A Brief Note:

Before we begin with this week's installment, where we take a peek at the changes to the user interface in Windows Vista, I want to take a moment to address what is likely to be a question some of you may have in light of events in the tech blogging world over the past week or so.

CNet News was among many websites that covered the story of Microsoft sending out Acer Ferrari laptops to various bloggers, preloaded with Vista.  There have been degrees of spin added to this story, with Microsoft saying they are review laptops and should be returned, a general public outcry over attempted bribery to get better reviews of the OS, and several of the affected bloggers claiming they would keep the laptop and that they would not let it bias their upcoming reviews.

This review series is 100% laptop gift-free.  I've been evaluating and testing Windows Vista Ultimate since the first public beta release all the way up through RTM code on an aging Dell Dimension 4700 that was sitting around the office.  So while those reviews are going to give you a picture of Vista "as it was meant to be", this series looks at Vista as you would experience it on a middle-of-the-road PC you might have at home. 

Aside from being lucky enough to have a job that allows and encourages me to write these sorts of items, I have been in no way compensated or "paid-off" for this review.  I've nothing to gain by painting things in a more favorably light than I see them.

And now, back to our regularly schedule article...  Touring Windows Vista Part 2 - UI Changes & Additions.

4.  Adjusting to a Vista World

There are a lot of changes to Windows Vista that will throw off most casual users.

  

Lets start with the new and improved desktop UI.  As you can see, things look a lot different with the new start menu, the sidebar and the Windows Explorer interface.

 

The New Start Menu

The new Start Menu is likely to cause a lot of headaches to users in how it has completely turned around how everything works.  Gone is the expanding menus like we've grown accustomed to in every version of windows since Windows 95.  Now the Start Menu acts more like the classic Windows Explorer in tree mode, only you're limited to items in your start menu, and you can't stretch the window to see more.  The screenshot to the left shows you the default view and an expanded view taking you a layer or two down the programs list.

 

The programs list aside, there are a few other changes to the basic Start Menu UI that doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense at first glance.  For starters, I challenge you to find the "Run" option, a staple to power users who often need to quickly fire up a command prompt, or an application they have setup to call by name.  If you look hard enough, you will find it.  Here:

All Programs > Accessories > Run

So quick and simple to get to, huh?  You can actually have it added back to the Start Menu by right clicking on the start button, selecting properties, click on customize, then scroll down and check the box next to Run Command.  This will add it right below "Help and Support" 

But you know the funny thing?  You don't actually need it anymore.  Turns out the "Run" functionality is built into the new Start Menu, it's just not really labeled anywhere.  See that text field at the bottom with the little magnifying glass in it?  The one that says "Start Search"?  Type in whatever command you'd normally put into the Run window, and the result is the same!  It will also do a real-time search across files in your start menu, recent documents, as well as your IE history to find similarly named items. 

Despite the lack of intuitiveness and the about-face versus how previous versions of Windows handle things, I actually like this.  The search bar also reminds me a little bit of Spotlight from Apple.  Not quite the same, but has that feel.

Now for a Start Menu change I'm less than thrilled about; shutting down.  In previous versions of Windows you at most have a Logoff, Shutdown and Switch User button.  The shutdown button gives you the option of Standby (Sleep), Shutdown and Restart.  Pretty straight-forward.  The shutdown button is usually the universal power symbol.

But in Vista, everything changes!  Now the shutdown/sleep/restart options are very confusing and don't actually make any sense regardless of what operating system you've used in the past.  This is a totally new, and completely horrible way to do it and I know I'm going to spend years explaining to family members how to turn their PCs off once they move to Vista.

To the right you'll see the new shutdown UI.  You see that power symbol?  The one pretty much universally understood to mean "Off/On"?  Guess what happens when you press that button.  Your PC goes to sleep.  That's right, it doesn't shut down, it doesn't restart, it goes to sleep.  The Lock is reasonable enough, it locks the screen so you have to enter your user password to continue using the machine.  But it's that little side arrow that gets me.  To me, a little arrow like that means "More Options" but it also means "Secondary and less important functions".  Unfortunately, that's where all of the useful options are hidden.  It's in that little secondary menu that you can actually shutdown or restart your PC, not to mention log off so others can use the system.  Oh, and you get the Sleep and Lock options AGAIN.  To me, it would make the most sense to place the most used functions on the icon buttons and place the less used options in the secondary menu.  But that's just me... and did you hear how many people were on the team that designed the new Start Menu?  24!  It took 24 people to redesign something that didn't need redesigning.

