Exceptional Sharp MX-5500N 55 ppm Monochrome/41 ppm Colour Print • Copy • Scan• Fax • Internet Fax Copyright © 2006 MCA Internet, LLC dba BERTL. All Rights Reserved. The license under which this document is made available and applicable law prohibit any reproduction or further transmission of any portion of this document. This document may only be viewed electronically through the www.BERTL.com Web site and may not be stored in electronic or hard copy format.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page • September 21, 2006 Table of Contents Introduction Device Features Summary 4 4 Paper Handling: Input Features Summary Reloading Paper Supplies What We Liked/What We Would Like to See 6 7 7 Paper Handling: Paper Input 6 Paper Handling: Paper Output/Finishing 9 Paper Handling: Output/Finishing Features Summary Finishing Options Finishing Productivity What We Liked/What We Would Like to See 9 9 10 11 Routine Maintenance 12 Maintenance Features Summ
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page • September 21, 2006 Table of Contents Accessibility 22 22 22 23 Copy Features Summary Image Quality What We Liked What We Would Like to See 24 25 26 27 Document Filing Accessing Document Filing Documents from Desktop What We Liked/What We Would Like to See 31 32 33 Print Features Summary Ease of Installation Print Productivty PCL6 Print Driver Functionality Image Quality What We Liked/What We Would Like to See 34 34 36 37 40 41 Scan Features Summary
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page • September 21, 2006 Introduction Device Features Summary 55 ppm Colour Engine Speed 41 ppm First Copy Out Mono 4.0 seconds First Copy Out Colour 8.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page • September 21, 2006 Introduction Sharp Open Systems Architecture Sharp’s Open Systems Architecture (Sharp OSA) is based on Microsoft .NET environment, one of the popular building block frameworks for software developers today. It allows independent software vendors (ISV), dealers, and end users to develop specific applications that can be run through the touch screen of the MFP.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page • September 21, 2006 Paper Handling: Paper Input Weight The majority of paper used in the general office is graded between 20 lb. bond/80gsm and 28 lb. bond/105gsm. If a device cannot handle these weights through the main paper sources, users are forced to use the low capacity bypass tray, resulting in a higher user intervention rate.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page • September 21, 2006 Paper Handling: Paper Input Reloading Paper Supplies Loading paper in the Sharp MX-5500N was a straightforward process. The paper levels on the main copy screen indicated that the paper has been replenished. The standard tandem main paper tray allows 2,000 sheets of letter/A4 to be easily placed in the top drawer.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page • September 21, 2006 Paper Handling: Paper Input WHAT WE LIKED (continued) • Flexible paper options allow users to add a large capacity tray (LCT) to accommodate either letter-sized sheets or up to 12"x 18" sheets, to gain maximum capacity for their specific needs. • The device handles high volumes of 12" x 18" paper for long, uninterrupted print runs on full bleed ledger jobs, a valuable attribute for CRDs or quick-print buyers.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page • September 21, 2006 Paper Handling: Paper Output/Finishing Stapling Lower cost stapler units often have a 15- to 30-sheet maximum capacity and are often limited to corner stapling. Floor-standing, higher cost finishers should offer 50-sheet capability and handle corner and double stapling. Saddle stitching heads up the finishing capabilities, allowing users to create folded, center-stapled booklets.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 10 • September 21, 2006 Paper Handling: Paper Output/Finishing Finisher Productivity To compare finishing results, BERTL analysts ran the same job (10 sets of 12 originals) with various finishing options. There was no reduction in speed when hole punching was added. The addition of one staple, and then two staples showed a small identical jump in both cases.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 11 • September 21, 2006 Paper Handling: Paper Output/Finishing WHAT WE LIKED • The standard, right-side output tray of the device can be set up to receive user specified copy/print jobs; or to separate faxes from the rest of copy/print jobs, saving users from searching through a pile of printed copies. This feature is customisable by the administrator from the device management tool or users at the walk-up panel.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 12 • September 21, 2006 Routine Maintenance Workgroup devices sold through retail and traditional IT distribution outlets usually are maintained by office workers changing the all-in-one cartridge units that encase the entire imaging system. Units sold through the reseller/ dealer community are usually maintained by office workers and trained service engineers.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 13 • September 21, 2006 Routine Maintenance Paper Jam Removal During Sharp MX-5500N testing, BERTL caused some jams to see how the unit would react. When a jam occurs, the machine displays a message on the touch screen indicating a jam has occurred. The control panel provides step-by-step animated illustrations to guide users through clearing paper jams.