ALFIERI@USC-ECLB.ARPA (07/26/84)
IBM's advertising to the contrary, the new DisplayWrite 2 word
processing program presents a few problems to the unwary buyer.
Although it is an excellent transformation of the original,
"dedicated" DisplayWriter, and is best for office word processing
and for people who don't want to learn control codes, DW2 does not
support many printers at the moment.
In fact, if you don't want to "go" IBM all the way, you will have a few
problems. If you have an IBM dot matrix printer, or the IBM-supported
NEC 3550, you're o.k. If you opt for the tres expensive IBM 5218
daisy-wheel printer (about $6000 with dual sheet feeder and interface card),
also o.k.
But if you already own anything else, such as a Diablo or Okidata, then all
these printers are lumped together in "Class B." Although you can get these
printers to work with DW2, they won't support many features, including
super- and subscripts.
But the biggest problem that I have encountered so far is that, for all non-
IBM printers, DW2 sends a "line feed" code with forces the first page of the
paper to run through the printer. What is more, DW2 sends a "B" which gets
printed out on the page. So if you're not using continuous form paper or can't
afford to waste the first page of a print-out, you're out of luck.
I certainly hope IBM can correct this problem, because there are going to be
a lot of unhappy customers who paid good money for this program, only to find
that it does not work well with most PC printers.
I personally like DW2 for what it does and would be willing to answer
particular questions. If anyone has a possible solution or a way to
patch the program to fix the problem mentioned above, please contact
me. Thanks!
vince alfieri
computing information services
university of southern california