CANON FAXPHONE L90 TONER CARTRIDGE

Canon FaxPhone L90 Review

Overview:

There are times when it’s useful to have a multi-function, everything-in-one printer. And there are times when all you need is just a fax machine. Designed for personal desktop use, the Canon Faxphone L90 uses laser technology for receiving faxes can send 20 monochrome faxes per minute. The Faxphone comes with automatic document feeding, fax storage to memory, and a handset allows for the fax to double as a telephone.

Pros:

The 19-pound Faxphone has a 19½” x 15¼” footprint, with a low 9-inch height for placement on shelves or on a desk. The 30-sheet Automatic Document feature (ADF) only adds a few inches to the unit s overall height of 8¾ inches.  The concealed paper tray can carry up to 150 sheets of paper, from 17 to 34 pound bond weights, of various sizes up to 11” x 14” legal-size.

In addition to a 9-digit keypad for manual dialing, the Faxphone control panel has 15 one-touch keys allow for up to 15 numbers to be entered or for 15 group distribution keys. Mass fax distribution to a maximum of 50 numbers per group can be achieved with just a touch of one button. 100 more fax numbers can be retrieved using a 2-digit code. If you forget the code for a fax number programmed in, the L90 has an Address Book that shows the stored list of numbers or allows you to search by name.  Menu features are controlled through three navigation buttons that are below the 2-line LCD display.

The Faxphone is also a basic multi-function printer, copy machine, and telephone.  Up to 99 copies can be produced with 600 x 600 dpi resolution. Magnification from 50% to 200% of the originals at 13 pages per minute can be made.

Connecting to a printer via the USB port, the L90 prints 15 pages per minute at 600 x 600 dpi resolution. Canon does not offer PCL or PostScript emulation with the L90.  Instead the Faxphone comes with Canon’s UFR II-LT emulator.  Some Mac users running OS X 10.6 have experienced problems with this emulator. Most people who buy the Faxphone will not be using it for printing.

Cons:

Just like the L90's size, its drawbacks are also small. The Faxphone’s use of terms RX and TX may be confusing to people who are not familiar with traditional telecommunication jargon for receive and transmit.  Another quirk about the L90 is while the Faxphone ringer can be set to “off”, that doesn’t mean it will stay quiet. Canon admits that if the Faxphone is in Sleep mode, that it may ring once or twice.  Having the capacity to store 300 names and numbers is great, but having to enter all of that information using only the menu on the LCD display can be tedious.

Since the L90 has no battery backup, any faxes stored in memory will be lost if power is lost. The L90 will list the last 60 documents that were lost from memory, but how this is helpful remains to be seen. Finally, there is no security features or password protection for the L90.