Rating: 
Summary: MagiColor
Review: A very good printer. However, it doe not print grey scale only black and white???
Rating: 
Summary: GREAT PRODUCT!!!!!!!!!
Review: An unbelievable product. I use this printer for making resale product labels. We have increased our sales. It handles grafics very well, very crisp, bright and make a very colorful display of products using Avery 2x4 low gloss labels. Customers come in and the color catches their eye. I have soaked labels (deliberatly) and NO BLEED!
BUT SO WHAT - The paper tray is on the side (need extra room), vents are on the opposite side again needing extra room. The status monitor is on the top with no back light. You need to stand up to see it if you keep it at desk level but Windows XP provides the same info on the progress screen.
Very easy to install and configure. I lost the configuration but it turned out NOT to be the printer. Tech spent almost an hour with me & determined XP got corrupted. Tech gave me a direct phone # and extension # to call when I got things fixed. I didn't need to call, I put the disk in, picked the driver and it did a trouble free installatin!
Don't let the price scare you it is a greaty unit!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: My First Color Laser
Review: Being this is my first color laser printer I may not be the best person to review it. I guess I was expecting the printouts to be of higher quality. I do a lot of photos and use Epson ink jet photo printers. Do not expect this quality from this color laser. The photos look like what you see in a color newspaper. I have tried the most expensive laser papers and it makes a difference but still not even close to photographic quality. It does produce overall good quality color printing at an acceptable speed. Do not try and use expensive high gloss laser paper - it simply will not work with this printer. I have also found that when doing business cards the registration can be off from one session to the next. This is bothersome as it wastes an entire sheet and then you must go back and readjust in your design software. Honestly if I had more experience with color lasers I would feel more confident in my opinion. For my purposes, a small office, it does what it is supposed to do and is cost effective.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Printer While It Works
Review: Having purchased the predecessor of this model, the 2200, I used the printer for school projects and Internet printing. After only 7,500 pages, the fuser and roller went leaving me with $550 in repairs. After speaking to Minolta, these items are consumables even though the fuser was supposed to last 100,000 prints and the roller 30,000, so they are not covered by any warranty. Even though this printer is economical at first, the upkeep will be expensive. I would recommend the HP 2500L for $999 instead because besides the toner, there is only one other consumable item rather than four on the Minolta.
Rating:
Summary: Great Printer, Great Price
Review: Here are my observations from in-box, through install, to printing:1. Good packaging, solid handles on the box. The device weighs 60+ LBs and the handles made it easy to manuever into my NOC. 2. Packaging was simple and efficient, printer has about 10 strings of blue tape to stiffen the joins for shipping. As a nice touch, all the tape ends were dog-eared making removal simple an painless. The documentation also clearly describes all the loactions so this process is simple. 3. Plugged it in, and turned it on. It's a little noisy but then my SUN Ultra 30 isn't exactly quiet so it doesn't bother me. I printed the configuration page and then the demo page and was delighted to see crisp, sharp output. 4. The printer comes installed with 32MB of RAM but the manual states that it will accept PC100 and PC133 SDRAM DIMM modules of either 128MB or 256MB. This is a great relief as I have an extra gig and I will put it good use now. The only drawback was that there is only one expansion slot available for upgrading the RAM. I have not done this yet, but the upgrade indicates that higher resolution printing will be available. 5. Network configuration was a breeze - I let my dog handle it while I made coffee. He reported that you just use the menu to insert the IP, MASK and Gateway. He has trouble with CDROMs so I installed the software. The installation was clean and simple. I thought I was going to need to add the printer to the DNS server or hosts file but the installer detected the machine on the network and got everything installed. The network test page was printed next and everything came out fine. I could have let the cat do it but neither the dog or I trust him. 6. I did not test out the BOOTP or DHCP protocols so I cannot say what their functionality looks like, but if the rest of the process is any indication I am sure they are functional and easy to setup. 7. I also didn't tryout the parallel port or USB connection either, so #6 applies to them as well. 8. The 2300 DL requires extra hardware to provide duplexing and it's a little costy so if that is a necessity consider that into your cost matrix. 9. The provided paper hopper doesn't appear to take more than about 200-225 pages of 24# paper. You can get another upgrade that provides 500 pages of media but its about as well. 10. The size of the printer is pretty svelte but a little tall (especially if you get the extra media tray. The location of the network/power jacks is on the left side which seems a little odd and out of place - it would be nicer if they were in the back out of view but that's a pretty minor complaint. Overall the printer is attractive and professional looking (if that is of great concern in your buying decisions). 11. The front bezel seems to only lock in place at the top/middle. This leaves the lower part of the door a little loose and I would have liked it be a little more secure. Overall
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This is a very good printer. It may be a little expensive for home users but if you want to get into good, quality color printing this is it. The output so far is almost picture quality. If you look closely you can detect a little of the jaggies but the increase it RAM should help. The HP competitive product was next to this one [in the store] and in side to side comparisons: was $ more expensive, didn't have network connectivity out of the box, was slower, and print quality was slightly less.
Rating:
Summary: Product is OK, be careful about rebate offer.
