page@ULOWELL.CSNET (Bob Page) (12/07/85)
Several weeks ago I asked for information as to what printers you would buy now if you had the chance to do it over again. Here's a summary: 1) Everybody was pretty much happy with what they already had. Most had either Imagen or Apple and planned on buying more from the same vendor. 2) Postscript was a mixed bag. Some "wouldn't consider another laser printer without Postscript," older printer owners didn't care. 3) Most advised against hanging the printers on Ethernet, instead letting computers handle accounting, spooling and such. 4) All suggested a few lower-throughput machines rather than one large machine ... and keeping them in different areas for varied access. I decided that Postcript was necessary here; we've done *no* laser printing (except for LN03 as a line printer) and Postcript looks like the new wave as I talk to all the printer manufacturers (who have or are about to announce Postscript printers .. aren't 'standards' amazing?). Since my requirements are *now*, that narrowed the choice considerably, to the still-in-beta-test Dataproducts printers, Apple LaserWriter, QMS PS-800 (an LG-800 but with Postscript, RS232, and Appletalk (!) support) and the NBI 8. The Dataproducts printers are 26ppm, and use the Toshiba engine (Apollo is OEMing the printer). An interesting note: while the Dataproducts LZR printers are about 4-5x the cost of the 8ppm printers, they provide 3x the throughput, and the Toshiba engine does not have as great an ability to accurately place a dot as the Canon engine (this is in the spec sheets). I ruled it out. The NBI 8 was too new, and uses the as-yet-unproven (to me) Ricoh engine, so I ruled it out also. Down to two printers ... a week before Comdex Apple announced a price cut to US$5995 (list) of the Laserwriter (and of course I'll get an educational discount), while at Comdex QMS announced that the PS-800 would sell for US$5895 (with 25% ed discount = US$4421). According to an applications engineer at QMS, I should buy a PS-800 over the Laserwriter because: 1) It has 2MB, 1/2MB more than the Apple 2) Has a faster controller, for a 30-40% throughput increase 3) Has more fonts available 4) Has a more complete implementation of Postscript 5) Has better algorithms to reduce roundoff errors in characters. Conclusion: Since we have not done any laser printing in the past, our needs are somewhat unclear. Until we can decide what we *really* need, I'm going to buy two printers: at least one QMS PS-800, and either another PS-800 or a Laserwriter. We will have one or two Laserwriters on our Apollo network, so I can make some comparisons if we get two PS-800s here. Oh, software. We have TeX and XXroff for Unix, and will probably get TeX for VMS too. I only got one vague suggestion on software. Should we use Scribe instead of TeX? Why or why not? Considerations are: 1) How fast can I learn it? 2) How good is the documentation (introductory, reference)? 3) How versatile/powerful is it? I understand that #1 and #3 can often conflict. I have the Scribe User manual, but since I don't have Scribe, I can't really evaluate it. Any suggestions? Thanks to all that responded to my original query. Long live the Networks! ..Bob