Epson EPL-N1200EN

The workgroup of today is no longer content to share printers when they're attached to someone's workstation. It's a second-rate solution at best, particularly if printing demands are high. As a result, a distinction is forming between personal and workgroup printers. This isn't just a case of engine speed: workgroup printers also have room for an optional network card. Epson's latest addition to its printer range, the EPL-N1200EN, brings the company into this fast-expanding market for the first time.

The EPL-N1200EN is a mono laser printer with an Ethernet print server card fitted as standard for sharing over a NetWare or Windows NT network. The engine speed is rated at 12ppm, which makes the printer suitable for small to medium workgroups without vast printing requirements. The comprehensive control panel and LCD display strip is sensibly laid out, making it easy to navigate. Toner cartridges should be good for 6,000 sheets at five per cent coverage, and at £99, they give an overall printing cost of 1.65 pence per page. This is about average for printers in this class.

For a 12ppm printer, the EPL-N1200EN is a fairly large unit. It measures 265 « 411 « 484mm, but weighs a modest 15kg. It's this big because the 250-sheet, multipurpose paper tray is inside the main unit rather than being slotted in underneath as a pull-out cassette. The tray is accessed by lifting a rather flimsy top panel, and is adjusted with a couple of slides placed inside. For extra capacity up to two 500-sheet lower cassettes (£215 each) can be added, bringing the total up to 1,250 sheets.

The printer comes with 2Mb of memory integrated on the controller board. A couple of 72-pin SIMM sockets allow this to be increased to 64Mb. PostScript Level 2 is also supported, but only after the optional ROM SIMM (£259) has been fitted.

The Ethernet network card provides ports for 10BaseT and 10Base2 connection. Status LEDs keep you informed of network activity and errors, and a small button allows a useful configuration sheet to be printed. In case you decide against the network option, two standard parallel ports provide access for local use or sharing across a peer-to-peer network. The more common type B socket supports cable lengths up to 3m, while a smaller type C socket allows the Epson to be placed up to 10m away from the host PC.

As the printer came supplied with the network card, I decided to hook it up to a NetWare 4.1 network running on an ICL Teamserver. It was easy to set up. Epson provides a Win3.1/Win95 network utility called Epson Net!, which made this often-tedious task a piece of cake. No mucking about with PCONSOLE or NWADMIN - you just load the utility, select from a list of available printers and assign servers and associated print queues.

Running in print server mode, the card can support connection to up to eight servers and 32 print queues. Alternatively, you can select remote printer mode, but you don't really want to do that if you're using NetWare 4.x as it means using bindery emulation.

Now all you have to do is load the printer drivers locally and you can start printing. Windows NT isn't covered so well - you can print over DLC or TCP/IP, but the manual only covers version 3.51 and Epson doesn't supply a Windows NT 4 driver either. I checked through the company's Web sites for the driver, but couldn't find a single mention of the EPL-N1200EN.

I tested the Epson's text printing speed using a 24-page Word document. The time to first page was under 15 seconds, and the test was then completed tidily in precisely two minutes. Speed dropped considerably when I printed a six-page report with embedded graphics, charts and a mix of fonts. The Epson took more than a minute to complete this, and occasional pauses between pages indicated that a memory upgrade would improve the speed.