johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu (12/20/90)
In article <39238@nigel.ee.udel.edu>, johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu writes... >From the volume of recent comp.sys.mac.xxx postings touting >the HP Deskwriter as a reasonable mid-range printer, I would >imagine that many net.mac.people are considering a DW purchase. >If you would be willing to share your experiences with price/service >from mail order vendors of the Deskwriter printer and accessories >such as ink refills and best paper type, I will summarize to >c.s.m.wanted (and xref to .hardware). No academic prices, please! > >(I would also be willing to summarize postive and negative >feedback regarding performance, although there has been >considerable discussion on this topic recently.) There were several interesting replies; thanks to those who responded. After taking their suggestions into consideration, I decided to join the ranks of satisfied Deskwriter customers. My comments are appended below; but I'll let the others go first. Some of the comments were edited to correct obvious symptoms of the dreaded 'line editor' syndrome, or to clarify comments made in response to my follow-up questions. I have credited those who were willing to be cited by name; other observations are lumped into my conclusion at the end. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From John Schettino <john@ctc.contel.com> (posted thru my wife's account at GMU) Sure, include me in the summary: I got mine at Mac and More (1-800-MAC-0052) price was $675 (free shipping) for the new type with appletalk. This was in october so the price may be different now :^) Shipped in five working days, worked out of the box. Also got a quantum hard drive and 4 meg of simms, both of which were bad, mac and more paid for fedex back and forth and replaced both in a week. very class act! We love the speed, quality, and low noise of the DW... and the ink is fine for all but very dark printouts (these come out kinda damp!) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From George Jefferson <george@mech.seas.upenn.edu>: (I don't care one way or the other about attribution). Regarding paper and ink cartridges: They say [a cartridge lasts for] 500 pages. I thought this would be a conservative estimate, but my first cartridge ran out just at the end of my first ream of paper. - but then I was doing a lot of experimenting, printing 250 pt. bold letters and such. The cartridges last a bit longer under normal circumstances, especially if you check the faster box. ( btw faster mode is good for proofing, unlike draft mode on an IW ) When the cartridges die, they give very little warning, so it is a good idea to keep a spare. FYI, the cartridge that came with my printer says nothing about being water-resistant, so I guess I have the same one you got. My ink smears really bad if you get it even a little bit wet, even days after printing. The new ink is supposedly a dramatic improvement. By the way, I have yet to try the new 'water resistant' cartridges. I did try to refill a cartridge, it was a compete disaster. Regarding fonts: I hear HP is a real pain to deal with. Our store refuses to stock any sort of HP font or cartridge (they will order them, but not for much of a discount). I was thinking about getting Freedom of the Press, or ATM, but if [ HP versions of the NTX fonts are available ], I think I'm satisfied. People using FOP for 'normal' printing (say from a word processor) are doing things ass backwards. The laserprep dictionary essentially converts quickdraw to postscript, then FOP has to interpret the PostScript to convert back to quickdraw. (I hear it is really slow, and I am not suprised) If all you want are PS fonts ATM makes much more sense. The really annoying thing about ATM is that you can't use it for printing only. I don't have the memory to spare to use it all the time, so I need to have the HP fonts on my disk (or reboot every time I print; I refuse to look at bitmaps even for drafts). I also don't have the HD space for both sets of fonts; consequently I almost never use ATM. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: mrsvr!master.mrisi!walkerl@uwm.edu (Larry Walker): Price: I watched the mail order prices for a couple of months after HP cut the DW list price, and $675 seemed to be the rock-bottom price advertised. So I went to my local TV/VCR/Computer discount emporium and told them I was going to buy one mail-order if they couldn't match the $675 price. After being told they can't (won't/don't) match mail-order prices, and that HP margins are too thin for them to discount the DW, he disappeared into the back room for a few minutes. When he came out, he agreed to $675. The clincher seemed to be that I had a copy of MacWeek in hand with the amail order prices circled. I decided to go ahead and buy it locally, despite having to pay sales tax, rather than deal with unknown mail-order places... Cartridges: The best price I've found for ink cartridges is my local CompuAdd store, which I believe is a (national?) chain: $14.30 for the new water-resistent ink. The best mail-order price I found was $15, I believe from MacDepot in LA (with free UPS ground shipping). Paper: I tried a couple of types of paper (the University bookstore had most types in single sheets as well as by-the-box, so it was easy to experiment). Duplicator/copier ($6.95/500) had small but noticible bleeding. I finally settled on Gilbert NeuTech Bond ($13.95/500): very bright white finish, no noticible bleeding, several $$ a box cheaper than most other top end bond papers. Fonts: If you get a DeskWriter, you WILL WANT TO GET ATM2.0!!! I can print a page of text in 40 seconds (on my MacPlus) with ATM2.0, as opposed to 60 seconds with HP's outline fonts. Plus, Adobe has several font packages available at much better prices than HP's fonts. Plus, you get smooth fonts on-screen at large point sizes. GET ATM! I bought my printer about 2 wks too soon for HP's free font offer (!), so that wasn't a factor for me. I would still choose ATM because I gives better on-screen (large) fonts and because it prints faster. Of course, I'd still take the free HP fonts and use them if I wanted a font that ATM didn't offer. Plus, I'm not much of a font-freak... I don't know anything about FOP, except what I read on the net (which seems to say SLOW!). Feel free to quote me: I'm a real DW fan, and encourage anyone who asks to get one (but to get it CHEAP! - no reason anybody should pay over $700 for one) PS: I forgot to also extoll the virtues of KiwiEnvelopes with the DW. The DW has very slick envelope feeding, and works great with KiwiEnvelopes. Be sure to get V3.01, as it has a few DW clean-ups (you may have to call Kiwi and ask for it after you buy a copy. MacConnection sells it for ~ $33). Now my envelopes finally look as nice as as my letters! Memory _could_ be a problem with ATM for 1 meg systems. I've got a 2 meg w/SCSI upgrade for my once-was 512K Mac (I bought that too early,too!) and I don't run multi-finder (I just don't feel like I get much benefit w/the 9" screen, plus I' ve had a fair amount of problem w/lockup and crashes when I tried it. Funny, I love it at work and use it all the time there, but never at home.) I keep a pretty big ATM cache for fast screen updates, so 2 meg is just about minimum for this to work well. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: V564HUCE@ubvmsc.cc.buffalo.edu Subject: HP Deskwriter and Custer's last stand... Lucky guy, getting a new printer... Well, what I can say is that my Deskwriter has been a dream since day one. I have found very few problems, and here they are: 1) It doesn't fit in my Imagewriter bag. 2) There are occasional jams when the paper supply gets to about 10-20 sheets. 3) There a some jams when the paper gets to 24lb super heavy stock. 4) I have one of the original ones that's not AppleTalk ready. Okay, so the last one is really my fault. But now to sing the praises of the DeskWriter. I don't care that the ink smears [ when the paper gets wet ]. Do you really want to spill coffee on that 35 page report to a professor? Or maybe a little water would be nice on that really important memo? My point is made. The ink also dries very fast. Give a couple of seconds coming out of the print area and it will not smear. In some 2000+ sheets I have fed through since last March, I have had 3 sheets smear. I just bought a new cartridge with the new waterproof stuff, but I haven't had a chance to try it. If you use Adobe Type Manager or the fonts supplied by HP with the printer, the results will startle you. As a law student I have to be concerned about the looks of what I do. If you use the right paper, you can send out very nice looking resumes with the DeskWriter. I already have several. One of them got me a summer clerkship with a Federal judge! The only real thing to watch is paper quality. Don't skimp on that. Normal xerox paper is not good enough. I use Hammermill Laser Print. Not only is it made in the USA, but it only costs about $1.50 more per 500 sheets that normal xerox paper. The local OfficeMax store has xerox paper at $3.20 per ream, I paid $5.56 per ream for the Hammermill stuff. They also make a pre-punched for 3-holed binder paper, with reinforced holes, at about $12.00 per ream. Price wise, well, you can get a copy of the New York Times, Tuedays and check out the