Beyond the changes to the way the Programs Menu is browsed, the power options and the new run/search bar functionality, the rest of the differences in the Start Menu are just different ways to paint the new system.  It's all Aero-ified and such.  The rest of your standard options are there and pretty easy to spot.

The Sidebar

The crazy part here is that Microsoft is suddenly getting on-board with the whole "Gadget" thing, and like when Apple entered the arena, doing a fairly half-assed job of it.  Regardless of technical implementation, this is going to be the first exposure to gadgets that most users will ever have.  How well does MS do it though?

Well, despite any issues developers have with it from a technical standpoint, it does LOOK nice if you have the screen real estate to use.  On a 17" LCD running at 1280x1024, it actually doesn't take up a whole lot of space, and if I'm not running apps in full-window mode, it looks like it can provide me with some valuable information without getting in the way.  My current sidebar has a clock, a rotating picture viewer, an RSS news reader (all placed by default), a weather gadget, and a calendar.  Nothing really out of the ordinary, and the default ones all look nice and polished.

For most of us though, we've seen this before with Konfabulator, DesktopX and Dashboard.  By comparison, the gadgets that Microsoft is supporting are pretty basic, no-frills data readers.  You won't be seeing anything complex like many DesktopX gadgets you get here at WinCustomize.  (We are working on making gadgets that work with the sidebar, so never fear, feature-rich gadgets are coming!)

So they look nice, and some basic ones are packaged by default.  The one thing MS does here is in how easy it is to add them, move them around, detach from the sidebar and place on the desktop.  It's smooth and "feels" good.  The emphasis here is to make it a friendly experience for end-users, which they accomplished even if they didn't actually make a good gadget engine, and even if the rest of us have been doing this stuff for years.

If you want to add gadgets, there is a plus symbol near the top of the sidebar, that will launch a window containing all of the gadgets you have on your system.  To place them on the sidebar, just grab and drag.  You'll see the gadget come to life when you drop it.  Like I said, very intuitive.  You can also place gadgets directly on the desktop, either drag them from the gadgets window, or from your sidebar.  Most of the default gadgets have a secondary (larger) display mode when placed on the desktop.

Now, if the default gadgets aren't enough for you, you can always take a stroll over to the Microsoft Gadget Gallery to see what users have created and uploaded for your enjoyment.  The gallery is a pretty big mess, and the preview icons are washed out so it's not very easy to browse through the gadgets trying to find one you may like.  It's a good idea poorly implemented.  Unless Microsoft drastically improves their gallery, users will start looking elsewhere for gadget content.

Aero/Glass & The New Windows Explorer

Aero, the shiny new GUI for Vista has received a great deal of public attention and scrutiny, so I'm not going to spend a great deal of time here chatting about it.  You've seen it, you know it all by heart.  Some claim it's just useless eye candy, others say it's the first sign of visual creativity Microsoft has exhibited in the more than 20 years it has been building and selling operating systems.  At the very least it's an attempt by Microsoft to establish a visual brand for Windows that it failed to accomplish with Luna under Windows XP.  What is my personal take?  I think it's just a GUI that I'll replace soon anyway with a new WindowBlinds skin.  It does manage to at least make Vista feel "next generation", which is a big part of their marketing effort.

However, one thing worth mentioning about the new Windows user environment in general is the file explorer.

The new Windows Explorer is for the most part the Old Windows Explorer with a nice new coat of paint, and a few extra options tossed in to sweeten the pot.

First off, the way Vista handles the tree view is ever so slightly tweaked.  As you dig deeper and deeper into your system, you maintain focus on the currently selected folder.  This means as you go down, you also shift further and further to the right.  However, the catch here is that there's no sideways scroll bar if you want to scan to the left.  You have to expand the column holding the tree view to get a wider look at the folder structure.  This "feels" nice, but can be annoying to anyone who spends much time digging around in their systems much.  It's an attempt to reduce scrolling ala the panel browse view found in OS X, but it isn't done nearly as well.

Next, we have the information panel at the bottom of the screen that gives you the same sort of information you'd expect from "Details" on the side panel in the old explorer.  It is presented well and nicely integrates into the window.  Overall, information held in the Vista interface is better integrated and has a better feel to it.