Review: I bought this printer and it's working OK. The $200 rebate ISN'T. The rebate apppears to be a scam although quite official looking. It's administered by Parago Inc. who return my e-mails with a "we're looking into it" letter. First they denied my rebate saying I had already had receive a check. When I called their Customer service, they said they had no information about sending me a check but my rebate had been denied... And that they would look into it. Long story short, I'm on my 3rd Black Toner cartrige and still no rebate. I've sent the complaint to the Attorney Generals office in hopes they can help. The printer is OK for light home office use, but not for photographs (matte ink) It is also loud when it runs and much slower than advertised.
Rating:
Summary: Piece of CRAP
Review: I bought this printer thinking it would give me quality color laser printing. While it can adequately handle the most mundane chores, if you try to do ANYthing creative whatsoever, it can't handle it. Want to print labels? Transparencies? Envelopes? Anything OTHER than 8.5x11 paper? Forget about it. Not only can it not handle the most basic of paper needs, but the piece of junk regularly screws up PowerPoint presentations (garbled output), Adobe Acrobat files, Excel worksheets, and even screws up MS-Word documents with complex graphics, text, headers, and footers on the same page. Wanna buy mine? You can have it CHEAP. Piece of CRAP!
Rating:
Summary: Great, photos better than newspaper. Very economical choice
Review: I got this Minolta 2300 DL refurbished at about half the cost. I was disappointed to have to pay additional shipping because of the heavy unit (about 65 lbs), but I have to say it is definately worth it.
I have a few 6 megapixel pictures developed as 4x6 photographs at the local drugstore that I used for comparison. The prints on the Minolta are truely amazing; however, there are minor pixelations on the edges of curves that can only be detected if you are looking at the picture closer than 4 inches. On photos that have many different shades of one color (red / megenta / pink in my case), the Minolta prints do not produce clear variations as my photographs do. One look and the minolta prints are a disappointment compared to actual photographs.
Prints that have more varied color seems to produces the best results.
The pixelation is not as obvious on the HP 4600--which is probably due to HP's color technology to produce a better print at lower resolution.
I do not think printing on paper can improve much more--simply because of the limitations of regular copy paper. That is, you can see slight color inconsistencies in the paper grain on a clean sheet of paper. (However, the HP 4600 at 600 dpi seems to perform slightly better on the same copy paper.) If only the Minolta can produce better colors.
(I would avoid glossy paper that have too much plastic. The hot laser roller seems to cause the paper to crinkle and shrivelled on a card stock gloss paper intended for inkjets. Although, I was able to find a thin gloss paper that looks like paper found in magazines. This produce slighter better prints where the picture doesn't produce a waxy reflection as it does on regular paper.)
(Furthermore, I noticed that most regular copy paper has a brightness rating of 84. I was able to find super-bright regular copy paper that had a rating of 104--this only cost 20% more. I got a whole ream of 500 pages for $3.50-5.00. The regular paper still gives the same resolution detail, however, the brighter paper makes the colors stick out. Also, the closer-to-white background gives a positive subconcious appeal.)
In addition to the quality, this can be an economical printer. I researched and found testimony from others that existing do-it-yourself refillable toner and OPC drum reset tool makes this an incredible cost effective solution for printing in color. Unfortuneately, use of such products voids any warranty--which is not a problem for me because refurbished units come with only a limited 90 day warranty.
At $30.-$50 for a single color refill. Each refill produces 4,500 pages at 5% coverage. I calculate that a 4x6 (33% coverage), only costs $0.044-0.073. (less than a dime if count on the super bright 104 paper).
Although this is a great product, by no means will it replace my efforts to print at the local drugstore. The photographic paper, gloss finish, and better quality are hard substitutes for $0.29 / print.
(The reviews and product description of the Minolta 2350 seems even more impressive. I am hoping that I can try to find some sample prints to compare; although, I am skeptical on how they can possibly improve printing on the limitations dictated by normal copy / laser paper.)
(My next endeavors is to try to get a true pantone sampling of the printout to see if I can produce more accurate colors in the prints. Maybe that can help.)
(I would definately say that the quality is probably the same quality used for printing newspaper ads. If you can find some glossy, thin paper, it would produce results close and slightly better to those found in magazines.)
Rating:
Summary: Very very poor
Review: I got this printer for our small buisness. Whilst it may operate well enough for a single user, this printer (from personal expirence) will be useless on any buisness network. First off the drivers are rubbish, you have to force installation of the status monitor if you want to access some of the settings/features. Printing over the network from MS Office applications causes Word/Excel to lockup. The spooler for the printer locks up, preventing other uses from printing aswell. In addition, the printer IS NOT A POSTSCRIPT PRINTER!!!. This means that you cant even try a generic postscript driver to replace the crap drivers it comes with!! It will not support MAC or Linux or anything except windows which it supports VERY badly. For the same money you can buy a similar spec postscript laser printer with USB2, duplex, and maybe, decent drivers. AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!! I would give no stars but there is not option for that.
Rating:
Summary: Great Low Cost Color Laser
Review: I got tired of having clogged printer heads on my inkjet printer, so I bought this printer a few months ago. All I can say is it is very impressive. Even photos look good for news letters. I still use an inkjet printer for photos to frame, othewise I use the Minolta 2300DL for everything else.
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