dan@sparkles.dcss.McMaster.CA (Dan Trottier) (03/11/89)
I'd like to thank everyone who sent me a reply to my posting about
good office laser printers. The comments were helpful and led me to
a printer which I think will be an excellent purchase.
To summarize, I received several response about the NEC LC 806+ and 890
printers as well as a vote or two for QMS, Toshiba, and HP printers.
[From: evan@telly.on.ca / {uunet!attcan,utzoo}!telly!evan
[
[I would suggest either the Toshiba or NEC lasers, mainly for their paper
[handling capability. Toshiba's envelope feeder option is the best around
[and both it (as an option) an the NEC (standard) have dual 250-sheet
[paper bins. The Toshiba is faster (12ppm) but the NEC is cheaper and
[comes in Postscript (model 890) and non-Postscript (860) versions.
[The NEC is the cheapest Postscript laser I know of anywhere, but has
[all the functions & fonts of the Apple LaserWriter.
[
[(There is talk of Toshiba offering a Postscript clone on its laser -
[nothing firm).
[
[The NEC is also cheaper on consumables than most other lasers.
[
[Hope this helps.
It did indeed. Thank you.
>From: "John R. Nickerson" <jrn@me.utoronto.ca>
>
> Saw your posting on laser printers. One unit you didn't mention but
>is worthy of note is the NEC LC-890. It has 35 built in fonts, is a postscript
>device, and has LaserJet and Diablo emulation. It also has separate toner
>cartridges as opposed to the toner/photo-drum assemblies used in in the
>QMS and the Apple Laserwriters. It is also reasonably priced. $4400 the
>last time I looked in the Wednesday's Tornoto Globe and Mail (not a
>wonderull paper ;-) ). The little toner boxes are about $12.00 each and
>you simply add their contents through the top of the unit and after about
>5-10,000 copies you change the PC cartridge ( ~$100.) I have used the QMS,
>the Apple Laserwriter and prefer the NEC. I used the NEC both with
>postscript output from nroff etc. and also output from Harvard Graphics,
>123, Freelance Plus (a plotting package from Lotus) and WordPerect 5.0.
> Have a look at one, recently a group with in Mechanical here did
>a competitive survey of the market and ended up with the NEC....
Very interesting and definitely influencing :-)
>From: Steven Johnson <s442148@nexus.yorku.ca>
>
>can save yourself some money by buying a HP-Laserjet or compatiable system
>like the QMS-kiss laser. The printer driver support for these models us
>unsurpassed, and the quality and speed are reasonable. The use of the extended
>ASCII characters *may* not be supported, I don't use Wordperfect, I use Xywrite
>. I've seen the HP-Laserjet II at a mail-order US price of $1800 this week in
>PC Magazine... Oh, i've seen add in boards that make the HP do Postscript
>tricks, so in the future, if required, you still have that option.
>Well, i guess that's all i can tell you about the HP, but the NEC LC-890 can
>no only do Postscript, it can emulats the HP and also emulate DIABLO too.
>This is the laser i have had the most experience with, we'ev got another laer
>printer that costs $12K that gives the same quality of output as the $5K NEC.
>(mind the the NEC is 2 times slower)
Cost was a big factor since the QMS printers with dual bins would run around
$8000 compared to $5000 for a similar NEC printer.
)From: style!dave
)
)NEC makes a very good printer in 2 configurations:
)
)1/ The Silentwriter LC860 includes Hewlett Packard LaserJet+ emulation
)and a standard 1.3Mb graphics/image memory board.
)
)2/ The Silentwriter LC890 features a PostScript language interpreter,
)3Mb of internal memory and the standard 35 Adobe fonts resident in
)addition to the HP support provided by the 860.
)
)
)Both printers use a LED print engine that provide for fewer moving
)parts and quieter operation. The printers have a 32-character control
)panel display which shows the status of important functions like
)resident font selections, letter/legal papersize and second tray
)selection. Both have parallel and serial interfaces, the 890 also
)has appletalk and rs-422.
)
)Pricing left out... Please send mail to Style Us for info]
)
)Call or e-mail if you have any other questions.
)
) David Seaman
)-----------------------------------------------------
)Style Us - Text Formatting Professionals
)100 Wellesley Street East, Suite 106
)Toronto, Ontario
)(416) 323-9444 (voice)
)(416) 323-1642 (fax)
){telly,sq,ddsw1}!style!dave
Thanks. We really needed service that would be a bit closer to Hamilton
in case we had major problems.
A vote from Henry Spencer for going with the tried and true :-)
]From: <utgpu!utzoo!henry>
]
]There are essentially two de-facto standards for laser printers: HP
]LaserJet and PostScript. If you're working with existing applications,
]you want one of those two.
]
]The only printers that are fully, absolutely, 100% HP LaserJet compatible
]are HP LaserJets. Furthermore, they are good printers (at least, the
]earlier models were -- I have limited experience with the newer ones).
]They are *not* the printer of choice for graphics, but if all you want
]to do is print text, and your software can handle HP-LJ, they may even
]be superior to PostScript machines -- higher throughput due to simpler
]code. HP's prices, amazingly enough, have been reasonably competitive
]in the past (I haven't checked them lately).
]
]As for PostScript printers, we've been using a QMS 810 for a little while
]and are reasonably happy with it. It uses the same print engine as the
]HPLJ 2, by the way: the newer Canon engine. This isn't a trivial issue,
]as I am quite impressed with the Canon engines and fairly unimpressed
]with most of their competition. One boobytrap in the 810: although the
]sales literature will tell you that it can emulate HPLJ or HPGL, it won't
]tell you that there is no way to switch between them from software -- you
]have to flip a switch on the back. We use the thing exclusively as a
]PostScript printer and rate this as only a minor nuisance. The price of
]the 810 is better than the Apple ones, last I looked.
]
This might have very well been our choice except for the fact that the HPLJs
don't seem to come with dual paper bins. The same for the QMS printers unless
you go to the most expensive models Big Kiss II or SmartWriter 150 which do
not seem to provide any real advantages over the NEC offerings.
As you can tell from the responses the NEC printers were almost unanimously
chosen. I find it strange that no one mentioned Kyocera printers. We had the
opportunity to see these printers at last years Computer Show and I was quite
impressed with their capabilities.
The deciding factors in getting a NEC LC890 for trial were:
Driver Support - Adobe Postscript (35 fonts) + HPLJ Emulation
Standard Dual bins - A necessity
Memory - 3 Megabytes std (an option on most other printers)
Cost - Under $5000 without tax
Connectability - RS 232, Parallel, Apple Talk
Again I'd like to thank everyone who responded.
A last question if you don't mind. Ok thanks :-)
The NEC LC890 does not supposedly support WP5.0 Line draw capabilities.
Does anyone know of any font cartridges or down-loadable fonts that would
allow line draw to be printed on the NEC LC890?
Thanks
--
Dan Trottier dan@maccs.McMaster.CA
Dept of Computer Science ...!uunet!utai!utgpu!maccs!dan
McMaster University (416) 525-9140 x3444