Across the top of the window, you'll notice items like "Organize", "Views", "Explore" and "Burn"  These menus contain a lot of the functionality that you previously had to hunt around for in XP.  Organize, for example, contains much of what we're used to seeing in the right-click menu.  Create folders, copy, paste, select all, delete, rename, properties etc.  The other options are a little more interesting. 

View gives you a slider that allows you to switch the way the explorer displays items. More or less, you'll find the options you're used to from XP, but there's a slider bar on the left of the menu that lets you see in real-time the differences in view modes.  As you move from "Large Icons" to "Extra Large Icons" you'll see the icons scale seamlessly.  It's a nice touch that shows off the improved graphics engine behind Vista.

Burn is the other persistent menu item.  It does just what you think it would do, takes all items selected and sends them off through the CD burning wizard.

Beyond that, the options start to switch up a bit, since this bar is largely context-driven.  If you select a folder, you'll see "Explore", "E-mail" and "Share" appear.  Explore just opens up the folder, same as double-clicking.  E-mail will attempt to attach the item to a new mail message.  Share will walk you through the file sharing wizard to open that folder up to network users.  I'm not sure how I feel about the context menu, since it makes for an inconsistent bit of navigation.  It will likely be very confusing for new users when they try to find features that aren't displaying, only because they selected a file instead of a folder.

Explorer got a fair bit of UI love, as is evidenced by the context menus.  However I'm not sure it needed to be fixed over what was in XP.  It feels like they're trying to make the basic shell of the OS look and act more like an application, which is fine I suppose, but it will be confusing to many.

This week we made it through the most immediately obvious changes that most users will encounter with Windows Vista.  Next week, we'll dive deep into the new options hidden away in the Control Panel area, and look over some of the bundled games and applications that come with the OS.

There’s been a lot of commotion over Vista.  It’s all over the press, people are writing about it extensively, and we’ve covered it in-depth here at WinCustomize through news postings and feature evaluations by some of our developers.  Through the forums and our associated blog site, JoeUser, many of you have talked about your personal experiences with the beta and then release candidates made publicly available by Microsoft.  Well, Vista has been released to manufacturing, and is available for purchase to business customers.  Vista is now "in the wild" so to speak and people are starting to play with what is essentially Vista 1.0.  What is out now is likely to be what’s available at consumer launch in January of 2007 and likely won’t change much until Service Pack 1 comes along in a year or more.

We here at Stardock have access to the RTM build of Vista.  Today, I’m going to take some time to write up my experience with the "finished" version of Vista and talk about it from a user perspective.  I’m not a developer, and I’m not a guru on the inner workings of the Operating System or computer itself.  I’m a power user who spends a lot of time working and playing on my computer.  If you’re looking for a critique of WPF, the new driver model, or even much in-depth coverage of the new security model to Vista, look elsewhere.  This article is about Vista from the viewpoint of a power user.

The entire article spans nearly 20 pages, which is far too long to post all at once.  Instead, the larger article has been broken up into five sections, starting with this introduction, and finishing with a general wrap-up and my personal thoughts on Vista after spending a week writing this series.  The articles will be posted every Tuesday starting this week and going until Vista hits consumer release at the end of January.

1.  Installation

We don’t have any DVDs burned at the moment, so I’ve put the RTM build from MSDN on an external hard drive and connected it to my secondary test machine.  This is the box I’ll be evaluating Windows Vista on:

Intel Pentium 4HT 3.0GHz
1GB RAM
X600 Video Card
On-board sound
75GB HDD

It has a "Score" of 3.6 according to the Vista Ratings tool built into the OS.  My averages were actually closer to 4, but the score isn’t an average.  Instead it’s the lowest overall score your computer achieves.  My lowest was a 3.6 on the Gaming graphics area.  Not a surprise considering I’m running with an X600 ATI card.  This means I can run glass without any trouble.  Not sure how it will work with games though.

The Installation process itself was pretty painless, all I had to do was set my installation type (upgrade versus custom/new) and let it go.  I told it a few things like what time of day it was, and what wallpaper I wanted, and I was off and running.    The new image-based install system speeds things up substantially.

Starting up a PC with Windows Vista seems like it’s considerably faster.  I was to the logon screen only a few seconds after my monitor had warmed up enough to display an image.  This blinding speed however is instantly lost when you actually go to login.  It launches into a "Preparing Your Desktop" window that churns for a while as the rest of the OS is loaded.

