schnable@ihuxf.UUCP (Andrew T. Schnable) (01/10/84)
I have been using a siemens PT88 ink-jet for a few weeks now. This is the same unit that you may have seen in some Byte ads. My main reason for getting hold of this unit was its lack of noise. It is really quiet. This particular model is very small and has many of the features you would find in a C.Itoh or Epson dot-matrix printer. There are 3 buttons on the unit: on-line, LF, and FF. There are 3 character pitches, 10, 12, and 17 cpi, and an expanded print, underline, and graphics mode. The unit seem to be quite well built. Much nicer than my C.Itoh. They have neat little cards that you plug in for serial/parallel operation and buffering/no buffering. The buffer card also has a ROM slot for a soon to be announced Epson emultor chip. The ink-jetter does clog from time to time and does need to be purged; this is no big deal. The unit also needs paper with a high rag content to prevent smearing. In terms of features, this unit gets a B, and in terms of construction, a grade of A-. Unfortunatly, the unit I have doesnt seem to do the graphics very well. After hashing it out with Siemans regonal sales manager and talking to some technical types in NJ, we asertained that I have a bug in my ROM (an older version). This was no big deal, because the printer was loaned to me anyway. I must say that Siemans was quite good about tracking the problem down (and in loaning me the printer in the first place.) I should be getting a new unit sometime this week, with the newer (working) ROM. I would give siemans an A+ for customer support. The price of the printer is around $900 with the serial port. For an office environment where you want to keep the noise down, an ink jet is a big win. Andy ihuxf!schnable AT&T-BL