roy@phri.UUCP.UUCP (08/17/87)
A couple of weeks ago, there was some discussion in this group about PostScript printers, vis-a-vis speed and price. In Aug 11th MacWEEK (page 38) there is an article about PostScript printers in which they say: Manufacturers are already developing PostScript laser printers, for example, that support 2,400-dpi resolution, size plain-paper up to 36 inches by 24 inches, print 25 pages per minute and 16 colors. These printers may one day sell for less than $8,000. But don't expect to see these printers at your dealer any time soon. I assume they are referring to the Linotronics when they talk about "2,400-dpi resolution". Does anybody know anything about PS printers which can do 24 x 36 paper? Would be a real boon for people preparing for poster sessions, not to mention people doing CAD work. As far as I know, the only PS printer that can do bigger than legal size is the Dataproducts LZR-2665, which can do 11 x 17 (but is supposedly a real dog when it comes to print speed). What about the 16-color machines? Is somebody really working on one? I *think* they are trying to say that there will be under $8k printers with all these features at the same time, but have no idea how they predict a 2400-dpi, 24 x 36 inch, 25 ppm, 16 color PS printer for under $8k (or any price) any time in the forseeable future. Aside from the economic issues, we're talking 18 Gbits of memory just for the page buffer. That's almost 4 (formatted) Fuji super-eagles. Not to mention that to print that at 25 ppm, would need almost 8 Gbits/second memory bandwidth just to dump the buffer to the print engine! -- Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
phil@RICE.EDU (William LeFebvre) (09/03/87)
> have no idea how they predict a 2400-dpi, 24 x 36 inch, 25 ppm, 16 > color PS printer for under $8k....we're talking 18 Gbits of memory just > for the page buffer. That's almost 4 (formatted) Fuji super-eagles. > Not to mention that to print that at 25 ppm, would need almost 8 > Gbits/second memory bandwidth just to dump the buffer to the print > engine! As with most laser printer speed quotes, when they say "24ppm" they *probably* mean that the print engine can process paper at 24 pages/minute, but they say nothing about how well the processor box can keep up with that pace. Along these lines, the recent announcement by Imagen to support Postscript has me just a little excited. The 2308 printer has two or three (I think it's three) 68000 processors in it. That means that, if they do it right, the printer will be able to direct the laser in producing the image for one page while simultaneously working on the image for the next page (or any subsequent page). This should mean a noticeable (even substantial) difference in overall throughput between the Imagen and the Laserwriter. Of course, there's also a noticeable difference in price :-) William LeFebvre Department of Computer Science Rice University <phil@Rice.edu>