rkl@cbnewsh.att.com (kevin.laux) (04/24/91)
I need recommendations for a low cost, full featured laser printer. Pages per minute is not critical, but being able to do 300 dpi in graphics mode, availability of soft fonts, quality, ease of use, etc. are. Also, (having been following the Win+WinWord+Deskjet 500 thread), would the Deskjet 500 be an acceptable choice instead of a laser printer. HP brand is preferred. Use will be 'desktop publishing' ala Windows applications (Word, Excel, Project, Powerpoint, etc.) Thanks. -- ________________________________________________________________________________ R. Kevin Laux Email: rkl1@hound.att.com AT&T Bell Labs Voice: (908) 949-1160 Holmdel, NJ 07733 Fax: (908) 949-0959
cballen@hubcap.clemson.edu (charles allen) (04/25/91)
From article <1991Apr24.142106.17102@cbnewsh.att.com>, by rkl@cbnewsh.att.com (kevin.laux): > > I need recommendations for a low cost, full featured laser printer. > Pages per minute is not critical, but being able to do 300 dpi in graphics > mode, availability of soft fonts, quality, ease of use, etc. are. > > Also, (having been following the Win+WinWord+Deskjet 500 thread), > would the Deskjet 500 be an acceptable choice instead of a laser printer. > > HP brand is preferred. Use will be 'desktop publishing' ala Windows > applications (Word, Excel, Project, Powerpoint, etc.) > > Thanks. > How about IBM brand? I recently saw a demonstration of a relatively new ink jet printer from IBM. It sounded pretty good. It's "IBM single unit price" was $1,099 as of 1/91. It's called an ExecJet printer. I'm not sure about the availability of soft fonts. Does anyone out there know? Here's it's features: DRAFT: 6ppm LQ: 3ppm GRAPHICS: 360X360 dpi (slow) one pamplet says 13.6" printing and another says paper up to 17" wide. I think the sales rep. said it could print 2 8.5" pages side-by-side. VERY QUIET! Good paper handling (cut sheets (100 bin), tractor sheets, envelopes, thick paper) 3 optional font cards. standard 30kb print buffer. optional 128 Kb "download memory card" (sounds like soft fonts?) standard parallel printer interface optional serial interface. 10 million character ink cartridge (LQ mode). I was impressed by the quality of it's output. The ink was DIFFICULT to smear and quick drying. (but don't get it real wet!) So, it's graphics are better than some cheap laser printers, and it's price isn't bad. (The wholesale price should be significantly less, shouldn't it?) Sounds like a good one to me.. Has anyone actually had any real-world use of it? How does this compare to the DJ500? PS: IBM sold it's printer division! Their products should be better now ;-) PPS: their printers never were as bad as apple's! DISCLAIMER: These opinions of the ExecJet are based on a first impression only! My opinions of apple's printers are based on 4 years of painful experience !
dcling@athena.mit.edu (Douglas C Ling) (04/25/91)
I went through this process of deciding between HP Deskjet and a low cost laser a month ago... The Deskjet is certainly attractive price-wise; but does HP have to omit a paper tray on their low-cost printers (DJ,IIP)? It may not matter to some, but it does to me. The DJ is quiet in SPRAYING JETS OF INK (compared to my 24pin impact-banger!), but the noise of the carriage moving back and forth is not insignificant. But the final deciding point is made by my dog. I had made a test print earlier in the day from a DJ at the local dealer's. The paper was left on the floor. My dog walked by, sat on it, got up, walked away...and voila, the printout was smudged! (Yes, they do have the new NONE-Smudge ink, but...) I ordered an OKI-400 the very next day fro $639 (best price, from Harmony in NYC, look for their ad in NYTimes, I received itin 4-days! No hassle) The OKI is very servicable to my needs; don't know about their durability under heavy Desktop Pub usage. My sense is that the Okis, being LED printers w/o the moving mirrors and parts and being quite well made (compared to the other cheap laser printers e.g. Epson/Toshiba base-models), should be able to sustain heavy usage. My friend at HP swears by their printers (IIP holding up to heavy office usage etc.); and if one insists on lasers and holding down cost, I'd go no lower than HP IIP. (Actually, just sa w an ad in DAK Catalog for a $699 LaserPro 8-ppm printer; maybe worth a look...) One more complaint on the DJ: if you anticipate a lot of black-filled graphics, forget it. The ink will make most paper, except some real heavy stock, wrinkle. There is one displeasure: I don't quite like the resident TimesRoman-like font with the OKI; it's actually Bitstream's Dutch font, I think. Guess I'm just used to the Times on the Postcript printers at work. (I'd soon get ATM to go with the OKI!) Otherwise, a happy OKI-user! Doug
drv@cbnewsj.att.com (dennis.r.vogel) (04/25/91)
While we're onthe subject of low cost laser printers, here's a new question to add to the lot. Are there any differences among the printers in this category with regard to light usage? In particular, does the toner last longer in some if the printer is idle much of the time? I'm considering a laser for light word processing use at home and don't want to waste money on toner. Any experience with low cost printers in this sort of environment would be most helpful. Dennis R. Vogel AT&T Bell Laboratories Lincroft, NJ
pmahler@starnet.uucp (Paul Mahler) (04/26/91)
The new little Texas Instruments PS printer is great. I've had mine about a year and it's wonderful. The price is right too, with all 35 fonts the street price is down to about $1600 now. The only thing I don't like about it is that T.I. wants more than I am willing to spend for a memory upgrade. Or at least they were last time I checked.