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 14 • September 21, 2006 Routine Maintenance Toner Replacement Process The overall maintenance of the Sharp MX-5500N is straightforward and simple. Most users will find the directions easy to use. The toner bottle design ensures that the toner cannot be placed in the incorrect slot. Both the high-capacity tandem black toner and colour toners can be replaced while the device is still printing.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 15 • September 21, 2006 Device Management An efficient device management backbone is needed to take maximum advantage of the feature set within a device, be it a printer, fax, scanner, or multi-functional product. Device management is commonly-supported through a Web server on the device controller. This Web server is accessed using any desktop Internet browser. The user simply enters the IP address of the device into the URL address line.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 16 • September 21, 2006 Device Management Status Monitoring The Device Status screen provides a quick view of current operations including paper tray conditions and availability. Job Queue Reporting On other devices, job queue reporting generally provides a status of where jobs are positioned and the print/copy order. A job that has not been produced can be deleted if desired.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 17 • September 21, 2006 Device Management Address Book Management Users and administrators can set up email, Internet fax, and fax addresses for local storage on the device. Addresses can be gathered into groups for simple one-touch distribution purposes. Addresses can also be created individually to send to an FTP address, file server, email address, Fax and Desktop.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 18 • September 21, 2006 Device Management Email Notification Alerts A user can set up unlimited email addresses to route specific notifications, which supports up to 200 characters per email address. This unlimited email address option provides more addresses than most competing manufacturers; some manufacturers set limits at three email addresses. The administrator can set up a local office contact for easy fixes such as paper and toner refill.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 19 • September 21, 2006 Device Management WHAT WE LIKED • Sharp’s Sharpdesk device management is consistent across the board and is very user-friendly. There is a low learning curve for those familiar with Sharp products. • The device management tool is very intuitive and easy for newcomers to use and migrate to Sharp products.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 20 • September 21, 2006 Security Security Features Summary Safeguarding Data Most MFPs now offer a standard or optional hard drive. Any company dealing in critical, sensitive information should determine if it needs a data overwrite capability that has passed Common Criteria (CC) certification. Data overwrite deletes information on the hard drive by writing a series of random ones and zeros over the sectors storing data, usually multiple times.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 21 • September 21, 2006 Security Secure Transmissions The hard drive (if not equipped with a data overwrite capability) provides the ability to create secure repositories for incoming print and fax jobs. Instead of being printed upon delivery, print jobs and faxes can be stored on the device and printed only after a PIN has been entered by the authorized user. IPv6 makes it harder to crack or hack into a PC address range by making the address more complex.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 22 • September 21, 2006 Accessibility In the U.S., Section 508 legislation prohibits government agencies from purchasing devices that are not accessible to those with physical impairments. For this reason—and the corporate world’s increased focus on delivering a better work environment for all—user-friendly features for physically-impaired users are considered more often.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 23 • September 21, 2006 Accessibility WHAT WE LIKED • The control panel is at a neutral tilted angle and is accessible to wheelchair bound users. The tilt also helps to minimize glare from overhead lighting giving greater visibility to disabled users. • The touch screen is very large, easy to navigate, and is very user-friendly. The contrast slide on the touch screen enables users to adjust the brightness to their own comfort level.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 24 • September 21, 2006 Copy Small, Simple Jobs Despite the wealth of features that MFPs offer today, most users will not be prepared to wade through countless screen menus to get to the point where they can press the Start button. Think in terms of human productivity, not device productivity.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 25 • September 21, 2006 Copy Image Quality With the Sharp MX-5500N, users can select from three modes: Colour, Monochrome, or Auto Colour. The default Auto Colour mode identifies whether the original is full colour or black and white. BERTL ran a variety of originals and the machine picked the correct mode each time. This function is important for cost savings.