Hardware article and Tip

Design
With a price tag of ฃ480
the new HP Colour LaserJet 3600n is small
weighs 27kg and has deep handholds
so one person can carry it easily. At 15.7 by 15.7 by 17.7 inches (HWD)
this laser printer can easily fit into a busy home office or individual office in a large company
should you need this level of speed and paper capacity. Its simplistic design makes jam-clearing and maintenance uncomplicated. However
the wall and hinges don’t appear to be too sturdy. It can be setup in the standard manner applicable to its class of printers
and the network installation routine is fully automated.

Paper Handling

The HP Colour LaserJet 3600n offers high-speed performance
with an engine rated at 17 pages per minute (ppm) for both colour and monochrome
fairly good graphics quality
even better text
and photographs that are good enough for client newsletters and the like. HP has also included an Ethernet connection for easy sharing over a network.

However
the main paper tray feels a little unsteady and has nothing to stop it when pulled out
so users should be careful not to drop it. The paper-length and paper-width guides are easy to adjust. The printer has a 100-sheet auxiliary feed in addition to the enclosed 250-sheet tray. You can boost this number to 850 by adding a 500-sheet feeder for ฃ280.

Features

A two-line backlit LCD screen on the 3600n's top panel displays a complete set of menus
which is easy to navigate with buttons for going through menus
selecting items and going back.

This printer comes with 64MB of memory and unfortunately you cannot expand that
nor add a duplexer
which makes expansion options very limited. If you need the extra memory
then consider HP's 3600dn
a ฃ670 model with a duplexer and twice the memory.

Performance

The 3600n prints black text at a reasonable 13ppm and colour graphics a bit faster
at 13.5ppm. In contrast
the Lexmark C522n prints text at 14.2ppm and graphics at 12.3ppm. However
if saving money is your real priority
and you don't print much colour
consider Ricoh Aficio G700
which prints fine text at 12.1ppm but misses the cut on graphics speed and quality.

The 3600n disappoints the user with its print quality. In a few tests carried out by popular technology magazines
the text looked greyish instead of black
showed some roughness in large point sizes
and lost fine strokes. This is also the case with some of the 4-point output
which looked slightly grey
rather than black. Colour graphics did not negotiate shading ramps smoothly and produced blockish transitions. However
the printer makes the cut with colour accuracy and detail. Additionally
it prints greyscale photos very well
with fine detail and smooth shading.

Graphics are easily good enough for internal business use
but not satisfactory for handing out to important clients or customers. The most important issue in a number of tests was misregistration
with the colours slightly out of alignment. It resulted in a noticeable white gap between some blocks of colours
around some lines
and around some colour text on a colour background. Thin lines also tended to disappear. Additionally
colours tend to shift toward darker shades
losing detail in dark areas and making some colours look muddy.

On the whole
the 3600n's text output has high enough quality for most purposes. Unless you have an unusual need for small font sizes
it is unlikely that you will print any text that the 3600n can't handle. Lexmark's similar C522 sells for around ฃ100 less and offers equal speed and better quality
though Lexmark's cost per page is slightly higher than HP's and the difference may add up over time.

The printer manufacturing market seems to be a booming one. Manufacturers are no doubt eyeing expansion and coming up with newer products to capture the burgeoning market. The manufacturers are interested in the colour -printer sector for purely reasons of expansion. There is stiff competition between the makers as all are concentrating to keep the prices low to capture the market. It must be said here that while in the monochrome department Hewlett-Packard co. are the market leaders
the reigning company in the colour segment still remains undecided.

However the future of the colour printer market is purported to be a bright one according to those investing in these companies. The investors are much optimistic
as these printers
using four times the toner cyan
magenta
yellow
and black of a monochrome printer
will produce pictures of a much higher quality. The market
currently a billion dollar industry
will increase manifold.

Adding on to its product range
printing giant Lexmark introduced its c52x series
which included the c524n last June. Earlier there was a huge gap in its colour line up-there was simply the low- end c510 with a capacity of printing about 8 colour and 30 monochrome pictures in a single minute which wasn’t all that fast. There also existed
side-by-side
the high-end c762 which
though having a higher speed
was much more expensive
thereby difficult to afford for the smaller offices and home users. As there was no other product catering to the demands of the users the competitors of Lexmark had an edge over it.

The introduction of Lexmark’s c524n however changed things.
They introduced this product with a very low price range
thereby making it affordable. Offering a dpi resolution of 1200*1200
this network ready colour laser printer has an outstanding colour output and can print up to twenty pages per minute. The very first page may be printed in as little as 13seconds. The model has a monthly maximum duty cycle of 65000 pages
which is quite impressive. The new c524 also reduces the time taken by print jobs considerably as it has a 437.5MHz processor and 128Mbytes of memory. The memory can be expanded up to 576
which decreases the waiting time taken for print jobs. Moreover
colour care technology and Lexmark coverage estimator help in managing the cost involved in using colour toner. The model
weighing 57 pounds
is 17.3 inches wide
19
inches high and 20.2 deep. With the model also comes a CD consisting of the user guide and the printer software
a power cable
a paper exit extension tray
set up sheet and toner cartridges for cyan
yellow
magenta and black. The product has a one-year warranty period for on site repair.

It goes without saying that that outsourcing of IT and consumer electronic products lower manufacturing costs of the product
which helps lower the prices of the produced good. The question is how low must the producers keep their profit margins in order to stay in the race in today’s colour printing market?

The current analysis lab examined the c524n at a product volume of 1
20
0
units under the assumption that the model was produced in china. An analysis was made of the procurement costs of commodity components
manufacturing costs of fabricated components and location labour rates. The production cost was estimated to be around ฃ265 / unit. The cost distribution showed the cost of the printer mechanism and its assembly to be about ฃ51. The electronics and assembly account for ฃ60. Other costs included laser power supply
consumables assembly
fuser assembly
paper assembly
control panel assembly electronics assembly
final arrangements
etc.

At the time of launching the product
the product was supposed to be priced at ฃ390. However
Lexmark priced the product at almost half of the originally intended price at some places. To maximize its revenue
the company in a clever move
outfitted the toner with different toner cartridges. The toner content was increased or decreased according to the budget of the customer. The more expensive models containing more toner catered to the demands of the enterprise segment while the lower priced models with low yield cartridges were ideal for small offices and also home users.

The product
being suitably priced
was a great success
perfectly fitted to meet the needs of the buyers and the manufacturers and compete with its competitors in the lucrative colour printer market. Lexmark claimed the print quality was Photorealistic. On account of its chemically processed
spherical toner delivering a 1200*1200 dpi resolution and also because the new print head four lasers in one unit with a mirror. The machine enabled Lexmark to take on the enterprise market as well as their competitors
especially Hewlett-Packard.