Once I made it to the desktop I was greeted by the now familiar Windows Welcome Center.

First things first, I wanted to see what exactly came in Windows Vista Ultimate, and why I might possibly want to buy this for home use later on.  So I go and click on it and I’m presented with an immediate Windows Update.  Turns out it wants me to get the latest Windows Defender definitions and apply sound drivers (the only hardware install didn’t auto-detect).  And I’m greeted with the first of what I assume are many UAC (User Access Control)  pop-ups asking me if I’m REALLY sure I want to apply the updates.

At this point I received some error.  I’m curious as to what this error is about, since I’m doing what the OS told me to do, so I click on the "details" button to get more information.  The message I received was complete gobbledygook, so it’s nice to see Microsoft is keeping the long-standing tradition of useless error codes and dialog messages alive and kicking.

3.  Exploring the features of Vista Ultimate!

Patches applied, I dig again into the advantages of Vista Ultimate.  It talks about cutting-edge programs, innovative services and unique publications that I won’t be able to live without.  Well, maybe I can’t live without it… lets download some!

Whoops, nothing new for Vista Ultimate just yet.  I kind of expected this since the consumer release, what Ultimate is targeted at, isn’t for another month.  But I’m still a little disappointed as I was hoping to have a more complete evaluation of Ultimate.  Even the link to learn more about the services and publications doesn’t go anywhere aside from the currently unhelpful Windows Vista website.

So what else do I get for using Ultimate?  Well, there’s Windows Media Center.  Now, I don’t have a tuner card on this machine, so I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be able to do with this just yet.  Immediately on opening Media Center it asked me if I wanted to run setup, I just let it do its express setup thing, since I don’t have any media on the box I could control with it.  Funny thing is several coworkers who are running Windows Media Player 11 were treated with a message asking if they wanted to share their media with my Vista machine.  What’s odd is my XP box running WMP11 received no such message.  Seems kind of arbitrary.

Windows Media Player is another area where it looks like there are placeholders for services that just aren’t available yet.  Specifically in the "Online Media" tab which looks like it’s set to become a storefront and distribution channel for purchased TV shows, movies, music and games through the Live Marketplace.  It’s all empty at the moment though.  This is where you’ll hook up an Xbox or Xbox 360 to use your PC as a digital broadcast box for your home entertainment center.  If I had a 360 in the office, I would test this feature out, but alas I don’t.

Overall, Media Center doesn’t have much for me to play with until I load it on a PC with my media collection.

Vista overall is all about the integration between the Operating System and the Windows Live offerings, an attempt to retake the online services market by Microsoft.  From Windows I can get Windows Live Search, OneCare, Live Marketplace, as well as Live Messenger, Windows Meeting Space etc.

Funny thing though, components as basic as Live Messenger (the heir to MSN Messenger) are not included with the OS and you’re provided with a link in the start menu to download the application.

Come back next week as we begin our journey into the OS itself and begin using it, kicking the tires and peeking under the hood.  We'll talk about the new Start Menu, Aero and the Sidebar gadgets.

Well after putting off installing Windows Vista for several weeks, I finally took the time and did it.  I opened up my PC and removed the small backup hard drive I had installed, and replaced it with a brand new 250gb drive.  It only took a few minutes to switch drives, and took another minute to make sure everything was secure and wires were firmly in place.

Next I booted back into XP to make sure the new drive is installed correctly and proceeded to setup the new hard drive.  Now it's time to install Vista Ultimate!

Popped in the DVD, restarted and booted to the DVD, selected a few options, and off we go.  Total time from putting the DVD in the drive to a usable desktop was about 25 minutes, very nice I must say.

Windows Vista booted to the desktop and then ran an update.  After a few minutes all the updates were installed, and it was time for me to install my video drivers and a few other minor things.  Now I was curious of how my Vista score looked.....3.7.....about what I expected.  I am running an Intel P4 2.8 with 1gig of RAM, and a Radeon 9800 Pro video card. 

Just running Vista for a few hours, the performance is about equal to how XP runs.  I noticed a few things run a little slower, but overall I'm happy with the performance considering this system is several years old.  Next step is to install Stardock Central, and get ObjectDock Plus and Multiplicity installed.  It seems I can't function properly without these two applications.