Science part (or look in the paper itself) and see the New York ad prices. These are generally near the bottom of the range. I have seen them now for around $670.00 range. Otherwise, look in any Mac magazine (MacUser, MacWorld, or if you're really special, MacWeek). Good luck and good hunting. P.S., since I have problems posting to UseNet, post this if you wish (or know how). P.S., about paper DO NOT get any type that is recommended for an inkjet printer. HP doesn't recommend it in their manual, and after my experience (thank you for your generous return policy, OfficeMax :-), I agree. Okay, if there are any other questions, post them on UseNet, or e-mail me. I'll be happy to see what I can do. Allen Hsu... :-) "Dating! But that's analog!!!!!!!" -original joke by Allen Hsu Based on a book by Guy Kawasaki, "The Macintosh Way" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- From Bill Johnston <johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu>: After the rave reviews given the Deskwriter by various netters, I felt comfortable ante'ing up half my life savings to buy a printer suitable for proofing Laserwriter output at 'home computer' prices. I use the Deskwriter mainly to print from MS Word and Excel ... but I am stunned at the quality of 'MacDraw-type' graphics output as well. A minor gripe, echoing others' sentiments cited above: The ink runs freely when you get the page wet! It's true that one doesn't SUBMIT a document that has been used as a coaster, but I recognize that those with less regard for my words may decide to do so with one of my documents. Thus I also look forward to trying the water-proof ink cartridge. As far as paper goes, the same cheap photocopy paper that worked in my Imagewriter did a respectable job in the Deskwriter. Maybe I got lucky, but I tried one Word document with included graphics and the results were stunning. To think that I had been considering selling my motorcycle to buy a laser printer. Purists will be quick to differ, but I see no substantive difference between the appearance of the HP outline fonts and the Adobe fonts from an Apple LaserWriter. There is a noticeable difference in blackness, to be sure, and the edges of letters are ever so ragged; for me the main issue was that the pagination matches that of the Laserwriter almost perfectly. As a USENET junkie, I have developed the habit of using the keyboard for much of my word-processing. Sometimes, this means that I hit a 'hard' carriage return, which always had disastrous consequences when I set up a document to be proofed on the IW, and then use the LaserWriter for final copy. There were always work-arounds, of course. But the reason I wanted to switch to the Deskwriter is that I wanted to concentrate on the writing, not the formatting. I can happily report that the Deskwriter does this and more. Regarding price -- <you mean you're still reading this???>: I had an interesting time of it when I tried to buy my DW. Assuming that my academic discount privileges had expired at the University of Delaware, I tried without luck to find a used printer. No such luck! Seems that most people like the DW well enough to hold on to it. That's OK, I suppose. In the depths of my despair, I went down to our campus computer store to ogle the merchandise. On a whim, I pulled out my college ID and asked the sales rep if my name was still on the list ( I had purchased my SE/30 on what I took to be my very last day of eligibility, back in late August). My name was still on the list! It seems that their database, which runs on an IBM mainframe, is updated only infrequently (perhaps because it's difficult to use?). < grin > I walked out five minutes later with a brand new DeskWriter, at a price not much more than what I had been offering for a used printer. With the performance that I've had so far, I would have no hesitation in recommending a Deskwriter to anyone. My mail order inquiries jive with those reported by the netters above; the NYT prices were a bit lower than those that I found in MacWorld and MacWeek. Service is still a question mark, but I have heard good things about HP's warranty service; this is in stark contrast to the reports of people who have called HP with questions regarding fonts and accessories. That's all folks! Thanks to the DW fans who responded! Thanks also to Trish Haney and Jack Howarth whose earlier postings and/or e-mail responses to my questions sparked my interest. I would be happy to take a stab at answering other Deskwriter questions. Just give me a few days peace to play with my new toy! -- Bill >-- Bill (johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu) >-- 38 Chambers St.; Newark, DE 19711; (302)368-1949 >