Lexmark Genesis multifunction printer
Space-saving and super swift
Review The Genesis S815 is the latest all-in-one (AIO) printer-scanner-copier-fax from Lexmark that brings a radically different form-factor to the product class.
Evolving technology: Lexmark's Genesis
It stands a shade over 40cm high on your desk, with a 40cm x 40cm footprint, allowing for the sheet-collector extension in the front. With this folded away the front-to-back dimension loses about 18cms. The Genesis' desk-space saving may be important to you, but for me the big question was: four hundred quid? Eh?
Consumer AIOs have plummeted in price over recent years, some of them now coming in under the 50 quid mark. For a couple of months now I've been happily running an Epson BX305, which can be picked up for £75, if you shop around. So what's the 'Stella Artois' factor in this new Lexmark offering?
Yes, it can directly print from or scan to a memory stick. And it has a pretty (and very practical) touch screen. But the biggest technical difference lies with the scanner. There isn't one. Or more accurately, the traditional wheezing flatbed crawling sensor arrangement has been replaced by a lightning-fast electronic camera.
Farewell, bump and grind
Special optics are utilised – designed to deliver a true image at very short-focus – with the inevitable wide-angle lens barrel distortion being corrected electronically. Red, green and blue LEDs flash in quick succession, creating a set of monochrome images that are internally merged to give impressively accurate colour rendition.
COMMENTS
This is a first!
The first time a Lexmark printer has cost more than a set of new ink cartridges! ;-)
I had no idea Lexmark were capable of such innovation and I aplaud them for that. Maybe other manufacterers will try to emulate this design but do so with a smaller price tag. If Epson or Canon produced something that looks like this for half the price I'd buy one.
Yes, it's expensive....
..and no, I'm not going to buy one....
But I'm impressed by the scanning facility. It's at least an attempt at trying something new. Let's be fair, the "bar-along-the-glass-plate" solution has been around for years, and is inherently slow. Yes, it works well, but so did the telephone dial for a long time - but who'd want to use that now?
Scan samples
Any chance of some sample scans from this machine so we can see for ourselves what the quality is like?
Do You Know What?
I don't care if the machine performs fellatio on me while it prints, it's a Lexmark and I have no doubt whatsoever that the ink will be more expensive than the finest French Champagne and they will have spared no expense whatsoever to ensure that you cannot buy generic ink either through placement of unnecessary technical hurdles or just good old fashioned method of sending out your attack lawyers to any firm who attempts to make reasonably priced ink.
It's about time companies like Lexmark were force to sell their printers at a price that reflects the cost to produce it and stop using the old sell the razor cheap and stiff them for the blades sales tactic through extortionate ink pricing.
I realise that all printer manufacturers play these games but Lexmark have made an art form of it.
Those crooks won't be seeing one red cent from me, ever.
Vertical scan bed
But... But... things will just fall off.
Linux? Yes that's nice, and vital for me. Canon provide Linux drivers, and *flat* beds to put stuff on.