marshall@wind55.seri.gov (Marshall L. Buhl Jr.) (04/27/91)
rkl@cbnewsh.att.com (kevin.laux) writes: > I need recommendations for a low cost, full featured laser printer. >Pages per minute is not critical, but being able to do 300 dpi in graphics >mode, availability of soft fonts, quality, ease of use, etc. are. > HP brand is preferred. Use will be 'desktop publishing' ala Windows >applications (Word, Excel, Project, Powerpoint, etc.) It's here! It's here! Finally - it's here! I just talked to a dealer about the new HP IIIP. She doesn't have much information on it yet. She didn't know about availability and options. she says the base (not list) price would be $1028. I use an HP III here at work and really LOVE it. Nary a problem over about 9 months. It has built-in scalable fonts including Times and Helvetica like fonts (CG Times and Univers). This means you don't need to buy any fonts - unless you want wierd stuff like DingBats or something. It also uses resolution enhancement technology to smooth out jaggies. It comes with 1MB of RAM. I don't know if the IIIP will just be a slower version of the III or if they'll remove some features, but I'll bet it'll be a nice machine. I'd love one for home. I was hoping that the price would be under $1000. Maybe they'll have a special on it sometime. BTW, I bought my first HP LJ II about four years ago. I have three other II's and two III's. Just yesterday, we had our first LaserJet problem. There's a groove in the fusor roller. The printer still works, but it squeeks a little while printing. HP makes high quality printers. Highly recommended. Marshall -- Marshall L. Buhl, Jr. EMAIL: marshall@seri.gov Senior Computer Engineer VOICE: (303)231-1014 Wind Program 1617 Cole Blvd., Golden, CO 80401-3393 Solar Energy Research Institute Solar - safe energy for a healthy future
tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) (04/29/91)
In article <1991Apr26.032208.8793@starnet.uucp> pmahler@starnet.UUCP (Paul Mahler) writes: >The new little Texas Instruments PS printer is great. I've had mine >about a year and it's wonderful. The price is right too, with all >35 fonts the street price is down to about $1600 now. The only thing >I don't like about it is that T.I. wants more than I am willing to >spend for a memory upgrade. Or at least they were last time I checked. Yes, the PS35 is a real winner. Real PostScript plus HPLJ II emulation, selectable in software or by front panel. My only, slight gripe is that the HPII emulation loses data when you run out of paper, so subsequent pages are off registration.
