laser-lovers@uw-beaver (12/19/84)
From: Richard Furuta <Furuta@washington.arpa>
Excerpted from a longer message:
---------------
Date: Tue 18 Dec 84 15:06:28-PST
From: William "Chops" Westfield <BILLW@SRI-KL.ARPA>
Subject: Winter 1984 DECUS Trip Report.
To: sri-bboards@SRI-KL.ARPA, tops20@SU-SCORE.ARPA
As you may or may not know, I attended the Winter 1984 Digital Equipment
Corporation Users Society symposium last week (from 9-Dec through 14-Dec),
along with several other people from SRI, and about 7000 other DEC customers.
Here are some observations resulting from that trip.
DECUS Exhibition Hall
Most interesting new product: The LN03 laser printer.
This printer is an 8ppm table top laser printer that lies somewhere
between the smaller HP and imagen laser printers in capability.
Unlike the HP, the LN03 has downloadable fonts, and has better
graphics capabilities. It does not have full resolution full page
graphics like the imagen, however. Unlike either the HP or imagen,
the LN03 is not based on the Cannon copier - whereas the entire
print drum on the cannon needs to be replaced frequently, the LN03
has the more traditional (and requiring more skill to fix) multiple
part copier mechanism. It isn't clear whether this is an advantage
or a disadvantage. SRI's degree of interest in this printer is
probably dependent on whether it becomes supported by the text
formatters in use here (SCRIBE, TEX, and TROFF mostly, I guess).
[[The rest of the message dealt with DEC-20 issues and has been
deleted. --Rick]]
-------laser-lovers@uw-beaver (12/22/84)
From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@uw-beaver.arpa > ... Unlike either the HP or imagen, > the LN03 is not based on the Cannon copier - whereas the entire > print drum on the cannon needs to be replaced frequently, the LN03 > has the more traditional (and requiring more skill to fix) multiple > part copier mechanism. It isn't clear whether this is an advantage > or a disadvantage. It depends on your priorities. Canon's approach of making the drum part of the toner cartridge effectively increases the cost of toner, since you can't refill without also replacing the drum and various other things. On the other hand, it means that most of the critical parts get replaced every time you refill, which minimizes the need for maintenance and makes certain important classes of repairs trivial. It's like any throwaway product: much more convenient and fewer hassles, if the quality's good and you can afford it. The Canon catridges (so far) are of quite good quality, and they are eminently affordable for most purposes. (One would not choose a printer this size for huge bulk print runs anyway.) I trust that this part of the original message is more-or-less verbatim from DEC, since it is skilfully phrased to make people think the Canon engine requires frequent non-trivial maintenance. Since the drum is part of the cartridge, and replacing the cartridge is trivial, the ominous tone of the phrasing is highly misleading. Sounds to me like DEC has come up with another turkey. Canon did it right. Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry