Color laser printers

News bits about low cost color printing with light

My own Corel PhotoPaint configuration: How do I configure Corel PhotoPaint v9 for my own hardware and in order to get the best possible photo prints.

All about OKI printers: This is more or less what you can find on the web site of the printer manufacturer OKI in its OKI Technical Review; Very technical pages about the technology used for the printers of this Japanese manufacturer. Sometimes, reading is difficult (because of the technical level), but the details can be thoroughly interesting.

Low cost laser printers: It was just right to update my previous comparison of entry-level color laser printers. The new comparison sees new candidates: Canon LBP-5200, HP Color LaserJet 2600N and Konica-Minolta Magicolor 2400W.

SimplyTheBest font library: is a nice collection of typographic fonts of high quality and freely available (for most of them). Contrary to the ugly bad habits of this kind of web site, SimplyTheBest font library is not covered with ads and the browsing is quite easy.

Counterfeit Deterrent Marking and Banknote Detection System (again 2): The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) had discovered the existence of this technology implemented by a large number of printer manufacturers in their laser color printers to help authorities in the fight against counterfeit doucments and banknotes (see below). The owner of a HewlettPackard HP4600 (duplex color laser printer) just discovered that the technology has an added drawback: It forces the printer to always print on both faces of the paper (even if nothing useful has to go to the back of the paper, the printer will spend time printing the pale yellow dots on the back side). Thios roughly divide by two the printing speed in "simplex mode".

Counterfeit Deterrent Marking and Banknote Detection System (again): The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) had discovered the existence of this technology implemented by a large number of printer manufacturers in their laser color printers to help authorities in the fight against counterfeit doucments and banknotes, because of the excellent quality of the color prints from these machines. As requested by the American Secret Service, it means printing (usually on the document border) a group of small fot color in light yellow (nearly invisible) that encode the brand name and the serial number of the printer. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) finally succeeded in decoding the meaning of these dots and filed a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request (PDF) with the US government to get some more information about how this is used.

Spies are really among us (at least in the US). Obviously, Big Brother didn't die in 1984.

Konica Minolta Magicolor 2430DL color laser printer: A full evaluation of this low-cost color laser printer is done by the Ars Technica web site.

Comparison of color laser printer: A fast comparison of the models available on the entry-level market at the end of Summer 2005: Konica-Minolta Magicolor 2300W, Epson AcuLaser C1100, Konica-Minolta Magicolor 2300DL, Canon LBP-520, Epson AcuLaser C900N.

Counterfeit Deterrent Marking and Banknote Detection System: This is the nice (Editor's note: Are you sure?) name of a technology implemented by a large number of printer manufacturers in their laser color printers (see my own color laser comparison). It means printing (usually on the document border) a group of small fot color in light yellow (nearly invisible) that encode the brand name and the serial number of the printer (to help authorities in the fight against counterfeit doucments and banknotes, because of the excellent quality of the color prints from these machines). You may find more information on the web sites of the manufacturer (at least an indication at the bottom of the technical specification datasheet on the printer, but not always), but there is a full analysis done by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Today, my web site is organized around categories: Click here, and then look at the (richer) menu on the right column.

Hunting for a laser printer: Or how I replaced my old HP LaserJet 4L with a brand new shiny laser printer. Some interesting tidbits are in the article.

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