Xerox Phaser 790 - Don\'t Pay High Prices For High Print Speeds

Not too long ago I was asked by a friend to review a piece of obsolete technology; the Phaser 790 printer from Xerox. My friend who made the request works with an NPO and was looking for a quick fix to replace their broken printer to allow them to continue until the new fiscal year.

I found that one of the biggest assets for my friend was the cost of the 790. Purchasing a refurbished model with extended warranty would allow more of their meagre budget to go directly towards the clients. The quality of worksheets created is very important to this agency, but it is sometimes forced to take a backseat to budgetary realities.

The 790 isn\'t the fastest printer I have seen but with speeds of 11 pages/minute for black and white and 6 for colour it would suffice for this agency. The most common use that a printer is put here is to produce attention grabbing worksheets for the client and that is usually done in advance of lessons. When it\'s not possible to print early the speeds would allow worksheets for 30 clients to be printed in about 5 minutes.

When you compare the 790 to other printers available at its price point, you find that it generally has a much larger paper input capacity. With a maximum capacity for 1400 sheets, staff can load it and forget about it. Saving them time that would be better spent working with clients. The only thing in shorter supply around NPOs than money is time, so this should be considered a positive for the 790.

Another time saving feature of this printer is the ability to store documents for reprinting on the standard 6 BG hard drive. Rather than finding and sending a job to the printer and going to collect it, a staff member could simply walk to the machine and spool through the memory to print the document.

The Phaser is not without its negatives however. I feel that the lack of any USB ports is detrimental to productivity as flash memory continues to become cheaper and more present in the workplace. It may not be a commonly accessed feature, but one I feel the staff at this agency would come to miss. The Phaser 790 comes with a standard 10/100 ethernet switch built in as well as a bi-directional serial port.

The other major con faced by the Phaser was the fact that it could only be purchased as used or refurbished. While this created a pro in the area of cost, receiving service would be difficult and costly. If the agency bought off of an inscrutable dealer or got a defective model the costs could quickly overtake the savings.