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 26 • September 21, 2006 Copy Image Quality (continued) Text Mode: Reproduction of fine lines and text was acceptable in most areas of the map. There is some blurriness in areas with fine lines over coloured background, making the map hard to read. A lot of fine detail is lost in the photograph in areas such as the foliage and roof tiling where shade reproduction is essential.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 27 • September 21, 2006 Copy Image Quality (continued) The full-colour nature photo is not a typical representation of general office documents and would be difficult for even graphic-oriented machines to reproduce. However, the Sharp MX-5500N had no problem reproducing this picture in colour. The monochrome mode reproduced particularly well. Although access to colour adjustments was available, BERTL analysts did not make any.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 28 • September 21, 2006 Copy WHAT WE LIKED • Choosing Colour and Monochrome is easy with two separate buttons for colour or black/white copies. The guesswork is taken out of selecting colour or black/white copies with one button. • The user-friendly control panel is in colour and is the largest BERTL has encountered. The home screen clearly identifies the paper trays, paper levels, and size of paper in each tray.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 29 • September 21, 2006 Copy WHAT WE WOULD LIKE TO SEE • Although a paper jam encountered on the document feeder displayed the mis-feed location on the touch screen, this is problematic for documents that are difficult to remove due a non-movable mechanism on initial input into the feeder. BERTL would prefer to see a fully detachable mechanism for easy access or a rotating wheel to back the paper out of the feeder.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 30 • September 21, 2006 Print on Demand Ever since MFPs started including hard drives, manufacturers have looked for ways to offer more and more ondemand document facilities. The most basic is the ability to store a document on the device for instant reprinting from the walk-up interface. Virtually all manufacturers offer this level of print-on-demand capability. Most allow users to store, copy, and print. Some also include scan and fax documents into the mix.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 31 • September 21, 2006 Print on Demand The Sharp MX-5500N offers several print on demand options. With Document Filing, the job is stored on the hard drive of the device where it can be accessed and reprinted at a later stage either from the desktop or from the control panel of the device. Users can choose to deposit documents into a general folder or into a specific folder of their choosing, which can be protected with a PIN.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 32 • September 21, 2006 Print on Demand Accessing Document Filing Documents from Desktop From the desktop, the user selects Document Filing from the main menu. The user enters their user name, the name of the folder, and the folder password. They then enter the file name and the password for the file. Or they can browse a specific folder and view all stored documents.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 33 • September 21, 2006 Print on Demand WHAT WE LIKED • Users familiar with Sharp and its products will require no adjustment or learning curve with Document Filing on the Sharp MX-5500N • The Quick (public), Main, and Customized (private) folders offer users additional options. Multiple users can access and print the same file through the Quick folder, which can be optionally set to be password protected.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 34 • September 21, 2006 Print Connectivity The vast majority of devices include Ethernet and USB connectivity out of the box; some include parallel connections. In addition, most devices offer a selection of optional connectivity choices like Wireless 802.11b or g (g is the faster, preferred standard.), Bluetooth for connection to cell phones or PDAs, and FireWire for high-speed local connectivity.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 35 • September 21, 2006 Print Secure Print The user initiates secure print from the desktop through the Job Handling tab of the PCL6 driver (Figure 8). They enter a user name and password and locate the file to be printed. From the Select File screen (Figure 9), the user can print, send, move, or delete a file. After the file is sent to print, the user goes to the device to release the file for printing.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 36 • September 21, 2006 Print Print Productivity Bandwidth Comparison The design of the PCL and PostScript drivers is very similar, allowing users to easily switch from one to the other without confusion. While many users will never veer away from PCL—and many IT managers will not give them the option—those that do will reap benefits in bandwidth and productivity.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 37 • September 21, 2006 Print PCL6 Print Driver Functionality On the Sharp MX-5500N the PCL6 driver is provided as standard and the PostScript driver can be optionally purchased. Both drivers have very similar features and attributes. The PCL6 driver can be accessed from the Properties menu. The PCL driver has five tabs available to users: Main, Paper, Advanced, Job Handling, Watermarks and Colour which will be discussed in detail below.