mckay@EE.PURDUE.EDU (07/21/86)
The Electrical Engineering Department here at Purdue is considering the possibility of installing a laser printer to handle line printing and high quality output in one of our student terminal rooms. I've been asked to do a little research on the subject and have two questions for the readers of "info-postscript" and "laser-lovers": First the easy question: Hardware: What would you buy? We are a BSD UNIX site with a mix of VAXes, Gould PN9080's, ISI and SUN equipment acting as our compute base. We have had a great deal of favourable experience with Imagen's line of laser printers and have started to work with Apple laserwriters. I was given roughly the following specifications: - 20 pages/min. or better output rate (actual pages coming out the marking engine) - 30,000 or more (I suspect more like 40,000) pages printed per month - Cost in the $50K range - low supply cost, low cost or self maintainance - terminal room "survivability" - any thoughts on the following devices: - Imagen's new LBP-20 based laser printer (there will be at least one of these on site) - Xerox 5700 or 8700 (4.3 comes with software to support these beasts) - is there a postscript engine that fits these specs? Now the tough question: Policy: without question, HUGE additional demands will be placed on our computing facilities if each and every student had access to this printer for high quality (troff) output. Line printer listings, however must be printed on this printer as it will replace one or more aging line printers. - who should get access? - how do you control access? - how do you recover supply costs? - have you tried a plan such as I am suggesting? What were your results? - have you experienced any abuses of your facility (ie. printing posters, letters for outside organizations, etc)? What did you do about them? In general I'd like to see some discussion of high quality output devices for large numbers of people or high volumne applications. --Dwight Mckay, ECN Text & Workstation Software Support [arpanet: mckay@ee.ecn.purdue.edu, usenet: ...ihnp4!pur-ee!mckay] [Compu-serve: 75776,1521, office: EE 348B, phone: (317) 494-3561]
GWidener.es@XEROX.COM (07/22/86)
Dwight, Since you mentioned the 8700, I will throw my two cents in about a new Xerox printer. Xerox has a new laser printer in the 9700/8700 family of products. The product is the 4050 and includes a new CPU (faster), a new IOT (good quality), duplex printing, 9700/8700 software compatibility, multiple paper sizes (standard, legal and A4), user defined static forms and raster images. The 4050 can handle up to 120,000 sheets per month. The new IOT is capable of producing very good quality and the speed and PPM sound like they would fit your need for some time to come. The 4050 is also significantly cheaper than the 8700. Greg Widener Xerox Corporation
jrw@opus.UUCP (07/22/86)
> The Electrical Engineering Department here at Purdue is considering the > possibility of installing a laser printer to handle line printing and high > quality output in one of our student terminal rooms. > > First the easy question: > > Hardware: What would you buy? We are a BSD UNIX site with a mix of > VAXes, Gould PN9080's, ISI and SUN equipment acting as our compute base. > > - 20 pages/min. or better output rate (actual pages coming out the > marking engine) > - 30,000 or more (I suspect more like 40,000) pages printed per month > - Cost in the $50K range > - low supply cost, low cost or self maintainance > - terminal room "survivability" We are testing a QMS PS-2400 laser printer and it works GREAT. It is based upon the Xerox 3700 engine and it does: - 24 pages per minute - 3 selectable paper trays: 1 1500 sheet bin 2 250 sheet trays We use the bin for the jobs and put colored paper in the 1st tray for the header sheets. I am toying with the idea of putting viewgraph sheets or labels in the second tray. - easily can handle 30,000+ pages/month. We run this many thru our 2700s. I won't mention what we do to our Imagens... - costs in the mid $30K range - maintenance should run about $500.00/month for a service contract. GET IT! Not that the printer breaks a lot, but the developer does need changing with the high volume, and cleaning it monthly makes for nicer output. - the "toner" (black powder) is relatively inexpensive, but the developer is somewhat expensive, but it lasts a lot longer. I would imagine it is cheaper than the 4000 pager imagen cartridges though. - this guy/gal/thing will survive the terminal room. > - is there a postscript engine that fits these specs? - it runs PostScript > - any thoughts on the following devices: The Imagen 24/300 is a nice printer. I have one also, but like the above a bit better because of the PostScript features. > Now the tough question: > > Policy: without question, HUGE additional demands will be placed on > our computing facilities if each and every student had access to this printer > for high quality (troff) output. Line printer listings, however must be > printed on this printer as it will replace one or more aging line printers. > > - who should get access? > - how do you control access? > - how do you recover supply costs? > - have you tried a plan such as I am suggesting? What were your > results? > - have you experienced any abuses of your facility (ie. printing > posters, letters for outside organizations, etc)? If you need a line printer, I would buy a nice big one, like the 1200 lpm LP27 DEC sells. This works out to about 20 pages per minute. I know, I know, laser output looks so much better, but for code listings, I think it is fine. If you have to turn it in after it has been debugged, THEN laser it. We have all manners of posters/etc coming out. Good luck stopping it. Enjoy! -- Jim Webb "Out of phase--get help" ihnp4!houxm!hropus!jrw