Next, it's time to get Windowblinds installed, and a few other programs such as iTunes and Office 2007.  After making an image of the drive, it's now time to explore and have some fun.....well try to at least.

It's getting closer and closer to the holidays, but that's not stopping people from submitting some truly great works.  I have also been getting some great feedback from Wincustomize members about this weekly feature, and I appreciate that and your suggestions.  Keep them coming!
 

Stellar Light for CursorXP
by J. Aroche

These cursors were made to match the Ceirous Windowblind, which is a personal favorite of mine.  I always look forward to his submissions, but it seems he's leaving for a vacation in Hawaii so we will have to wait a little while for more great cursors.  Have fun!

Download

DX State Snap-Shot for DesktopX
by Skarnivorous

This DesktopX object generated some talk the other night, and I thought this is a great idea for developers.  With DX State Snap-shot you can save, load and distribute "snap-shots" of your DesktopX theme.  Be sure to read more about this, I think this will come in very handy for some theme developers.

Download
 

Holiday Countdown for DesktopX
by RomanDA

RomanDA has once again created a countdown gadget that has 15+ holidays to choose from.  There will also be a "Pro" version soon which gives you ability to add your own holidays, and more.

Download

Browsers - Iconpack 3_PNG for Dock Icons
by mtFr0st

I was browsing through the galleries of DeviantART and spotted this icon pack of browser icons.  It features icons for Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, and Firefox.  Great job!

Download

Dynyx for Windowblinds
by Z71

This Windowblind was one of my favorites during this years GUI Championships.  This came in a little later last week, but several Wincustomize members e-mailed me and thought it should have been featured, so here it is! 

Download

Another great week for submissions, and I always look forward to more.  As I said, I always appreciate e-mails recommending skins to be featured.  It's not always what I thought was cool this week, it's also about what you think as well. 

See you next week!

I have a problem. Okay, I have a lot of problems. But one of my problems is that I have a printer fetish. I like printers. Always have. I just like being able to print graphics and text and pictures onto a piece of paper. I acknowledge my problem.  Few individuals have purchased as many printers as I have. I've owned dozens of printers over my 30+ years of life.

If you're like me, you go on-line to try to find out how good different printers are. But usually, the reviews suck. Some places will get them quality ratings of like 8.7.  What the hell does that mean? Would it really be that hard to simply scan a picture in of your print out so we can look at it? That's what PC Magazine and PC World used to do (but don't seem to do it so much anymore).  At least then we could look at it.  Most of the "Reviews" I read on-line read like regurgitated media guides.

If your shopping for a printer on-line, the specs should matter. But they don't. Not really. Because DPI means nothing now. I have printers that claim 2400 dpi but look less impressive than 600dpi printers.  The other issue which is rarely talked about is color accuracy. I find this extraordinarily frustrating that my print outs on various "good" printers tend to not be very accurate. And few reviews bother to even talk about it. It's not a review unless there's some subjective talk in it. And most reviews these days are on injkets. No offense but with injkets costing $200 and available at a store, how much advice do I really need from a reviewer? I can go to the store and see a printout of any reasonably popular injket. Thanks. It's on those higher end printers that we tend to want to hear some advice on.  Okay, that's not really fair since most people are looking for injkets, but what about people who are looking for higher end printers?

And by higher end printers I'm talking about laser printers that do color.  The first question I've always wanted the answer to is how good can laser printing get? I mean, if you pay enough, where is the cut off? Can I basically get a laser printer that can print a photo about as well or better than an injket (except be able to print 10 of them a minute rather than 1 every 3 minutes?).

The answer is yes. But you get into diminishing returns. This little article is to share my experiences at buying printers. From $100 injkets to $20,000 industrial printers. I told you, I have a problem.

Injkets

My current Injket of choice is the Canon i9900. It's outdated now. But the quality it produces is fantastic. It's not a terribly fast printer but it produces incredibly good output. My main beef with Inkjets is that they've slowly morphed into being photo printers. I'd like to see more injkets being made that produce great photo output (doesn't have to be godly good, I have a Canon photo printer for that!) but can reasonably be used for printing email and other documents at home or casually at work without thinking I just spent a buck in ink to do it. But right now it seems I can either get an inkjet with sub-par graphics output but is a practical casual multi-purpose printer or I can get something that will show every zit on my face in a photo print out.

