tpmsph@ecsvax.UUCP (Thomas P. Morris) (08/07/87)
Computing and Information Services at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health is looking to replace an ailing QMS1200 sometime in the next few months, and we've begun a search for potential replacements. Perhaps some of you folks could give suggestions, descriptions of your experiences with various vendors' hardware and software, which might be of help to us in our search. Our environment: VAX/VMS 4.5, VAXcluster w/ 8530, 2-750's, ethernet, terminal servers, DECnet. Software compatibility desired: MASS-11, D/Pict, TeX, VMS Print Symbiont (??). We currently print > 35,000 pages /month on our QMS1200 (when it's working, not down for PM, etc), and need a printer with a recommended duty cycle of 30K-70K pages/month. We're currently investigating: Imagen 3320/7320, Diconix Dijit-1/PS, Talaris printers, Compugraphics CG400-PS, DEC PrintServer-40 (and the ??soon-to-be-announced?? PrintServer-20????), among others. Yes, we're very interested in supporting PostScript or DDL or some other "high-level" page description language. The VERY IMPORTANT question for our purpose is: "Is there a well-supported (PostScript|DDL|whatever)-compatible VMS Print Symbiont---which reasonably accurately counts pages printed--- available for this printer? From whom? At what cost?" (Printing and paper charges are the only thing we charge for: it's our bread and butter and pays for expansion of the printing services we can support.) Thanx in advance. If your response is not of general interest to this group, post directly to me. If there are enough responses, I'll post a summary to this group. Tom Morris Applications Analyst Programmer II UNC School of Public Health -- CAIS ...!mcnc!ecsvax!tpmsph tom@uncsphvx.bitnet
ron@TOPAZ.RUTGERS.EDU.UUCP (08/30/87)
Well, since you are highly DEC oriented to begin with and have DECNET, I'd recommend the DEC PrintServer 40. So far it is the fastest Postscript print engine I've seen yet. The only problem we had is DEC's silly maintenance policy which we hope to resolve soon. The allowable number of pages per month seemed a bit on the low side. The ability to find Postscript printers around 20 pages a minute while actually interpretting normal postscript text (like TEX or TROFF output) is pretty limitted. -Ron