000/Net continues the tradition. Based on a print engine manufactured by Minolta, QMS' latest offering boasts an impressive 20ppm (pages per minute) maximum print speed, a top resolution of 600 x 600dpi and can handle paper up to oversize A3.

Considering the printer only costs £999 this is a remarkable list of features. Nonetheless, some corners have been cut to achieve it. First, and most importantly, the DeskLaser 2000 has no internal formatting capability. Before a document or graphic is printed it has to be turned into a bitmap. The conventional approach for this sort of printer is to use an internal page description language such as PCL or PostScript. The users just send out print requests and the printer does all of the work.

Instead, the DeskLaser 2000 printer uses the Windows Printing System (WPS), which means that it doesn't require an expensive controller board. Instead, it relies on the PC it's connected to for creating the raster images. The bottom line is that print speed is going to depend entirely on the specification of the PC that's doing all the work.

Network printing is also limited. Although the printer has an internal Ethernet card with a single 10BaseT port, it has no built-in print server facilities. On top of this, the printer only supports TCP/IP and is aimed specifically at Windows 95 and Windows NT-based workgroups of up to ten users. NetWare users only running over IPX should look elsewhere.

Although the DeskLaser 2000 looks fairly compact at first glance, you'll need to leave space at the front for the large, flip-down 250-sheet capacity tray, which increases the overall depth to 555mm. Underneath there's another protruding 250-sheet capacity paper cassette. Both trays can take from A4 to oversize A3 paper. A second sheet feeder tray (£250) that comes with either a 500-sheet A4 cassette or a 250-sheet universal cassette can be added to extend capacity. Double-sided printing can be achieved for an extra

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£250, and the standard memory configuration of 8Mb can be upgraded to a maximum of 32Mb.

For most lasers, this specification should be enough to achieve the quoted speed for basic documents at the very least, but test results proved otherwise. Using a Pentium/166 MMX with 32Mb of memory I first printed a 24-page Word document with a single font, minimal formatting and no graphics. The printer took 147 seconds at 9.8ppm to complete the task, pausing every few pages as it waited for the PC to send more data. There were no improvements when I used a four-page DTP-style document with heavy formatting and graphics. This was completed in 26 seconds for a similarly unremarkable 9.3ppm.

To see whether these print speeds could be improved I turned to a Pentium/233 MMX with 16Mb of memory. Overall, there were no significant improvements, with the 24-page document taking 138 seconds for a print speed of 10.5ppm. The DTP document fared little better, taking 25 seconds for another modest increase to 9.6ppm. Clearly, increased processing power has little impact on speed, and the fact that the demands placed on the PC during printing hit application response times suggests it would be advisable to connect the DeskLaser 2000 to a dedicated PC for network printing.

For print quality you'd expect razor-sharp text at this resolution, and the DeskLaser 2000 certainly delivers in this department. Try using it for graphics, however, and you're going to be disappointed. Results from the standard PC Pro monochrome test page show very low levels of detail with graininess and poor contrast. The Windows 95 driver controls are limited for graphics, and modifying the density control failed to make any improvements. In short, the graphics quality is unacceptable for a laser printer at any price point.

While the DeskLaser 2000 may be cheap to buy, it isn't cheap to run. The toner cartridge costs £165 and is good for 10,000 A4 sheets at the industry-standard five per cent coverage. This works out at a considerably more expensive than average 1.65p per page.

Although using WPS has allowed QMS to produce a very cheap printer, you'll need to weigh up the pros and cons carefully before buying. If you want to print on paper sizes up to A3 then there's nothing around that can touch the DeskLaser 2000/Net for price. However, to get even close to the quoted print speeds will require a high specification, and consequently expensive PC, which may also need to be a dedicated machine. Printing costs are comparatively high and graphics quality could be better. Apart from the initial price, the DeskLaser 2000 has little to recommend it.