raymond@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (R P Wilson ) (05/23/91)
Below are the responses I recieved to my question regarding purchasing a StyleWriter or Deskwriter. On the whole they were favourable to the DeskWriter. Today the new price for the Deskwriters came in, almost $100 cheaper than the StyleWriter. I have ordered a Deskwriter. Thanks to everyone who responded, Raymond. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From jeffe@eniac.seas.upenn.edu Wed May 22 02:36:26 1991 the DW is a good bit faster and seems to be sturdier. One of my problems with the DW is that it only holds ~<100 sheets in the paper tray. Well the Stylewriter holds about 20 sheets ( note I didn't count either, just a guess ) The big advantage to the stylewriter is size / portability. Last I looked the DW cost about $150 more, which seemed "about right", if you can get them for the same price go for the HP. ( I suspect apple has a deeper education discount ) -- -george george@mech.seas.upenn.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From weiss@SEAS.UCLA.EDU Wed May 22 03:11:21 1991 In article <1991May21.214337.794@csc.canterbury.ac.nz> you write: > >I wish to purchase a printer and have narrowed the choices down to a >StyleWriter and a DeskWriter. With HPs reduction in the price of the >DeskWriter to a level similar to that of the StyleWriter the choice >is not so simple now. > >Given equivalent cost for these machines which would be the better one to buy? > >Is 360 dpi look much different from 300? Nope. I can't tell the difference myself. >Just how much faster is the Deskwriter? Enough that you definately would notice it. >How do their useful lifetimes compare? I hear that the DW is rated for about twice the lifetime as the SW. >With the paper tray etc on the StyleWriter how much smaller is it than the >DeskWriter (which has these things 'built in')? The SW has about half the footprint (without the output tray extended...if you have the output tray extended, the footprint is almost identical). -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From dth@reef.cis.ufl.edu Wed May 22 04:55:15 1991 We have both the Deskwriter and StyleWriter here at the Center for Instructional and Research Computing ACtivities at UF. The Deskwriter is ~8 times faster than the StyleWriter (8 PPM vs. .5 PPM); this is dependent on CPU speed, as both systems use the host computer to image the page. For example, the StyleWriter is faster when connected to our IIfx with the Deskwriter to our SE. When both are connected to the same machine, the Deskwriter literally FLIES compared to the StyleWriter. The Deskwriter is AppleTalk compatible; this may not make a big difference to a single user, EXCEPT for the fact that you can have more than one (or two) printers connected (via AppleTalk) simultaneously. With the StyleWriter, you have it connected to one serial port; no other computers can use it. We have the Deskwriter, a LW plus, a LW IINT, an HP LJIII w/AppleTalk and Postscript, an Imagewriter with AppleTalk interface, and a LW IINTX connected to ALL our machines via AppleTalk; in addition, we still have one serial port open on all our machines (some are direct-connected to HP Paintjets, others to the campus serialnet, etc.) The fact of the matter is this: 360 dpi is nice, but you really won't notice a difference. For a substantial difference, you would have to increase the resolution by at least a fact or 2; a good example would be the TurboRes printers @ 600 dpi, 600 lpi. If this were not the case, why do printer manufacturers not make printers at 500dpi, or 450dpi? For text, both printers are very nice. For graphics, they both are very poor. This also depends on the graphics being printed: Line art from both is very nice, shading (as in Excel cell-shading) comes out acceptable, and greyscale/halftone images look like garbage. Size-wise, the StyleWriter wins hands-down. The thing (without the paper tray or feeder mechanism installed) is about the size of a moderately-thick textbook turned on its side. Add the peripherals to it, and it still comes out smaller than the DeskWriter. The Deskwriter, on the other hand, has a larger paper capacity, and--this is an advantage--you don't have to worry about installing the paper tray, feeder mechanism, etc every time you print. Of course, you could leave these items installed on the StyleWriter all the time, but if space is at a premium why would you? All in all I would have to say my vote goes to the Deskwriter--for text and moderate graphics ONLY. If you intend any serious graphic use, there's no substitute for a laser. Dave dth@cis.ufl.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From ta-dw30@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu Wed May 22 07:17:40 1991 find out about ink smearing on the two - I know the StyleWriter smears something awful (ie keep your printouts out of the rain!) