forrest@blia.UUCP (Jon Forrest) (04/21/87)
Most of the recent discussion of future laser printers has been about faster printers or new PDL's. I'm interested in higher resolution laser printers. The fact that 300dpi printers have been around so long seems contrary to the normal technological improvements we have seen in memory capacity and microprocessor speed. Perhaps the lack of higher resolution printers is due to the fact that they will require lots of memory for holding bit maps but again, memory prices and capacities are going down much faster than laser printer resolution has gone up. There are rumors that Apple is coming out with a 600dpi printer. Which engine will they use? Jon Forrest ucbvax!mtxinu!blia!forrest
mackay@JUNE.CS.WASHINGTON.EDU (Pierre MacKay) (04/23/87)
AMI-Varityper already offers a postscript 600DPI laser printer. It comes with a switchable interface so that you can hook up Centronics parallel, Serial, and Apple-talk (at least those, I don't know what else besides). Check with Varityper at 11 Mt. Pleasant Ave. East Hanover, NJ 07936 phone (201) 887-8000 (This is the main switchboard number) Pierre A. MacKay TUG Site Coordinator for Unix-flavored TeX
starkweather.pa@XEROX.COM (04/23/87)
There are a few higher resolution laser printers. Data Recording Systems has a 800x800 bpi unit, PrintWare has a 1200x600 bpi unit etc. Higher resolution will bring better typography but sooner of later the marking process comes into the picture. Laser Phototypesetters and Imagesetters on photographic materials operate as high as 2540 bpi. These units do NOT print on xerographic engines, however. I assume from your question that you were looking for laser xerographic printers like the DRS and PrintWare units. Halftones still leave something to be desired due to the particle size of the toner. Gary Starkweather - Xerox PARC
tj@utgpu.UUCP (05/04/87)
AM International's Varityper division has released the VT600 600 dpi PostScript printer. Will see it May 21 or 22. Will comment. tj