Watching the pages fly into the HP Officejet Enterprise Color Flow X585z Multifunction Printer’s output tray at 26 pages per minute (text only) is impressive, being that we’re not used to such behavior from an inkjet, even an enterprise-class inkjet multifunction such as this. But in capacity, performance, and cost of operation, the $2799 X585z competes well with laser MFPs. It can’t quite match a laser printer’s text, but it out-duels the majority with its color graphics.
Image: Michael Homnick The HP Officejet Enterprise Color Flow X585z Multifunction Printer's scanner lid rises to reveal a legal-size platen.
The USB/ethernet-attachable X585z proved just a hair finicky with on our test network. We had to reset our router and the X585z’s IP address to eliminate some rather lengthy pauses. Once it was up to speed, pages scooted out in rapid succession—22.75 pages per minute (ppm) on the PC and just over 16 ppm on the Mac. Why the large disparity between the PCL and Postscript drivers, we can’t say. Color photos print to plain paper at just over 4 per minute and a full-page photo printed to glossy stock takes about 50 seconds. Copies are also quite fast, especially double-sided copies using the automatic document feeder, which has dual scanner elements to eliminate re-feeds.
The secret to the X585z’s fast output is the PageWide print mechanism (introduced last year with the OfficeJet Pro x576dw) that covers the entire width of an 8.5-inch page. It’s actually a set of ten staggered print heads and in addition to faster prints, it eliminates alignment issues caused by shuttling a printhead back and forth on a carriage.
Image: Michael Homnick The HP Officejet Enterprise Color Flow X585z Multifunction Printer's input drawer takes 500 sheets.
The X585z has plenty of paper capacity, starting with a 500-sheet bottom tray and ending with a whopping 300-sheet output tray. There’s also a 50-sheet multipurpose tray on the side of the unit for envelopes and the like. If 550 pages doesn’t cut it, you may purchase a 500-sheet auxiliary tray (B5L07A) for $300.
The overall quality of the X585z’s output is quite good. Aside from some slight striations that cleared up after a 15-minute first-, and 5-minute second-level deep-cleaning (HP’s terminology), photos looked quite nice. Color graphics on plain paper at default settings looked a tad light, but are fine for the average business document. Text is sharp and clear for an inkjet, though not quite at the level that Epson has taken things with its PrecisionCore printheads. All in all, it’s typical HP inkjet, with a slight pinkish cast to skin tones, and an otherwise elegant palette.
Image: Michael Homnick Open a door on the front of the HP Officejet Enterprise Color Flow X585z Multifunction Printer, and the ink cartridges rise for easy access.
The X585z’s large 980 series cartridges make for outstandingly low per-page ink costs. Using online pricing from Staples, the 10,000-page black costs $114, or 1.14 cents per page. The cyan, magenta and yellow cartridges cost $98 and last for 6600 pages, or 1.5 cents per color, per page. That makes a four-color page a mere 5.64 cents per page. Also, there are no drums, waste catches, or other laser consumables to worry about.
The X585z features a large 8-inch capacitive touch screen, and a slide-away keyboard (the z-model only) for controlling the unit locally. The whole deal is easy to use once you’re up to speed with the rather large array of functions. There’s a 320GB encrypted hard drive on board, so there are lots of things you can do with queues, previewing and storing scans, etc. Add secure printing, NFC, e-printing, multiple users, administrative tasks and the like, and a half-hour with the user guide will be time well spent. Me? I wing it, but that’s what I get paid for.
Image: Michael Homnick A slideout keyboard makes data entry easy on the HP Officejet Enterprise Color Flow X585z Multifunction Printer.
Other models include the $1999 X585dn, which lacks the Z’s keyboard, fax, and ultrasonic double-feed detection. The $2299 X585f offers the faxing missing from the DN. All models are recommended for 2000 to 6000 pages a month. If you simply want the speed and low cost of operation, you can get in the game considerably cheaper with the $799 X555 printer.
The one area in which we weren’t particularly impressed with the X585z was one-year warranty. You can get up to five years, but you’ll pay over $1000 for it. As you’re already dropping a cool two-grand-plus, a one-year warranty, even if it includes onsite service, seems skimpy at best.
The X585z’s feature set, quality graphics output, capacity, and speed render it highly competitive with similarly-priced, enterprise-class laser printers. Said laser printers may offer slightly better text, but rarely compete on photos or the X585z’s price for four-color pages. Well worth a look.
From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference
The Kodak Hero 3.1 color inkjet multifunction printer offers a lot of bang for the buck. At only $100 (as of April 2, 2012) this copying/printing/scanning device produces exceptionally nice photos, and its inexpensive inks make it cheaper to operate than other MFPs in its price range. Kodak also provides some elegant software, though it suffered from a glitch in our testing.
Why should your small office buy a low-end color laser for $400 to $500 when you could opt for the $150 (as of March 25, 2012) Epson Workforce Pro WP-4020 color inkjet printer instead? Good question, especially when you compare it to models like the $450 HP Laserjet Pro 400 Color M451nw. The Workforce Pro WP-4020 offers superior speed and color graphics, near-laser-quality text, and more features, plus a significantly lower price per page.
3DMark has had its ups and downs over the years, but it remains the go-to source for synthetic gaming benchmarks. You can find a separate version for each flavor of DirectX from version 9 onward (3DMark 06, 3DMark Vantage, and 3DMark 11), and each version has its own section in vendor Futuremark's online database. Advanced versions with additional features are available for a price ($10 to $40, depending on the software), but the free Basic versions suffice for most needs. 
