Docucolor 242-252-260. Right?

[homeboy]

The Docucolor 260 is in the class of, and a faster version of, the 242 and the 252, not the 240 and 250. Is that right?

 

[Jeff]

Did you ever find out more about this? When I bought my 242 in December they were selling 242, 252, and 260 as the series. I'm not sure why the 260 didn't get the same numerical upgrade as the 240->242 and 250->252 other than maybe since the 260 is 220 volts it uses different components anyway for many of the things that were upgraded? I don't know. I also don't necessarily think the 242 is in a different class than the 240, more of an incremental improvement.

I would be interested if anyone has done any detailed comparisons of print quality to see if they can spot the difference between the 242, 252, and 260. Is there an ideal speed to run this basic frame for print quality?

 

[c-print@pacbell.net]

I have used both a 240 and the 242.

First question; The 240/250 and the 242/252/260 are the same except speed and the below differences.

Second question; When the 240/250 came out the interface didn't allow you print jobs that were sent from an external source (amongst other options). The 260 had not yet been released. I've been told that the 240/250 was released prematurely and all of the bug in the software had not been worked out. After receiving user feed back, they fixed the problems and added extra features. At that point the released the 242/252 and the first version of the 260 (hence no 2).

In all there isn't much of a difference between the 0 and the 2, I don't utilize the added features of the 242.

 

[Jeff]

I'm not sure all of the bugs in the software have yet been worked out of the xx2 series -- if it wasn't such an awesome printer the little things could drive me nuts, but thankfully since it is an amazing printer for me I become accustomed to the little ways it makes you do some things and soon it doesn't bother me. (for example, if I send a job to print on coated and have plain loaded in the feeder, it won't let me load coated and start printing... I have to cancel the job and re-rip. Or the fact that it takes so many clicks to adjust the image position on the machine itself a login and 3 or 4 menu levels deep. Or the fact that I can't save the defaults as the colorcal template for calibration overwriting the default with color space, image rotation.) Just little things like that where my canons have a higher degree of "common sense" but the xerox runs circles around them in print quality and performance so I can live with the small "eccentricites"

 

[k_graham]

I'm not sure all of the bugs in the software have yet been worked out of the xx2 series -- if it wasn't such an awesome printer the little things could drive me nuts, but thankfully since it is an amazing printer for me I become accustomed to the little ways it makes you do some things and soon it doesn't bother me. (for example, if I send a job to print on coated and have plain loaded in the feeder, it won't let me load coated and start printing... I have to cancel the job and re-rip."eccentricites"

On the 240 with EXP250 external RIP it asks to change paper and press Start button, pressing start button is sufficient.

I think one of the larger items different in 240 vs 242 was they provided Adobe 6 and Pitstop 6 with the external RIP and Adobe 7 Pitstop 7 with 242, changing the number allowed them to not upgrade these packages with people that bought the 240. The 260 was only introduced at the time of the 242, 252 so they did not have a upgrade issue with it.

Ken Graham
Community Pr