laser-lovers@uw-beaver (laser-lovers) (10/04/84)
From: Richard Furuta <Furuta@WASHINGTON.ARPA>
A forwarded message concerning the HP LaserJet printer.
--Rick
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Date: Thu 27 Sep 84 15:48:27-PDT
From: Jackie <Burhans@ECLD.#ECLnet>
Subject: HP LaserJet printer
To: info-pc@USC-ISI.ARPA
cc: info-printers@MIT-MC.ARPA
I went to see a demo of the HP LaserJet printer today with an eye toward
purchasing it for use with our IBM PC in our word-processing
department. This message constitutes a review of the
printer from that perspective:
We went out to a computer store in Century City.
This store was an HP authorized dealer and had only HP equipment.
Nonetheless, we asked to see a demo of the LaserJet. The salesman
turned on the canned demo and sure enough, as fast and as
quiet and as pretty as you could want, out came several pages of
text with mixed fonts, bold, italics...even some graphics.
However, when I started to ask questions about software compatibility
and paper handling, I started to get some answers that weren't too
heartening. The salesman allowed as how any piece of software sending
straight ascii characters would print fine on the LaserJet but that
any special features or escape-sequences that a program sent might
cause problems if the software couldn't be configured to send
the right things. He could not, however, give me any idea of what software
would support the Laser Jet.
The most important drawback of the LaserJet as a production word-processing
printer is its lack of paper-handling accessories. It only has one bin
to feed paper from and only accepts standard (8.5x11,8.5x14) paper. It has
no envelope feeder although the salesman assured me you could feed
standard size envelopes manually (I don't think my WP department is going
to be too impressed).
Summary: nice machine, fast, quiet, good quality but not perhaps quite
geared for a production word-processing environment.
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