Because toner is comprised of miniature particles they can leave gaps in colors and shading and cause a blurred or faded effect. Solid ink actually fuses with the surface of the paper becoming part of the fibers and provides clean smooth lines and colors even when in close proximity; bleeding rarely happens with solid ink for the very same reason. Another big difference in print quality between solid ink and color laser printers is the style of the printed document itself. Color toner will generally have a matte finish on standard paper while solid ink has an inherent semi glossy finish delivering photo quality prints on virtually any type of paper or medium.

In continuation, color toners will print and behave differently depending upon the media type used to print upon. Solid ink can print as is on virtually any medium without any lose of definition or change in appearance. Due to the glossy nature of solid ink printing extremely small font sizes can seem muddy and unclear; the infusion of the solid ink into the paper plays into this as well. Monochromatic printing at small font sizes is a strong point for color lasers for the same reason they can fall short in color shading, their extremely small particles. Both solid ink and color laser printers have their strong points that should be considered when determining the best technology for printing in any environment.

The base model, Xerox 8860, is equipped with USB 2.0, Ethernet networking and an optional IEEE 802.11a/b/g for wireless networking. Setting up the printer in the network is fairly simple shouldn’t require any help. Text is presented as well as laser printers present it and is crisp down to small font sizes, around 4 point font. The printer is powered by a PowerPC 750 MHz processor and a base memory of 256 MB. While the memory is decent for most general applications adding to it will improve quality and printing speeds for larger and more complex documents. The memory maxes out at 1 GB, more than enough for most work groups.

Duplexing is standard on the Xerox Phaser 8860 solid ink printer and it can handle a large range of media types from cover paper to transparencies and from bond paper to business cards. The Printer is compatible with virtually every operating system including Linux, UNIX and some Novell Netware versions. The applicable drivers are included with the Xerox 8860 printer. A wealth of color management features like Apple ColorSync, PANTONE Digital color, ICC Color Profiles, and proprietary color correction software. This enables users to tweak the color further providing consistently improved prints.