greenber@swatsun.uucp (Peter Greenberg) (01/20/88)
I saw these stats in Digital Review, 11 Jan 1988 pg. 70, on the NEC Silentwriter
printer.
There were many other printers listed but this seemed the most cost-effective.
And it is made by a Japanese company that won't go away any time soon.
- Non-lasing LED engine (proprietary?)
- 8 ppm
- 300 dpi
- 3000 copies per toner cartridge, $20/cartridge
- 5000 copies/month, manufacturer's figures
- $399 routine maintenance every 100,000 copies, vendor didn't know exactly what
- Diablo 630, HP LJ+ emulations
- PostScript, 35 Adobe (LW+) fonts
- Alleged "3 MB memory" in salestalk with vendor, processor???
- Centronics, RS232C, RS422, AppleTalk
- 8.5 x 11, legal, European
- Desktop size
- lists $4795, quotes in NYC at $3500 range
- compare $4000 quote for LW+, $100/cartridge
Seems pretty good. Sales person mentioned some problem with Centronics from PC's
but I want to run off Sun3 on serial. Are the operating costs as
low as advertized? As a side, anyone know how these non-LW machines do with Mac
boxes which I think sometimes do strange things, like down load machine code?
Anyone know the processor? Is this better than an LW+, or worse, for the $$$ ?
Is it selling well enough that the carts. will be long available?
Summaries to the net.
Peter
--
Peter Greenberg, ImClone Systems, 180 Varick St., 7th Fl. New York, NY 10014
UUCP: ...{{seismo | inhp4}!bpa | {sun | rutgers}!liberty}!swatsun!greenber
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I work for ImClone, graduated from Swarthmore, neither cares what I say.moss@ptsfa.UUCP (MiniComputer Ops Support) (01/22/88)
Peter Greenberg asks about NEC's new LC 890 printer...
[ some of Peter's commentary deleted ]
> Seems pretty good. Sales person mentioned some problem with
< Centronics from PC's but I want to run off Sun3 on serial. Are the
< operating costs as low as advertized? As a side, anyone know how
< these non-LW machines do with Mac boxes which I think sometimes do
< strange things, like down load machine code? Anyone know the
< processor? Is this better than an LW+, or worse, for the $$$ ? Is it
< selling well enough that the carts. will be long available?
Peter,
Our group did some software evaluation for Pacific Bell on the NEC,
along with the ditroff 'devps' package. We now have our own 890,
used both in the Postscript and LJ+ emulations. It's on a Bell
Technologies 386/387 box, running SYS5, as a line printer on the
serial port. We had the NEC on an ICC card in the Bell box to
offload some of the CPU interrupts, this has caused REAL PROBLEMS!
(see below).
We run amazing amounts of troff, tbl, pic, grap, etc thru it, plus our
own locally-developed LJ+ emulation filter and HP downloadable
fonts. (The line printer interface file toggles the printer between
emulations)
Comments pro and con:
PRO
--------------------------------------------------
Price was our main objective, NEC cost us less than retrofit of HP
LJ+, and/or Apple LJ (not practical in our UNIX environment without
more $$ :-) ) Postscript and built-in 35 fonts vastly superior to HP
cartridges, unlimited point sizes, etc.
Consumables appear to be cheaper than HP, we were NOT getting our
HP cartridges refilled, cost ~$130.00 each, due to one-at-at-time
ordering. We haven't had the NEC long enough to tell....
NEC has been FLAWLESS in print quality, ease of use, and etc.
The LaserJet+ emulation works perfectly for us. (as does Postscript)
CON
--------------------------------------------------
The HP was capable of finer lines than the NEC. This is a very minor
complaint, we're too fussy :-) Shows up with grap and pic.
Our vendor out here in Northern Californis was very poor on shipping
dates, returning calls, etc. This is hopefully a local problem, as
they're a VAR for NEC. You may have better luck...
A truly weird problem exists with this NEC printer and the Bell
Technologies smart ICC card. After a few hours, the ICC card hangs
and the printer stops working. Reboot the box, still have same
problem. Let the box (and ICC card) cool for 15 minutes, all's fine
and wonderful until tomorrow, same failure. Put the NEC back on the
standard dumb HUB card, no failures. Put the HP LJ+ on the ICC, no
failures ever. We've even moved to a different port on the ICC and
lost that one too, but only if the NEC is on it. We simply don't
know what's the matter. (Yes, we tried another ICC card, same thing,
Bell finds nothing wrong with the ICC, and cannot duplicate the
problems...)
--------------------------------------------------
Overall, very good printer - I highly recommend the NEC LC890, but
don't put it on a Bell ICC card for a while!!!
John R. Trinterud Pacific Bell Minicomputer Operations Staff
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Pillage, THEN burn!! {dual,ihnp4,lll-crg,ames,pyramid}!ptsfa!pt05a!johndnk@bucsb.UUCP (Danny Kumamoto) (01/22/88)
At Saddlebrook, we use it for printing forms (legal and letter), and
two bugs came up:
* The letter/legal selection is not permanent (must be set
every time you turn on the LC-890).
* When printing legal with dense text and graphics, sometimes
a set of dots (about 6) appears on the top right hand
corner. We thought it was a bad printer but our replacement
worked the same.
We've mentioned this to our dealer, but we haven't heard about it for
the past 2-3 months (or 4?).
--
Danny
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USnail: 14 Laurel St., Cambridge, MA 02139, U.S.A.
"Joy is in the ears that hear."
-- Saltheart Foamfollowerlharris@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu (Leonard Harris) (01/23/88)
I've used one of these for a while and I recommend you stay away from it. There are known bugs in the serial port communications routines (at least when we called NEC they told us to use the parallel port) and we also found that the parallel port drops characters when the printer is busy calculating (our software is heavy on macros)). We have also had one die after 3 month's use. NEC told us they are working on the problems and when the machine works the output is very nice - just not worth the aggravation. /leonard
pla@zippy.eecs.umich.edu (Paul Anderson) (01/26/88)
In article <1988Jan22.185018.1516@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu> lharris@gpu.utcs.UUCP (Leonard Harris) writes: > >I've used one of these for a while and I recommend you stay away from it. ... >problems and when the machine works the output is very nice - just not >worth the aggravation. >/leonard Yours might be a lemon. I've been very happy with mine except for two things: 1) it leaves dots (2 or 3) at the top right of the first page of a job 2) The physical page is very slightly narrower than a LaserWriter Plus, so programs that don't let you tweak the margins slightly may give clipped pages (about 1 column on the left for my machine). I've dumped several thousand pages of various documents and screen dumps, and haven't yet noticed any problems other than these two. I managed to get a nasty paper jam (I overfilled the paper tray) that left toner all over the drum once, but I was able to disassemble it, clean it, and get it all working again. All in all, I like the machine a lot, and other than some design desicions that I don't agree with, it is a well designed and constructed machine. Paul Anderson
pjh@mccc.UUCP (Peter J. Holsberg) (01/31/88)
Does anyone have any experience with the AST Turbolaser/PS? It seems to
be a direct competitor for the LC-890 and the street price is a few
hundred dollars less.
--
Peter Holsberg UUCP: {rutgers!}princeton!mccc!pjh
Technology Division CompuServe: 70240,334
Mercer College GEnie: PJHOLSBERG
Trenton, NJ 08690 Voice: 1-609-586-4800