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From tlt38517@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu Wed May 22 08:37:07 1991 I have recently bought a DeskWriter after wrestling with some of the same questions that you have. I will try to answer them as best I can; -360 D.P.I vs. 300 D.P.I I could not tell the difference, in fact I could not tell the difference between DeskWriter and laserWriter output unless I looked at the page very closely. -Speed The DeskWriter is 2-3 times faster than the StyleWriter, that was a major factor in my decision. -Useable life The StyleWriter has not been out long enough to determine this, however HP is a company known for well built and well-supported products. -Size Unless size is a major factor you will not find the DeskWriter to be much larger than the StyleWriter. -Etc. The DW has built in Appletalk and holds 100 sheets of paper vs. 50 for the SW. I have already seen the HP DW selling for $499.00 since their recent price change. This is only $30-$40 more than the SW street price. The DW also will do envelopes, I don't think the SW will but I could be wrong. Usual Disclaimer; Blah, blah, blah. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From g6483868@scheme.cs.ubc.ca Thu May 23 08:59:13 1991 Alright, here's_my_review, and it seems to be rather long [correction - this runs on and on and on - trash it if you wish, I won't be insulted]. Note that I haven't been scientifically stringent, nor have I compared them side by side. My numbers may be off. But I did study the StyleWriter for quite a while, and I recently bought a DeskWriter. 360 dpi is better than 300 dpi, but on 25% rag paper, textured or rough, which is required for best printing with these two printers, the difference is slight. The Stylewriter faster printout is definitely cleaner than the Deskwriter faster printout, although I think it has more to do with the pattern than the resolution. Since draft is very useful, this could be important, although again, it is a slight difference, nothing to raise an eyebrow over. I'd be quite happy with both. Both appear (again, maybe it's the roughness of the paper (and the glossiness of the photo/print)) much, much better than the samples printed in Mac magazines, which make them appear terribly inferior to lasers. Considering the difference between laser and sharpness of linotype and carbon ribbon typewriters, I'd say the difference is negligible. The main difference is that laser produces a (sometimes shiny, sometimes faded (if not taken care of regularly)) raised plastic type, whereas the inkjets produce matte black (very black) ink image. There was a slightly annoying offset line on the Stylewriter (this may be mostly correctable with the alignment correction sequence). There is one on the Deskwriter too, but very hard to notice, and I'm not sure if I could locate an entire width of it, just single characters. The Stylewriter deals with normal copier/plain smooth 20 lb paper much better than the Deskwriter, which (at least on a new cartridge) produces unacceptably bled characters. I didn't try printing small sizes on the Stylewriter, but the Deskwriter does 4 point, in any font, including Times, quite cleanly. Neither Word nor Pagemaker could produce smaller type than that, so I haven't tried anything smaller. The DeskWriter is one complete, well-designed, boxy unit, about 2 square feet, rectangular, and quit high. Much smaller than a laser, of course. The cables run underneath, and you can push it right to the wall. It's not heavy, although it looks like it. Despite the virtual necessity of the separate paper feeder, the StyleWriter is definitely much smaller. It's easy to clip the paper catchment fold up to the body when you're not using it, and since the paper comes out ink side up you could even do without it entirely if you have a clean desk and it won't float off (haven't tried). I'd say that visually, it's less than half the size. Physically, 2/5 the size (why? - the sw is only a few inches wides than a page, the dw is almost 2' wide, and the sw is only about 5" deep, if that, while the deskwriter is a little over a foot deep). Speed I can't compare, because I waited for the stylewriter from a classic, and the deskwriter from an lc. Naturally, the speed difference is, well, almost astonishing (about 1 to 4). I'm sure you know that the speed difference is supposed to be 1:2. The Deskwriter doesn't come with a cable, perhaps because it supports appletalk. There is a power brick (half the size of a traditional red building brick) and a 10'+ power cable. The docs are excellent, although they don't discuss printing grayscale images, which I'm having problems with*. It comes with 4 outline fonts (HP equivalents of times, courier, helvetica, and symbol) but these are only printer fonts, not screen fonts. They are nice, but too rounded and thick for my taste. The page setup supports printer font use, font substitution, printing from the end to the beginning (so the pages wind up in order - I don't know if the SW does this), and precision bitmap alignment (reduce 4%). It does not seem to have the other features of the LaserWriter driver (which you don't use, and you don't use LaserPrep either, just the Deskwriter driver). *A review on the net said that DW printed grayscale images better than the SW, although both were outclassed by any recent laser printer. I've heard some fuss about the SW not coming in one package; the paper feeder & software coming separately. At least at my university, this is not true. It