I tend to also like Epson injket printers. But they tend to lag a bit beyond Canon in quality in my experience. Still, the Epson Stylus printers are very nice. Lexmark makes decent printers but they tend to be run of the mill. I won't buy HP printers at all for personal reasons -- their driver support during the Windows 2000 era really ticked me off and so I've avoided them since. I buy lots of other HP stuff and they do make good printers, I'm just still sore about the scanners and printers from the Windows 2000 era that they refused to update the drivers to work on back then.

The Main Event

Okay, injkets aren't really my main interest.  Where I've gone on-line over the years is to find out just how good the high end printers really are. And that's where I've been disappointed. I get that injkets can produce photo quality output if you buy the right paper. Fine. Good. Understood. What about printers that can crank out 10 pages or more per minute?

Well...

Quality is a relative term. So I'm going to go with 3 different printers here.

Phaser 8500

The entry level Phaser 8500 (8400 shown but it's the same output). You can get these for starting at $500. Great printer at the price. Here's a sample of the output:

Xerox 8500 (8400)

Not bad but somewhat muted. It's a solid ink printer and that's one of the gotchas with them in my experience. The colors tend to be a bit washed.

Xerox Phaser 8400DX

Oye. It's a bit fuzzy. I printed out my Christmas letter on one of these and the photos, while pretty decent, were definitely fuzzy. I'm pretty picky on this kind of thing, most casual users would think it's fine. One thing that annoys me about most reviews is that they print out the test page where they're alreayd optimized.

Now, on-line on PrinterShowcase.com they rated the quality as 8.5 (good).  That's probably a reasonable rating.  But it doesn't really tell you much.  I do know that anything under the 8400 would be something I'd consider unacceptable for work use. At that point, it's just a casual printer for printing out "stuff" that just happens to be in color.

What I love about the Phaser 8x00 series is how easy they are to maintain. They're "solid ink" which means they're wax. You can eat the wax (not that you should but it's just kind of cool).  You just plop in the wax blocks and off you go. Virtually no maintenance required. A true install and forget. I can't say enough nice things about the solid ink Phasers other than their quality of print is not something you'd want to use if graphics quality is a major factor in your decision.

Phaser 6300DN

The Phaser 6300DN is a regular injket printer. Like the 8500, it's a great product and great for office environments.

Xerox 6300DN

Impressive results but not noticebly better than the Xerox 8500. Moreover, I have noticed a tendancy to streak on out put. I notice faint banding here and there on it. The test pages show fine but I see it. Look really closely on the zoom in on the colored checker board and you'll see it too. It's also got a red-ish tint to the whole thing.

Xerox Phaser 6300DN

It is definitely sharper than the Xerox 8500. You can read the text and the colors are more accurate (the Phaser 8400's colors tend to be just way too muted for serious image work)

That said, right now the Phaser 6300DN is my favorite daily printer. It's incredibly fast and reliable. The banding issue is something I'm still a bit concerned about. And it's not as sharp as the 2400dpi specs lead you to believe.  On Printer Show case it comes out with an 8.7 on quality. That is something I'd agree with. It's a tad better than the 8400/8500 in quality.

Now according to PrinterShowcase.com, the Ricoh C410 has the best quality output of any of the printers in their class with a 9.5 rating. But I don't have that printer so I can't really say. The 6300 is around $1300 . It's got marginally better quality than the 8500 which is significantly cheaper.

Canon CLC 1180

I do know the best printer I have is significantly better than these in quality and it's the Canon CLC 1180. But you pay a bundle. Anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 depending on options. And you will need maintenance agreement because they are very temperamental and engineered like something out of a Dr. Seus cartoon. They are very VERY large. And it's technically listed as a photocopier but nowadays, it's all so blurred because of the multi-function nature of these things.

So how does it do on printing? Well, bear in mind its specs only claim 600dpi. That's important to remember because the lesson I've learned is the specs mean little. Number of colors matters a lot more and I suspect that is why this one is so much better. It's just got the ability to mix up a lot more colors.

Check out the results:

Canon CLC 1180

Canon CLC 1180

Even from the thumbnails you can tell it's significantly better in quality than the others. And those others are no slouches. But this is probably approaching the top end of what you're going to get with current (2006) printer technology. That isn't to say it's the best out there. The Xerox DocuColor 12 is in the same category as well and some have reported it being better. I can't say. I suspect I wouldn't have been able to get it new from Xerox at the price I got the CLC from Canon. In both cases, they're ancient ancient technology.  They're just slowly getting cheaper. But they're both were old technologies 5 years ago but the quality is obvious.

