phco@ecsvax.UUCP (John Miller) (10/29/87)
Thanks to all who responded to my query about portable printers. It
sounds like the Diconyx is probably what we want. Here's what several
of you had to say.
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We tried thermal, Epson P80. They were junk. The cost
of supplies almost put our company into bankruptcy. The prints were
of low quality and would fade. The speed was slow. A thermal printer
should not even be considered.
We rented 10 Diconyx printers for a month. They were great. We used
regular paper. The cost of supplies was no higher than for an impact
printer. The batteries are of standard size and available anywhere.
Print quality was very good and permanent. The speed was fast. We
had no failures. The users liked them.
We then bought and are using HP ThinkJets. They are okay. They
weigh a pound more and are not as well shaped as the Diconyx. The
battery is nonstandard and expensive to replace. The pitch, cps, is
nonstandard. There is a build-in margin that prevents the printing
of the full width of the paper. The paper can only be feed in the
forward direction. Reliability has been good.
Buy the Diconyx. I wish we had.
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I have had one for 3-4 months, and am fairly happy with it. Print quality is
not fabulous (especially if you don't use their expensive coated paper), but
that wasn't a concern for me, as I can get letter-quality output at work, and,
while the output tends to look "computerish," it is legible. The nicest
features in my opinion are the use of off-the-shelf ni-cad batteries, and the
low sound level. I would recommend this unit. I saw a blurb in either Infoworld
or Computerworld saying that Diconix is planning to introduce a wider carriage
version of the same printer.
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I looked into this matter at the beginning of this year when
I was working for a company that was trying to sell Toshiba
T-1100+'s. At that time, I had samples of the Kodak Diconix
inkjet printer and something called a Hush printer (I believe
Hush was the name of the company, not the model). There was
very little need for comparison. The Diconix is light, silent,
Epson- *and* IBM ProPrinter- compatible (and the documentation
is clear enough that I was able to use it elsewhere to figure
out why a ProPrinter misbehaved when told it was an Epson), and
reliable. The Hush was not as light, not as silent, not as
well documented, didn't stay around long enough to be tested
for reliability, and cost even more than the Diconix.
--
John Miller (ecsvax!phco)
Dept. of Pharmacology, Univ. of N.C.-Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC 27514 (919) 966-4343