tgr@brl-tgr.UUCP (11/29/84)
We are considering replacing all of our central facility impact printers (~900 line/min CDC and IBM printers) with a collection of 25-40 page/minute laser printers. We currently have several small Cannon based (Imagen and QMS) laser printers and would like to stay at 300 dpi, but would consider 240dpi if we have to, and if the print quality is good. We would also like controllers which can do full page bit maps so that graphics is possible. I have several questions: 1) I am aware of two laser printers which might fill the bill, namely the QMS-2400 and a Holoscan 24 page/min device. Are there any others that we should look at. (We don't like the output quality of the Imagen Delfax device.) 2) Does anyone have experience with such devices in this application (high volume, central facility printer). Thanks, Bill [johnston@lbl-csam] 415/486-5014
John S. Labovitz <hnij@BNL> (12/01/84)
If the Holoscan is the General Optronics Holoscan 28, DON'T GET IT!
We had one for a while (still have it, actually, but I'll get to
that). When we first got it, it seemed OK, except that the manual
was done with either a typewriter or a very bad daisy-wheel. That's
not a good sign if you manufacture letter-quality printers.
Anyway, after using it for a couple of months, and having a few
problems (can't remember offhand what they were, but not major), it
started giving REALLY bad output. Like raster lines all over the
page, things smearing, just gross. So, we got it fixed (I've
forgotten what exactly was wrong).
In the meantime, I had played around with some of the "features,"
like downloading fonts, graphics, forms software, reverse "video,"
and other neat stuff, I found that most of it did not work at all,
or only worked in a specific mode. Blah.
Later, it died again. Repair-people came in to fix it, and couldn't
that day (needed some tool they didn't have), so they said "We'll
be back tomorrow." They never came back. Finally, after we got an
Imagen, we moved the Holoscan out to a storage room. It's been there
since August. We never paid for it (it was on trial) and they never
called. Today (coincedence, eh?) management decided to spend money
to send it back, just to get it out of the way.
As you can see, we didn't have good luck with it. However, we've got
a Royal 2800 now (20 ppm). It's GREAT! We've done 27k pages in 2
months, and it's only been serviced 2 or 3 times (our model was an
early one, and the power supply was wired wrong, so the power supply
blew out once). I think the price is 25k or so.
@hnij@ John S. Labovitz hnij@bnl.arpa