KONICA MINOLTA's magicolor 2430 DL the first color laser printer equipped with PictBridge-compatible camera direct photo printing--has received the CNET "Next Big Thing" award in the "Peripherals" category. CNET editor-in-chief Patrick Houston announced the winners of CNET's "Next Big Thing" awards on Friday, January 7th at the 2005 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

The "Next Big Thing" winners were chosen from hundreds of submissions in 12 categories, and judged on criteria that included: their promise to delight customers with their usefulness, design, and/or capacity to entertain; their ability to endow the owner with a certain cachet; breaking new ground in ease of use; working easily and readily with other products; pioneering a new category; setting a new standard for excellence in an existing category or innovation; selling in substantial numbers; and capturing the "wow" factor. In addition to "Peripherals", other award categories included: Digital Photo and Video; Home Theater; Portable Audio and Video; and Computers.

"We are delighted by CNET's response to our new PictBridge-compatible magicolor 2430 DL," said Stephen Fletcher, president and COO of KONICA MINOLTA PRINTING SOLUTIONS. "The innovation and affordability of our newest network color laser printer is a testament to how far KONICA MINOLTA laser technology has advanced in recent years."

Priced at only $499, the magicolor 2430 DL was developed to provide the home office user and small business environments an affordable color laser alternative to inkjet printers. It offers all the benefits of color laser technology--such as faster print speed, higher resolution "laser quality" output, more durable prints, and less frequent user intervention--in a compact but robust and reliable design. The camera direct photo printing feature lets the user print pictures directly from a PictBridge-enabled digital camera with no PC required. Its easy-access USB host port with PictBridge 1.0 compatibility allows for quick image downloads, and also enables the user to control various photo printing options such as resolution, paper size, media type, brightness, contrast, copy count, and rotation settings, as well as n-up, batch and index printing.

The magicolor 2430 DL is compatible with Windows(R), Macintosh(R) and Linux(R) operating systems. It comes with an Ethernet(R) 10/100BaseTX network interface, as well as a hi-speed USB 2.0 local connection. The magicolor 2430 DL prints up to 2400 dpi at speeds of 20 ppm in b&w and 5 ppm in color. It can handle up to legal size (8.5" x 14") paper and has an optional automatic duplexer for effortless two-sided printing.