comes complete with docs, driver, truetype fonts. I don't know if it has a separate power brick, but I would think so. For me it was no contest, since (and if you didn't know this is very important!) HP lowered the price of the Deskwriter by $250US it meant that it was $529CAN vs. $569CAN for the Stylewriter. (I was about to buy a StyleWriter, quite happily, when the cut was made, which made me twice as happy.) At twice the speed and with reputed high quality of construction, I would have bought it for $100 more, even on a tight budget. It_does_seem very well made. The StyleWriter seems well-made, too, but it's size, and its tightly packed construction make it seem a little fragile. I should note I have a bias against Apple because of its ridiculous prices, in the past, and the present. On MTBF: the StyleWriter docs are supposed to say something like 6,000 pages (or is it 12,000 - somewhere in there). The DeskWriter docs say 60,000 based on 30 or 40 average per day, but, surprisingly, give 50 pages as a daily maximum. You cannot buy the DeskWriter (as of last week) at a reduced price from mail order companies (I phoned three or four major ones). My university was selling printers in stock at the old price, and I had to ask to order a new one to get the new price. A last note on noise: the StyleWriter, with the sad exception of the raspberry noise before each print job, is beautifully quiet. The DW is surprisingly noisy - it hums, throws its print head from side to side strongly enough to make a very heavily built desk vibrate, and flaps its plastic arms at startup, and some of that before each print job. The printing sweeps hum quite audibly. But this is all relative. It is quieter than a laser printer, and silent when not printing (no fan). The startup is only enough to wake my cat, if that. Well, if you've gotten this far, good luck on your investigations. Feel free to post this, if you think people can stand so much verbosity. I don't know your intended uses of the printer, but for low volume, non-grayscale use, I think both of them are excellent, even considering the drop in laser printers to $1200 (and soon less - and Postscript is no longer necessary for personal use). Reg Lee ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: kpottie@icarus.cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Pottie Karl) >Is 360 dpi look much different from 300? Because the ink on both printers tends to spread out a bit, it is very difficult to see any difference. >Just how much faster is the Deskwriter? The deskwriter is typically 4 to 5 times faster than a Stylewriter >How do their useful lifetimes compare? The Stylewriter has a MTBF of 5000 hours, the Deskwriter has a MFBF of 20000 h >With the paper tray etc on the StyleWriter how much smaller is it than the >DeskWriter (which has these things 'built in')? Stylewriter => 50 pages Deskwriter => 100 pages ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: danno@css.itd.umich.edu (Daniel T. Pritts) In article <1991May21.214337.794@csc.canterbury.ac.nz> raymond@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (R P Wilson ) writes: >Is 360 dpi look much different from 300? >Just how much faster is the Deskwriter? >How do their useful lifetimes compare? >With the paper tray etc on the StyleWriter how much smaller is it than the >DeskWriter (which has these things 'built in')? For text, 360 vs. 300 dpi doesn't matter much. Although i did notice that 6 pt was legible at 360dpi but not at 300. The deskwriter is two to three times as fast. I printed a 3pg MS Word document, times 12pt with a headline, on a classic. Deskwriter: 3:30 Stylewriter: 10:00 This is the most real-world of my tests. The DW is just SO much faster. I did several tests, the results were similar. a 36-page pagemaker doc took 49 mins on the SW but 29 on the DW. Far as we know, the lifetimes are about the same. Of course the apple printer is brand new, so if they all turn 1yr old and croak, this could be a problem. Haven't heard of any problem with HP. The Stylewriter with its dopey flimsy crappy little paper tray opened up still takes only about 1/2 to 2/3 the desk space of the DW. In summary: Go with the DeskWriter. You won't grow old waiting for output. The ink doesn't smear as badly. The ink cartridges are refillable (not recommended by HP but it works) while the SW's aren't. It's an easy choice unless you just can't afford the desk space (I'd buy a table for my DW before buying a SW). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: russotto@eng.umd.edu (Matthew T. Russotto) In article <3531@n-kulcs.cs.kuleuven.ac.be> kpottie@icarus.cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Pottie Karl) writes: >>Is 360 dpi look much different from 300? > >Because the ink on both printers tends to spread out a bit, it is >very difficult to see any difference. If you get good paper ($$!), you can tell the difference. Also, 72dpi bitmap scaling works bettwe with 360dpi. The main tradeoff I see is speed vs space. The deskwriter is faster, the StyleWriter portable. -- Raymond Wilson. email: raymond@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz snail: c/- Computer Science Department, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.