For a more reasonably sized, if less complete, set of gaming and DirectX numbers, try Unigine Heaven. Heaven's sandbox nature is a revelation in synthetic benchmarks. It’s a hoot to click out of the preset paths and explore the environment, moving the camera with gaming-standard WASD keyboard controls. On top of that, Heaven may be the best-looking DX11 benchmark around--some of the views are stunning. The basic version is free. 
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the dowdy, bespectacled Prime95 (available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions), which is disguised as an innocent mathematical research program. Don't be fooled: It's nothing less than a cattle prod for your CPU. The free utility is well known in the performance-computing community, as system builders typically test their CPU, memory, and overclock settings with Prime95 by running the built-in stress test for a few cycles. If you have issues with your hardware, or if your cooling isn't up to snuff, you'll find out in short order. 
In addition to catering to gamers, Futuremark is appealing to mainstream users with PCMark. Though the previous version had some issues with Windows Vista, PCMark 7 manages to be a credible, modern re-creation of the desktop-performance benchmarks so popular in the '90s. It skirts some of the criticisms leveled at synthetic benchmarks by using code snippets from popular commercial applications, and by timing the execution of prescripted procedures to run through them. As the name implies, though, it's for Windows 7 only. The basic edition is free. 
Among system-wide benchmarks, Passmark's Performance Test 7 (for 32-bit and 64-bit systems) is the respectable child of the family--it went to school and got good grades, and it wears a neatly tailored suit. The 3D tests in this tool show you sober models of jets and evergreens, which is something of a relief after all the roaring dragons, battling spaceships, and whatnot featured elsewhere. Conceptwise, it mixes and matches some of the best ideas from all the packages here. You'll find no free version, however; Passmark offers just a free 30-day trial for this $24 program. 
On the other hand, SiSoftware's Sandra does have a free version, and it includes all benchmarking features. Although the tool is occasionally obscure, Sandra's long and winding history has led to a pretty useful comprehensive benchmarking and system-information package. If you like your benchmarks with an extra helping of utility, this is the one to pick. 
Reminiscent of Sandra but with a more accessible interface, AIDA64 doesn't do quite as much overall, but it does feature an excellent set of focused CPU/memory benchmarks. Take your pick of either package, the $40 AIDA 64 Extreme Edition (for personal use) or the $80 AIDA64 Business Edition (for commercial use)--you won't be disappointed. The free download is only a limited trial, though. 
After dealing with the bloat of some of the larger packages, you have to love a benchmark as quick, simple, and tiny as the free CrystalDiskMark. It's the smallest program here. You'll know how to use it the second you set eyes on the interface. No need to wade through menus or 25-minute processing queues, either--a few clicks, a few seconds, and you're done. That's truly refreshing among disk benchmarks. The tool doesn't do anything else, but it doesn't have to. 
Fraps was created with the same philosophy. It sits atop any game and displays the frame rate in the upper-right corner of your screen. The free demo is perfectly functional, though the $37 professional version can also take screenshots, record gameplay video, and more. It may sound simple, but Fraps doesn't get half the kudos it deserves. While flashy synthetic benchmarks attract all the attention, Fraps shoulders the workaday burden of providing trusted, real-world results from the actual games that people play, and it has been doing so for years. Even if you use another benchmark, this one is essential if you're a gamer. 
Toggl's Web interface is very simple to get started with.If I had to describe Toggl with a single word, it would be "simple." This is one of the easiest time tracking solutions I've seen to date--even simpler than tracking your time using an Excel sheet. The Web interface features a large text box captioned "What are you working on?" similar to the one used on work log service IDidWork. You can just type in whatever you are doing, and hit Enter to start tracking. A counter appears (accurate down to the second), the Start button transforms into a Stop button, and that's all there is to it.
Toggl offers clear, clean reports that can be filtered per employee, project, or tag.Toggl's desktop client is available for everyone, even if you use the free version of the service. At 24MB, it is a large download: That's because it is actually a version of the Chrome browser. Chrome uses multiple processes for stability, and when you run Toggl's desktop client it, indeed, spawns two processes. Killing one of these exposes Chrome's "Aw, Snap!" error page within the client, showing its innards. The only disadvantage to it being an instance of Chrome is that it is a large download with a large memory footprint (23MB in RAM on my system). If you're already using Chrome as a Web browser, worry not: The desktop client doesn't conflict in any way.
Toggl's desktop client provides access to all task details.Toggl offers three types of reports: Summary, Detailed, and Weekly. The Summary and Detailed report can be produced for any time span, while the Weekly report can be produced for any single week. Reports show where your time went, and can be filtered by user, project, and tag. Reports can be exported as CSV or PDF files, and are easy to understand. The Summary and Detailed reports include a daily bar graph showing how long you've worked each day, and the Summary report also features a handsome pie chart showing at a glance what projects took up your time. Toggl can also be used in a team scenario (the free plan supports up to five users per team), and reports can show how each member of the team is using their time.
The Samsung ML-2955DW monochrome laser printer is notable for its very low street price ($150 as of February 8, 2012) and its full network connectivity, namely USB, ethernet, and Wi-Fi. Unfortunately, the expensive toner restricts it to low-volume use.
The folder interface in GS-Calc makes it easy to organize complex spreadsheets.The first thing I noticed that got my positive attention was the basic interface. Rather than a row of tabs along the bottom to handle multiple sheets, which becomes problematic when a workbook grows beyond 4 or 5 pages, GS-Calc offers a hierarchical, folder-based view supporting multiple levels of folders. This makes it much easier to create a workbook consisting of many smaller, more-focused sheets, a boon to navigation and debugging.