OkiPage 10i/n

Installing the printer on a NetWare 4.11 network proved pleasantly simple, helped along immensely by the bundled OkiView network utility. It scans the network on loading and displays any OkiLAN print server cards detected that are ready for configuration. A surprising feature is that the card has its own internal HTTP server allowing it to be accessed and configured using a Web browser over TCP/IP.

The only criticism I would level at the network setup is that it doesn't support NDS (Novell directory services) in queue server mode. NDS is the most important management feature of NetWare that Microsoft has always envied. It has been a standard part of Novell's NOS (network operating system) for nearly four years now and it's unacceptable for network printers not to fully support it.

Apart from this there's nothing much wrong with the OkiPage 10i/n, and at £645 for the network-ready model, it's considerably cheaper than its only competitor, the Kyocera FS-800. The latter does come with PostScript 2 as standard but it's slower and the network option makes it £124 more expensive. The Kyocera's graphics quality is better, but if you want a cheap network printer for mainly text-based tasks then the OkiPage 10i/n is a good buy.

Author: Dave Mitchell