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 38 • September 21, 2006 Print Print Driver Functionality (continued) The Advanced tab provides some advance printing options including resolution settings, graphics mode, bitmap compression, and print overlays. The Tab paper settings provide an image shift to where tabs will print. Tab sheets must be loaded correctly in the universal tray. The Job Handling tab provides many of the security features for printing documents.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 39 • September 21, 2006 Print Print Driver Functionality (continued) The Watermarks tab provides the user with a list of commonly-used watermarks. The user can create a customized watermark or customize the phrasing to support a particular requirement. The watermark can be integrated with any size image (letterhead or company logo) and placed anywhere on the page.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 40 • September 21, 2006 Print Image Quality Overall, the image quality has a very high rating across the entire range of document and image types as compared to similar devices. The Sharp MX-5500N prints colour images that defaults to a 1-bit setting, which can also be set to a higher 4-bit resolution. The 1-bit colour setting produces adequate colour output, which should be acceptable for most business colour settings.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 41 • September 21, 2006 Print WHAT WE LIKED • The upper left hand window on each driver has a status box option that can be viewed in graphic mode. As a job develops, the current selections can be viewed to ensure that the correct feature sets are chosen for the current run. The graphic selection supports more visually-oriented users who prefer to see how the job will be laid out.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 42 • September 21, 2006 Scan Address Book Integration Integration into central corporate address books on LDAP or NT servers is the de facto standard today, as is the ability to force-populate outgoing email with sender information through an enforced login process. This way, outgoing communications from the remote MFP can be traced back to the user and audited for compliance purposes.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 43 • September 21, 2006 Scan Scan to Email From the Document Filing tab, the user selects scan to email to view all options. Both grayscale and colour scanning are available with the Sharp MX-5500N. Users can scan to TIFF, PDF, and JPEG formats. Colour options are black, grayscale, full colour, and auto colour. Available modes are Text, Text/Photo, and Photo. Resolutions can be set at 100 dpi, 200 dpi, 300 dpi, 400 dpi, and 600 dpi.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 44 • September 21, 2006 Scan Scan to Email (continued) To enter or change any text, users can use the QWERTY keyboard which fills the top part of the screen. Users can use both the QWERTY keyboard and hard button numeric keypad to enter numbers. The QWERTY keyboard is easy to use and supports many languages along with specialized symbols. As illustrated, the user is entering a message informing the recipient of the attached contents.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 45 • September 21, 2006 Scan Scan Data Capture Accuracy One of the fastest growing needs for high-speed scanning is the conversion of legacy hard copy documents into an electronic format for better information sharing, reduced storage space, and easier search and data retrieval. Exceptional Above is a portion of BERTL’s OCR test chart scanned at 200 dpi (top), 300 dpi (middle) and 600 dpi (bottom) in text format and saved as a PDF file.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 46 • September 21, 2006 Scan Scan Data Capture Accuracy Results The device fared very well on eight point and 10 point type, which is standard in most documents. Four point text, which will be processed on diagram labels, and terms and conditions on contracts, did not fair as well with a very low recognition rate at 300 dpi, even on the bold black font. 200 dpi vs.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 47 • September 21, 2006 Scan Scan Data Capture Productivity Judging scan productivity is another difficult task. The impact of the user on the overall process will be largely determined by the amount of work required at the initial scan operation.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 48 • September 21, 2006 Scan WHAT WE LIKED • The scan template creation process is easy for novice users. • The 150-sheet, 65-opm scanner allows for fast original handling, minimizing user intervention time. • JPEG file creation is offered in addition to the standard PDF and TIFF, providing a low- bandwidth image file creation option that some environments demand.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 49 • September 21, 2006 Summary Exceptional BERTL analyst inspects the optional LCT on the Sharp MX-5500N. O FFI CE BERTL has already praised Sharp for its rise from business colour laggard to innovator in the space of one generation of product. With the introduction of the departmental MX-series, Sharp has now rounded out its line and has the first line to ever achieve a BERTL 5-Star status throughout.
Office Back to Contents Sharp MX-5500N page 50 • September 21, 2006 About BERTL About BERTL The success of an organization depends on its ability to manage its information and assets. An effective workflow process requires the complex integration of information, devices, software, and people. IT managers, office managers, and other knowledge management professionals need to know which digital imaging devices would best serve their specialized workflow processes.
