The remote one man band solution (Lexmark X6150)

Member Name: andycharger

Product:	Lexmark X6150
Date:	24/03/04 (1661 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Does lots of jobs

Disadvantages: Not good at any of them, Expensive cartridges.

Here in the office, we are blessed with copiers, faxes, printers and scanners. However, in the office we are blessed with lots of space to store all of these items. All of these devices take up space.

Now consider people working from home. Something I have to do quite often. I don?t have the room for all of the above devices and imp sure my company don?t want to shell out for 4 or 5 £150 separates like this.

So the best alternative to the remote user, one man band, home worker, small business is the multi function device.

Being a Lexmark based company, I opted for one of their competitively priced devices. The X6150.

Retailing at £150, it?s not going to put a huge dent into anyone's wallet. Particularly not when it?s the price of a single printer, copier or fax.

For this money, you are getting an all in one Colour printer, Copier, Fax Machine and Scanner. All of this is fully compatible with your PC.

So lets look at the device from an aesthetic point of view. It comes in a rather cheap looking shiny Silver and Black plastic. A bit like the Logitech mouse family are now being produced in. This really lets it down as it does not fit with any of the other parts of the office set up. It looks more at home sitting in your Home HI FI or TV set up! However, it is small and compact and takes up very little space.
What does it look like? Well, I think it looks like my Gas Barbeque!
The large oval sided base looks like it is holding a load of coals and the silver bowed lid is hiding some tasty sausages underneath! Alas, lifting the lid to see the flatbed scanner reveals just a piece of glass!

So enough of the barbeque look. Lets find out what it performs like.

Hmmm.....
Yet again the big downfall of multi function devices strikes the Lexmark. Yes it does all of the jobs of 5 separate devices but it does none of them particularly well.
The scanner does beat a lot of other ones in the
market place by having a flat bed scanning facility. Most have a slot to feed through which prevents things such as books and delicate items to be scanned. This scanner can also enlarge images and scans up to 4 times original but it does lose a lot of resolution and items become very "blocky and grainy". The scan area is also quite big for a flatbed in a multifunction. It can easily handle A4 which I tend to do.

The Printer does perform quite well. For an inkjet, it produces quite sharp images without any smudging or blocking nozzles. Something that I found wrong with the Canon equivalent. One thing I will warn you about though is something that applies throughout the Lexmark range......The Consumables are not cheap!
The printers are very cheap to buy but you will end up paying a fortune in consumables. They are more expensive than most competitors.
This is worth considering with this device as it is very ink hungry, particularly on the Black jet. They are separate carts to the Colours though so you wont have to waste loads of Colour ink every time.

Faxing and fax software is very simple. It can either be done direct from your PC in electronic format or manually with a paper document. However, the dialing keypad is very small and difficult to use. Please also no there is no handset with this device. This means no conversations on this one! If you need a handset, consider a Canon model.

The functions available on the device are mainly operated from buttons on the front. These are quite difficult to press as they are very small. I also find the Display screen of 1 line of text very poor and not east to understand or set up.

The manual supplied is very detailed and very long! There is a "quick start" guide for you impatient ones like me!

Installation is very simple. It plugs directly into your computer via a USB port. The cable is supplied with this unit. However, this is the only option to conne
ct the device so make sure you have the capability for USB.
It is fully compatible with Windows 98/ME, 2000 and XP, It does not work with NT4 though.
IT comes with an entire range of software on a CD as well as the drivers for the device.

Speed again is an issue. It does take a while to get the Scanner warmed up to perform. It claims it is all instant and does not even need the computer on but I find that all operations take some time, particularly printing and copying. Faxing is pretty instant.

Pricing? Like I said it is roughly £150 which stands it in a good competitive market. Most devices are more expensive than this but the consumables are expensive.

Overall....
Well, Its not the best printer, scanner, fax machine or copier on the market but it one of the best priced multifunctions around and does do the job it was intended to do. Save you space, save you money and perform a load of operations. Well done Lexmark....Now make your cartridges a lot cheaper!!!!

Summary: