shapiro@CORTO.INRIA.FR (06/19/90)
A number of people have put out requests for information regarding
color printers. Here is some: I have tested the following color
printers:
- Tektronix 4693PS
- Oce G5241
- QMS Colorscript 100
- Canon CLC-500
Of the four, the overall quality of the Canon is overwhelmingly better
(true 400 dpi vs. pseudo-300 dpi, prints on the whole page, uses
ordinary paper, also serves as a scanner and a photocopy machine).
It's very fast (8 pages/minute). However the price is 3.5 to 4 times
more, and it is not a PostScript machine.
The three others are quite similar (same technology: thermal transfer,
same price range: approx. $20,000 here; Adobe PostScript interpreter).
They all are claimed to be 300 dpi but it's a pseudo-300: pure colors are
effectively printed at that resolution but any non-saturated mixture
uses gross dots. None of them prints on the whole page: they leave 2
to 4cm margins at each end of the page. They use special paper (very
expensive) and transparencies (outrageously expensive!).
I ran a number of postscript tests on the thermal transfer printers.
They were all connected to Sun workstations via an Appletalk over a
Kinetics link. The test files include some bitmaps, some text, and
some fairly involved postscript programs. I also sent some images
from a color Mac-II, just for completeness.
Impressions:
- the Tektronix 4693PS is big, slow and noisy. (A new version has
come out since, the Tektronix 4693PX, which is supposed to be much
faster). Prints on both A3 and A4 sizes. Has very wide margins.
Very good print quality. Ink ribbon lasts 350 copies.
- the QMS Colorscript 100 prints dull colors. The paper is not as
nice. Prints A3 and A4. The machine we tested broke down at least
4 times a day.
- the Oce G5241 is compact and silent. Print quality similar to the
Tektronix, much faster. A4 only. Must change ink ribbon every 100
copies. Smallest margins. Best quality/price ratio.
Even the fastest machine, the Oce, takes 1minute and 18s for a very
simple postscript program which draws a colored triangle (for the same
page the Tektronix needs 3m35s and the QMS 1m27s). For a 1.5Mb bitmap
the times are: Tektronix 13 minutes; QMS 3 min.; Oce 2m28s.
Marc Shapiro
INRIA, B.P. 105, 78153 Rocquencourt Cedex, France. Tel.: +33 (1) 39-63-53-25
fax: +33 (1) 39-63-53-30
e-mail: shapiro@sor.inria.fr (internet)
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