mikew@x2.wyse.com (Mike Wexler) (10/16/88)
A few people have asked how NeXT manages to sell a 400 DPI Postscript(tm) printer for $2000. I think I have the answer. It isn't a Postscript printer. The printer gets sent pixels and it prints them. The Postscript processing is done by the computer's CPU. Since the NeXT computer already has Display Postscript, it is probably trivial for it to process print Postscript. BTW, I saw an add in today's San Jose Mercury News for Lasersmith's 415 DPI Postscript laser printer for about $3195(It uses a Canon Engine). If you remove the CPU, memory, and Postscript license, $2000 doesn't sound unreasonable does it? Especially if you are talking a University price. Also Apple has already done this on their LaserWriter SC. They use QuickDraw instead of Postscript, but the idea is the same. Given a 25 MHz 68030 and a 68882 the NeXT machine should handle Postscript as fast as most Postscript printers even when you take into account that there are almost twice as many pixels. Does anyone know if the DSP chip would be of any help in handling Postscript? BTW, about copying information from one Optical Disk to another. Given that Ethernet is built in, they probably expect that almost all of the machines will be on a network. Even without file servers there will almost always be another machine who's optical drive can be used. Mike Wexler(wyse!mikew) Phone: (408)433-1000 x1330 Moderator of comp.sources.x