So as far as I can tell you, this is about as good as they get above. You can see the progression in quality as you go up. Where you stop is up to you.

Further reading.

Stardock's love affair with Xerox Phasers goes back a long time to our original Xerox Phaser 850DX.  When it died, we replaced it with the Xerox 8400.  My review of it can be found here. 

My main beef with the 8400 was that the quality had taken a bit of a hit from the 850DX. The 850DX was a 1200dpi printer, the 8400 (and now 8500) is a 600dpi printer. Of course, the price difference is pretty significant. But on printers, I'm not terribly price conscious, I want high quality even if I have to pay a premium.

As our office grew, we decided to go a different route. We picked up the Xerox Phaser 6300DN.  We still have the 8400 and it's working like a champ.  We use it as a general office printer now and in that role, it's print quality is fine. 

The Phaser 6300 is a color laser printer with toner.  The 6300DN prints very VERY fast. It's rated 26 pages per minute and it really definitely is doing that. Xerox also makes the 6350 which prints 36 pages per minute. That's over a page every other second. It's amazingly fast.

But the quality is very good too. At 2400 dpi, it gives very sharp results.  So how good it it in practice? I mean, 2400 dpi, that should be photorealistic right? Well...

It is sharper than the Phaser 8400/8500. But not by the margin you'd expect. Moreover, the color matching capabilities of the Xerox's always seems problematic. Where the Phaser 8400 print outs tend to be muted, the Phaser 6300 images tend to be a bit too warm in some places. I don't like having to monkey around with color settings. 

On a print out of an ad that was already shrunk on the page, I couldn't read the text of the ad that was printed out on the Phaser 8400 but could, barely on the Phaser 6300.

Xerox Phaser 6300DN

Xerox Phaser 8400DX

The Phaser 6300 was also much more accurate on the colors than the Phaser 8400/8500 series.

Xerox 6300DN

Xerox 8400DX

My bottom line is that the Xerox 6300DN is an outstanding office printer. It is better in quality in most respects over the Phaser 8400/8500. But it also does cost more.  The difference in quality, however, is not nearly as good as its specifications imply. At 2400DPI I expect razor sharp pictures.  Why isn't that advertisement's letters crystal clear? I don't know.  In fact, the Canon CLC 1180 that we have, which has a much MUCH lower DPI than the Phaser is far superior in quality. It's not even close (and it's also a $20,000 printer so it better bloody be better).   Don't let my whining dissuade you. The Xerox Phaser 6300DN is a great printer for any office environment. Just don't expect inkjet print quality on graphics and images. It's pretty good and its speed is great but don't let your expectations get the better of you.  If I were to recommend an office printer to anyone, it would be the Xerox Phaser 6300.

According to my handy little Christmas Countdown Gadget by RomanDA, it is right now 12 days and 7 hours until Christmas.  I don't know about everyone else, but I'm still working on finishing up my Christmas shopping and there are a few people I'm smashing my head against the wall trying to conjure up gift ideas for.  If only they were geeks, I'd have such an easier time!

Well, I'm going to assume some of you out there have friends or family that are of the geeky persuasion, so I'm going to be doing five days of Holiday Gift Ideas here on WinCustomize.  I will be updating this article as additional days of goodies are added.

Day 1 - Give the Gift of Skinning

Today, Gift the Gift of Skinning with WindowBlinds or Object Desktop 2007!

Do you know someone who might be interested in customizing their PC but hasn't taken the plunge by picking up our software?  For those of you who would like to give the gift of skinning this holiday season, think about giving WindowBlinds, or even Object Desktop 2007. 

WindowBlinds, stand-alone, is a great way to ease someone into desktop customization without a heavy investment and isn't as overwhelming as the massive number of choices presented to you in Object Desktop.  It's perfect for the novice user you'd like to start nurturing along down the road of OS Customization. 

Now, for the friend or family member who really knows their stuff and is all about tricking out their PC, go for the gold and get them a copy of Object Desktop 2007!  Give them everything they could possibly need to reinvent their User Interface.  Icons, visual styles, gadgets, and tons of productivity-enhancing utilities such as ObjectBar, Enhanced File Dialogs and RightClick.

WindowBlinds is available at CompUSA, Frys Electronics and J&R Electronics, or you can purchase it online via the Stardock Store for $19.95!

