Oki Data OkiPage 8w LED printer

By Andy Walker, Cyberwalker Media Syndicate

If your business is looking for laser-quality printing but can't afford it and inkjet printing is too slow, an LED printer may be what you've been looking for

Oki Data, long-time printer maker, has bet the farm on LED technology after abandoning its laser technologies.

LED printers work much like laser printers, creating an image with focused light on a drum that rolls toner onto a page. There are fewer moving parts in an LED printer, so it's cheaper to manufacturer and easier to offer longer guarantees. Consequently, Oki Data offers a five-year warranty on its LED printers' print heads.

The OkiPage 8w printer is the company's offering for the budget-minded small or home office.

The most compelling features on board this printer are what you don't see. Inside the monochrome printer is a two-piece toner cartridge. There's also the drum, which moves the toner to the paper. Then there's the toner itself. 

In most printers, the drum is filled with toner and when the toner runs out the drum is refilled or replaced. In the 8w, the drum and toner cartridge are separate units. 

The toner cartridge -- a six-inch tube -- fits into the drum. When it runs out after 1,500 pages of average use, the tube can be replaced for about $25 US. The drum lasts for about 10,000 pages and a replacement costs just over $100 US.

This will delight users who have been bitten by the $250 US cost of replacing toner cartridges on other printers.

As for performance, the 8w spits out eight pages per minute. It was tested using a text file from Microsoft Word and, as specified, produced eight copies in less than a minute. Graphics, as to be expected, are much slower. 
Black text output is nice, and solid black images are beautiful, but some graphics appear striped.

A further downside to the 8w is its lack of memory. All the pre-print processing occurs on the computer it is attached to. In the case of the text page, processing took 17 seconds on a Pentium II 400 MHz machine. The printer itself has about 512 K of onboard RAM. Don't choose this printer if your office PCs are dinosaurs.

It's also a dedicated Windows printer, with support for Windows 95, 98 and NT. DOS printing is also supported through the Windows DOS prompt applet. If you run a Linux or Mac machine, this printer won't work with your operating system.

The unit has a small footprint; it sits on an area a little larger than a letter-sized piece of paper and a little smaller than a legal-sized sheet. More accurately, it's 12.8 inches by 13.7 inches. That includes the paper feeder that sticks out of the back of the unit, but the feeder doesn't make contact with the surface the printer sits on.

The printer connects using a parallel cable, which is not included. USB models of Oki Data printers are not yet available.

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
Comments: Competent, budget-friendly printer for the Windows user with fabulous toner technology.
Approximate price: $270 US