Next time you pick-up a flyer at local café or clear one off your front porch you can expect it be a full-colour print. Colour printer manufacturers seem to have taken a keen interest in medium-size small businesses, designing products that can produce professional quality prints at speeds and costs within their reach. The Fuji Xerox has developed an innovative new print head that should give their Xerox DocuPrint M750 an edge in this market.

Xerox has been quick to boast the M750's performance results in a recent SOHO colour printer comparison conducted by BERTL (Business Equipment Research & Test Laboratory). Competing against a group that included a range of equivalent Hewlett-Packard's and Lexmark colour printers, The M750 demonstrated the faster overall prints speeds. In its patented eXpress mode the M750 printed at speeds around times faster than the next fastest machine in the line-up. In normal mode, only two printers in the group could match its throughput.

Results like these are usually accompanied by some sort compromise - in the case of printers you might expect poorer print quality. According to BERTL, in eXpress mode the M750 retains print quality deemed worthy of business documents and superior to that of produced by other printers in the group, running in normal mode of operation. The printer is capable of a maximum print quality of 1200 by 1200dpi.

The M750's eXpress mode is a patented technology. Where most colour print heads make two passes over each line of a document to lay down correct portions of ink, the M750's can print 100 per cent in a single pass, significantly increasing the speed at which a colour image can be composed on paper.

The new print head is also more cost effective both in the short-term and over the life of the printer. Rather than integrating three, colour drums into a single cartridge, the M750's colour tanks can be replaced individually. This means that you don't have to waste ink replacing entire cartridges when only one colour tank has depleted. Each colour in tank costs around $17.95 - the monochrome tank is more expensive at $32.

At an expected life of 10,000 pages the M750's print head's longevity should see it last the life of the printer if it's used within it rated usage levels. The M760 is the 750's network-ready cousin. The stand-alone M750's recommended street value is $395 and you'll pay an extra $50 for the 760.

Company: Fuji Xerox

Price:

• M750 AU$395    • M760 AU$445

Warranty: 3 years
Phone: 1800 X XEROX (1800 9 93769)

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