Object Desktop 2007 can be purchased online via the Stardock Store for $49.95

The beauty of purchasing Stardock Software online is that you can order it Christmas morning and have it immediately!  Additionally, you can purchase products for others via the store, so they are sent the registration and download information.  It really doesn't get any easier or convenient.  No boxes, no wrapping, no waiting in line at stores!

 

Day 2 - Fishy Business

Today, it's going to be a little more light-hearted and fun.  One of our more popular products is Aquarium Desktop 2007, an application that adds swimming fish, treasure chests and various other animated doodads to your desktop.  It's a great program to put on a kids PC, or maybe a machine belonging to an older relative who might find this sort of thing fun.

The Aquarium Desktop 2007 application sells for less than $10 (9.95)and would make the perfect stocking stuffer for your PC using friends this year.

But don't stop there.  If any of these same friends have Object Desktop, you could go and grab them the matching Aquarium Premium Suite released earlier this week!  If you purchase it after purchasing Aquarium Desktop 2007, it costs just $4.95.  So for less than $15, you've got a great stocking stuffer for the customization junkie in your life.

• Aquarium Desktop 2007 - $9.95 ($8.95 for ODNT Subscribers)
• Aquarium Premium Suite - $8.95 ($7.95 for ODNT Subscribers, $4.95 for Aquarium Desktop 2007 Owners)

Day 3 - Premium Content

Sometimes, the skinner in your life just has all the software they need already.  They've got Object Desktop, they've got ObjectDock, heck they even have Aquarium Desktop 2007.  Oh dear, whatever are you going to do?  Well, in that case you just have to resort to some pretty extreme measures!  Measures so extreme, they can only be properly dealt with by picking up a few of our Premium Suites!

Yes, that's right, they may have all the software but do they have all the content?  With the recent launch of Stardock Design, we've been putting out a lot of great premium content that's sure to scratch the skin-changing OCD of your favorite skinner at home.  Here are just a few of the great premium content packs we've released this year:

• Argos - $8.95
• Liquidox - $9.95
• Logika 2007 - $8.95
• Fortune - $8.95
• Essorant Skinpack 2 - $9.95
• Paul Boyer's Icon Trilogy - $19.95
• More great content can be found here!

Discounts are available for many of our premium suites to current Object Desktop subscribers.

Day 4 - KeepSafe & Multiplicity

Ever been working on a word document for hours on end?  You know, the project plan for the multimillion dollar project you've been tasked to have finished by 8am tomorrow, or that thesis paper you have to hand to your adviser by 5pm.  Those critical files that, if lost, will make you consider finding the nearest bridge to jump off of.  We've all lost documents before to either drive crashes, power outages, or you accidentally deleted an entire section of a document and then accidentally saved it over the only copy you had.  Trying to recover from that can be insanely stressful and wastes a lot of time.

Of course, no one ever backs their files up either like they're supposed to.

KeepSafe is the answer to people caught in those most dire of situations: a file is gone!  KeepSafe stores iterative backups of your documents in a completely different location on your hard drive, and it does it without you having to lift a finger!  It will automatically backup documents as you save them, keeping several iterations back so you can recover from accidentally overwriting the quarterly financials with a recipe your friend emailed you.

KeepSafe is especially great for any students you know, if it can save them from losing just one midterm project, it will have been more than worth the cost of purchase!

Give the gift of file safety this year!

This next gift is for anyone who runs more than one computer at a time.  You know the type, the person with their laptop setup next to their desktop PC, checking email on one, surfing the web on another, going back and forth from keyboard to keyboard.  Or there's the type with more than 2 machines sitting on their desk that they're constantly flipping back and forth between them all.  I'm sure their desks are littered with keyboards and mice.  Imagine how happy they'd be to clear that all of, and just have to deal with one set of input devices.

That's where Multiplicity comes in!  If you've got multiple PCs with multiple monitors, you can control them all from just one keyboard and mouse, moving between them seamlessly.  Just install Multiplicity to all of the machines you want to control, set one as primary and the rest as secondary machines, and presto!  Put all those extra keyboards and mice away.

Multiplicity is perfect for power users and gamers who have to use multiple PCs at the same time.

Multiplicity and KeepSafe can be found in retail at CompUSA, Frys Electronics and J&R Electronics, or can be purchased online through the Stardock Store.