drp@dosbears.UUCP (David R. Preston) (05/01/91)
In article <marshall.672696653@wind55> marshall@wind55.seri.gov (Marshall L. Buhl Jr.) writes: >I use an HP III here at work and really LOVE it. Nary a problem over >about 9 months. It has built-in scalable fonts including Times and >Helvetica like fonts (CG Times and Univers). This means you don't need >to buy any fonts - unless you want wierd stuff like DingBats or >something. I'm sure glad this wasn't crossposted to comp.fonts!!!! :-) >It also uses resolution enhancement technology to smooth out >jaggies. Does the resolution enhancement only work with its own fonts, or does it help with graphics, stuff printed with ATM or other windows font scalers, etc.? -- David R. Preston drp%dosbears.uucp@ingres.com The world hadn't ever had so many moving parts or so few labels. D. R. Preston 584 Castro St. #614 SF CA 94114 USA
harold@wam.umd.edu (James B. Harold) (05/02/91)
In article <254@dosbears> drp%dosbears.uucp@ingres.com (David R. Preston) writes: >In article <marshall.672696653@wind55> marshall@wind55.seri.gov (Marshall L. Buhl Jr.) writes: Re the HPIII: >Does the resolution enhancement only work with its own fonts, >or does it help with graphics, stuff printed with ATM or other >windows font scalers, etc.? > The resolution enhancement takes place "last", so it works on anything. So they say. It certainly seems to work...it's even noticable. Not that the difference reaches out and smacks you in the face, but I compared an HPII and HPIII plot (from Quattro Pro) and could tell the difference (had to look closely , though). I use Intellifont to provide Windows font scaling and run ATM as well to give me "weird stuff" (which I couldn't live without :-). This way most text is printed very fast, with only occasional bitmaps being sent by ATM. I like the printer, but I'd like to see more support for the PCL5 language. That will come, though. BY THE WAY...I'll use this as an opportunity to voice a peave, and if any HP people are listening I'd really appreciate a response. The HPIII supports, internally, symbol character sets in it's scalable fonts. You can see in the manual that this includes the Windows symbol set. And yet, windows doesn't think the printer can do symbols. Even using the HPIII driver included with Intellifont. I find it appalling that the printer supports these characters, and yet nobody told windows (through the driver) that it had them. Nor does Intellifont access them. I have to use ATM to get symbol characters that are already in my printer. A letter to HP has had no response. Anybody have anything to say on this subject? HP Tech support just said "nope. you can't do that." Verrry annoying. James Harold harold@lpf.umd.edu
drp@dosbears.UUCP (David R. Preston) (05/02/91)
In article <1991May1.181040.1577@wam.umd.edu> harold@wam.umd.edu (James B. Harold) writes: >The HPIII supports, internally, >symbol character sets in it's scalable fonts. You can >see in the manual that this includes the Windows symbol >set. And yet, windows doesn't think the printer >can do symbols. I don't know if this will help, but when I found out that the windows driver didn't know that the HP Deskjet Plus could do courier italics, I selected the courier cartridge in printer setup (even though I don't have any font cartridges). Maybe you could select a cartridge that has symbols and trick windows. -- David R. Preston drp%dosbears.uucp@ingres.com The world hadn't ever had so many moving parts or so few labels. D. R. Preston 584 Castro St. #614 SF CA 94114 USA
fahole@cc.usu.edu (05/03/91)
In article <254@dosbears>, drp@dosbears.UUCP (David R. Preston) writes: > In article <marshall.672696653@wind55> marshall@wind55.seri.gov (Marshall L. Buhl Jr.) writes: >>I use an HP III here at work and really LOVE it. Nary a problem over >>about 9 months. It has built-in scalable fonts including Times and >>Helvetica like fonts (CG Times and Univers). This means you don't need >>to buy any fonts - unless you want wierd stuff like DingBats or >>something. > > I'm sure glad this wasn't crossposted to comp.fonts!!!! :-) > >>It also uses resolution enhancement technology to smooth out >>jaggies. > > Does the resolution enhancement only work with its own fonts, > or does it help with graphics, stuff printed with ATM or other > windows font scalers, etc.? It is my understanding that the RE works transparently and on everything. If you don't need the faster engine of the III, the new IIIp has all of the same features with a 4 page per min engine. I got mine yesterday and it seems to have some real advantages over my (old ?) IIp. -- _____________________________________________ David Hole, Utah State University | Bitnet FAHOLE@USU | Internet FAHOLE@CC.USU.EDU | Remember, A mind is a terrible thing to use.| ____________________________________________|
ryoung@pollux.svale.hp.com (Roderick Young) (05/03/91)
This is MY opinion, not that of the company for which I work. The HP Deskjet is the way to go only if cost it at extreme premium. If you must have postscript, you could get an (software) emulation package, but this approach is SLOW, SLOW, SLOW. But then again, so is the DeskJet when you're used to even the slowest of lasers. Since the LaserJet IIIP has just been announced, look for a bargain price on the IIP in the next few months. The IIP is amazingly sturdy, and has stood up for us printing perhaps 3000 pages/month. You can buy a postscript cartidge for the IIP, which gives not the cheapest, but a reasonably priced PS solution. I haven't seen any problems with this, yet. The new Oki LED printer seems like a good deal, especially if you can get it below list, but I have no personal experience with it.