ginger@ihlpm.ATT.COM (R.P. Berg) (03/18/88)
I've been asked several questions about the Star NX 1000 Rainbow color printer I got 3/11, so here is a mini-review: Here are some of the specs I remember: Epson JX-80 compatible 144 cps draft mode, ~60-80 cps NLQ mode (I don't have the book here) 4 on-board NLQ fonts: Elite, Pica, Courier, Orator several on-board styles : italics, condensed, expanded, etc.. 4 buttons, 10 LEDs 9 pin print-head 8K buffer when using on-board fonts, 1 line buffer when using down-loaded fonts buffer clearing feature (I mean besides the power switch :-) ) The paper feed is nice. Both tractor feed and single sheet feed are standard. There is even a paper parking feature: when you want to do some high-quality single sheet work, the printer will back-out the fan-fold stuff, but still keep it accessable. When you're done and want to go back to fanfold, press two buutons, the fan-fold gets reloaded and aligned. I like that. Ribbon: For color, it uses a 4-band (black, blue, red, yellow) ribbon, about an inch thick. The cartridge sits in a carriage that moves it up and down to choose the color it needs, one color per pass. The driver is smart enough to know if you need a specific color for the current line. Now the stupid part: My dealer tried to talk me out of getting the color printer, since I will mainly be doing word processing. His distributor said that the printer does not support a black- only ribbon. Why should a person mainly interested in text waste 3/4 of a color ribbon? Well, we compared the color ribbon to the black ribbon for the b&w version. Hmmm, same shape. We tried the black-only ribbon, and you can see that the carriage is specifically engineered to accept this type of ribbon cartridge. The up-down part of the carriage doesn't hold the cartridge, so the black ribbon is always in front of the print head. The book doesn't mention this; Star's docs and reps aren't doing this machine justice. I'm surprised that my dealer didn't try this before I got there; he's usually good at these things. So, use the black ribbon for text; color ribbon for graphics. Save some $$. Speed: Graphic dumps are slow.... not totally the printer's fault though. A DPaint I picture (KingTut, for example) took about 5 minutes. For some reason my quality isn't as good as my dealer's; I get a little overlap. He just got the V1.3 Epson JX-80 driver; big difference in quality and speed. The dithering is much better also. NLQ: That about says it... damn near letter quality. Hold it 4-5 inches from your eyes and sure, you'll see that it's dot-matrix. Further away... hmmm, looks like it's type-written. Price: printer + cable = $265 Any other questions? Russ ihnp4!ihlpm!ginger