One man and his printer (Lexmark Z11)

Member Name: paddywak

Product:	Lexmark Z11
Date:	17/02/01 (260 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap & chearful

Disadvantages: Print quality, price of cartridges, speed

I have just upgraded from a Lexmark Z11 colour inkjet printer to a HP 640C. Here is what I made of the Z11 whilst I had it.

The Z11 is a good printer for its price & it is even cheaper now since all the new models came out. The biggest downer for me was the price of replacement cartridges; they were just too damn expensive! I never bought a replacement cartridge, but did my usual & bought a refill kit for £14.99. The quality of the refill ink was just as good as the original ink, so there was a good thing.

The reason that I bought the Z11 was that my Olivetti had more or less given up the ghost & wanted to go to the printers’ rest home for worn out & crappy printers. I had been told by a few pals about the Z11 & after seeing some of the prints produced, was convinced that the Z11 was for me. I then sent off for one by mail order, it was cheaper than PC Word/Dixons/Currys (total rip off merchants!) by quite a bit even after paying postage. I saved about £15 at that time & was well chuffed with myself. Anyway, a week or there abouts, my nice new printer arrived! The packaging was very strong & it took quite an effort to get the box opened! Once I got the box open, I got to my new pride & joy of the printing world. Within about five or so minutes I had the printer connected to my PC & was ready to install the drivers. I booted the PC & inserted the driver CD. The PC found the printer & then the drivers & continued to install my Z11. What a breeze that was compared to some of the printers that I have had to install (for others) & myself. Then the Lexmark control program proceeded & calibrated the printer. A reboot later & I was up & running & ready for anything armed with my new printer!

I have to admit that the Z11 is a fair printer for the price & never had a single problem with it, other than the odd paper jam. The normal print quality was okay.

Before too long I had to print a few high quality pictures for
a job that I was doing. This was where I realised that The Z11 was not all that it was made out to be! It took an age to print high quality stuff (time to put the kettle on & have a coffee!). The quality was quite good for what was required, but when I needed to do photo quality pictures, the Z11 was no use at all. The pictures are very grainy when it comes to this type of printing. Even with the Z11 colour drivers, the colours just were not the same as my monitor & I had added the Z11’s profile to my monitor profiles. The Z11 just was not as good as I had thought it was & this was where I started to get the urge to pay for a quality printer or one that had been tried tested & proved itself to be good!

I scanned the net & mags for reviews & had a few in mind, but it was not til I came across the HP 640C that I found the printer for me.

The Z11 is overall quite a good printer, but leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to quality & speed of printing. The cartridge price is another bad point. You can buy a Xerox printer for the same price as a cartridge for the Lexmark range of printers! That is how bad the prices are. Everything in the world of computing is becoming more & more “use once & throw away” which is no good for anyone! Nappies yes! but computers & peripherals…NO!

That’s it folks, my opinion & personal experience of the Lexmark Z11. If I were to give it a score out of 10, I would have to give it a score of about 6.

Thanks for taking the time to read my opinions & take care!

Regards to you all…..Paddy (Tom)

Summary: