TEST DRIVE
Inkjet even rivals photo finisher

By Simson L. Garfinkel, Globe Correspondent, 10/07/99

he Lexmark Z31 is the newest entry in this company's ever-expanding line of consumer-grade printers. Priced at $190, it features two inkjet cartridges (one black, one color) and an astounding 1,200 dot-per-inch resolution. It also says it has a printing speed of eight pages per minute black-and-white or 3 1/2 pages per minute color, but I got only half that in my tests.

Like most of today's inkjets, the Z31 does a pretty good job printing on plain paper. Even photographs look good on standard photocopy paper. If you use glossy stock and Lexmark's special photo color cartridge, you'll get a printout that is almost indistinguishable from a print from a photofinisher.

The sheet feeder is good, too, although it did misfeed when I stacked more than 30 pages of paper in the tray and when I put in paper that wasn't perfectly flat. There's also an envelope feeder, which lets you print envelopes without first removing the full-sheet paper supply.

Lexmark's consumer printers work with Windows 3.1, 95, 98, and NT, but not with Macintosh. All come with a fancy driver program that keeps track of your remaining ink and lets you calibrate the printer's heads. Last year's version was buggy, but this newer version is noticeably better. The driver even speaks the words, ''Printing started,'' at the beginning of the job and ''Printing complete!'' when it is finished.

Personal digital assistants such as the Palm Pilot connect to desktop computers using a serial port. Unfortunately, serial ports are a dying breed: You won't find any on Apple's new iMac computers, on Acer's Aspire desktops, or on new so-called legacy-free systems. These systems all have high-speed Universal Serial Bus interfaces, but no standard serial ports.

Keyspan wants to help overcome this problem with its USB PDA Adapter. The $40 device looks something like a Swiss Army knife with a standard nine-pin serial port and a tail that plugs into a USB port. It works with any USB-capable Macintosh or any PC that has Windows 98 installed.

For most Windows and Mac applications, Keyspan's serial port looks like a regular serial port. It will not work properly with some older DOS programs, however.

When you plug in the adapter, the operating system assigns it a new COM port. These new ports don't take any IRQs or memory I/O addresses. Once it is plugged in, you just configure your PDA's software to use that port.

If you want to use more than one or two USB devices on your computer, you'll soon find you need a USB hub as well. You can now buy 4-port hubs for anywhere between $30 and $60. Entrega Technologies makes a $150 hub with four USB ports, two serial ports, and one parallel port for $150.

If you just need one or two extra USB ports, the Keyspan is a great deal. If you think you'll need more, look at the Entegra.

This story ran on page C04 of the Boston Globe on 10/07/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.