Xerox Power Play

Competing with Hewlett-Packard's Laserjet 4100, the Phaser 4400 squeezes true 1,200-dpi image quality and Adobe PostScript 3 support into a unit that's not much bigger than a personal laser printer.

A 266MHz processor helps the Phaser 4400 achieve printing speeds of up to 26 ppm, with an 11-second first-page-out time, according to Test Center benchmarks. The printer has a standard input paper capacity of 550 sheets and can handle 130-pound card stock as large as 8.5 x 14 inches. It does not, however, handle 11 x 17-inch paper.

The Phaser 4400 comes standard with 32 Mbytes of memory, upgradable to 192 Mbytes. It also comes standard a with 10/100-Mbps network, USB and parallel interfaces, so it's ready to install anywhere. Solution providers won't have to waste time adding options to the printer just to make it usable in a particular environment.

Phaser's network support menu screens can produce a number of network connection logs for Novell NetWare, TCP/IP and AppleTalk.

In addition to its fully interactive documentation CD, Xerox also bundles its CentreWare tool suite, which offers solution providers additional management capabilities such as network printer identification, Novell's NDPS protocol resolution, remote configuration and full integration with IBM's Tivoli NetView and Computer Associates International's UniCenter TNG running under multiple network environments.

The Phaser 4400's attractive feature set and fast printing speed make it more than adequate as the main office printer for SMBs. Multiple users can share the same unit, and they won't have to wait in line for output because the printouts will likely be completed by the time they get to the printer. The ultraquick first-page-out time means that there's no waiting for the printer to warm up.

The Phaser 4400 was very easy to set up,so easy, in fact, that Test Center engineers set it up within 5 minutes, without having to consult the documentation.

Engineers tested the Phaser 4400's print speed using simple, multipage Word documents and a stopwatch. It was tested for image quality using some of the files from the Spencer and Associates printer test suite.

Test Center engineers are convinced that solution providers will be pleasantly surprised by the printer's near-26-ppm performance. Image quality is top-notch, with the blackest of black text imaginable.