ZBEN@UMD2.UMD.EDU (Ben Cranston) (06/11/86)
> From: phil@RICE.EDU (William LeFebvre) > Newsgroups: mod.computers.laser-printers > Subject: Imagen customer service (was QMS PS-800) > Date: 2 Jun 86 20:17:16 GMT [LeFebvre is quoting someone ELSE here... -zben] >> Imagen makes reasonable printers, but I would have to say that they >> are one of the worst companies to deal with when something doesn't >> work right. Imagen seems to think they know all the answers and that >> their customers should learn to accept what is "best" for them. > I have said this before in this forum and I will say it again now. I > have heard several complaints about Imagen's customer service, yet I > continue to find them a very pleasant and helpful company to deal with > when "something goes wrong"... > Now, granted, all of our problems have been hardware problems. I have > never had the necessity to deal with the "applications support" people. On the two occasions I had to talk to the "applications support" people, both times I talked to sympathetic knowledgable people who took the time to talk things out. As it turns out, in the LBP-10 to 8/300 conversion they broke a few things upon which I was relying (glyphs bigger than about 500 by 500 or so, as reported to the net at the time, and the DGLY stuff). Nothing that couldn't be programmed around... >> One advantage (debatable) that Imagen claims to have is direct >> connection to Ethernet. I don't see this as much of an advantage >> since host computers have to have fonts, filters, and formatters >> anyway. The network connection also increases the price of their >> hardware. > True, the network connection increases the cost. But it does have a > distinct advantage. Since the host has to have, as you said, all the > "fonts, filters, and formatters", more data than just the document and > the formatting instructions gets shipped to the printer---the font > bitmaps get shipped as well. This can be a considerable amount of > data. The ethernet has the potential to move this data much faster > than a 9600 baud serial line does. My own experience is that adding the font bitmaps just about doubles the size of the data transfer. If the limiting factor is the 8 pages per minute of the engine, I don't think the line speed is much of a factor. One would think that when doing pictures the opposite would be true... > William LeFebvre > Department of Computer Science > Rice University > <phil@Rice.edu> Ben Cranston Computer Science Center The University of Maryland <zben@umd2.umd.edu>