kpottie@icarus.cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Pottie Karl) (04/06/91)
I had a look at the stylewriter today. I took my own test files with me, and didn't use those of Apple. At home I use an Epson LQ 550 (24 pin printer) connected with the Grappler LQ to my SE/30. The files at the apple centre were printed on a Si. On the Epson, my file took 3 min 20 secs (1 page with text and graphics). On the Stylewriter it took 5 mins 47 secs. Next I compared the output quality. The Stylewriter output was better, but only marginally. Stylewriter output compares to laserprinter output as text is concerned, but certainly not what graphics are concerned. Large uniform colored surfaces give a very 'noisy' impression, i.e. black is not uniform black but looks like the kind of black you get from a 3rd generation photocopy . Large structures clearly show 'bands', corresponding to the printhead's passes. You also get these when using a matrixprinter like the Epson LQ. Generally I can say Stylewriter output is only little better then that of a 24 pin matrix. A bit darker and sharper perhaps, but not enough to make me go out and buy a stylewriter. And if you take printing speed in account, the Epson-Grappler combination is clearly a winner. Not that I tell you to buy this combination; I'm just saying: don't bother to look at the stylewriter if you already have a 3rd party 24 pin printer. And then came the big blow: I used the Stylewriter with a French (European) driver with MS WORD, and tried to print on a DIN A4 sheet of paper. What happened ?? Well, at the right side of the page, the two last letters on each line got cut off !!! Just like that. The poeple of Apple had no idea what's wrong. We printed the same file on a Laserwriter LS (I'm in love now with that machine; perfect for high quality low end laser printing), and it came out perfect. It seems that the printable area of the Stylewriter is too small to print on DIN A4 . EUROPEAN USERS: BE CAREFUL. Test this out. The stylewriter may be totally unusable with DIN A4 !!!!!!!!!! Karl Pottie; Belgium
aptagliabue@amherst.bitnet (04/08/91)
In article <2747@n-kulcs.cs.kuleuven.ac.be>, kpottie@icarus.cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Pottie Karl) writes: > It seems that the printable area of the Stylewriter is too small > to print on DIN A4 . EUROPEAN USERS: BE CAREFUL. Test this out. > The stylewriter may be totally unusable with DIN A4 !!!!!!!!!! I don't remember where, but I have read that the StyleWriter DOES work with DIN A4 paper. For two reasons this logically makes sense: 1) A4 paper is narrower than US Letter, so it doesn't make sense that the StyleWriter should cut off the right side. 2) The StyleWriter is basically the same as the Canon BubbleJet, which I know is now very popular in Japan, where the standard paper size is A4. Drew Tagliabue aptagliabue@amherst.edu