andrew@idacom.UUCP (Andrew Scott) (11/03/89)
I'm interested in purchasing the HP DeskWriter but have a couple of questions about the printer. First, what does the DeskWriter do that a DeskJet with a Grappler interface doesn't do (or vice versa)? The price for a DeskJet Plus w/ Grappler appears less than for the DeskWriter. Second, do the print screen functions work on the DeskWriter (or DeskJet w/ Grappler) as they do on an Imagewriter? Any comments about either HP printer or the Grappler would be most appreciated. -- Andrew Scott | mail: andrew@idacom.uucp | - or - {att, watmath, ubc-cs}!alberta!idacom!andrew | - or - uunet!myrias!aunro!andrew "It's the greatest game in the world." - W. Gretzky
neff@hpvcfs1.HP.COM (Dave Neff) (11/07/89)
> First, what does the DeskWriter do that a DeskJet with a Grappler interface > doesn't do (or vice versa)? The price for a DeskJet Plus w/ Grappler appears > less than for the DeskWriter. The advantages of a DeskWriter for a Mac: The DeskWriter runs at 57K baud serial, the DeskJet printers at 19.2 K baud. The DeskWriter does "smart" bi-directional graphics, which no DeskJet does. The DeskWriter supports scaleable outline fonts, which third party drivers only support via ATM. The DeskWriter printer and driver is officially supported by HP for use on the Macintosh. In general, the DeskWriter on a Mac will be 10 times faster than a DeskJet and about 2 times faster than a DeskJet+, but these numbers vary depending upon quality of the DeskJet driver and system configuration (mainly RAM and CPU speed on the MAC). The advantages of a DeskJet+ for a Mac: You can also use it with MS-DOS. You may save a few dollars, but once you add in the cost of ATM to get scaleable outline fonts that savings goes away. The DeskWriter can only be used on a Mac with a hard drive and at least 1 meg of RAM. Some third party drivers will likely need less RAM and no hard drive since they don't use outline fonts. Personally, "my ego" is more tied up in the DeskJet+ since I worked on the product. But if I had a Mac I would definately get the DeskWriter over the DeskJet+ without hesitation. > Second, do the print screen functions work on the DeskWriter (or DeskJet w/ > Grappler) as they do on an Imagewriter? The DeskWriter will support the print directory command from the finder. If you are talking about a tricky way to print the entire desktop to an Imagewriter (I believe there is one), I don't know how that works. The rule of thumb is, if QuickDraw is used to print the data, it should work with the DeskWriter. Dave Neff neff@hpvcfs1.HP.COM
erik@hpsad.HP.COM (Erik Kilk) (11/09/89)
I recently purchased a DeskWriter and will be happy to try to be an objective evaluator to anyone who mails me. Although I work for HP, I work 100s (1000s?) of miles away from the printer guys. In the past I've tried third party HP laser printer drivers, not all of them, but a couple, and was always frustrated at their limitations and gave up on plans to buy a laser printer. I'm real happy with the DeskWriter, in fact, so much so that I have that "how did I live without it" feeling. When I tried third party laser printer drivers, I had troubles if the laser printer didn't have enough memory to image an entire 300 dpi page. This means you can't do much graphics at all and forces you to use the internal HP fonts. Once you use the internal fonts you loose WYSIWYG. With the DeskWriter I've been getting perfect, absolutely perfect WYSIWYG output. You don't have the memory problems because the printer doesn't need to image the entire page before starting to print. The scalable fonts are great. I no longer have to worry about which fonts I have loaded in my System file. I can just pick any size and it comes out perfect. (I even tried pt 2 and could read it.) Now I can't wait until my screen can do this. The DeskWriter software comes with scalable Times, Helvetica, Courier, and Symbol -- all I care about. But you can also use any of the Mac fonts -- I use some Cairo characters. Since I have a Cairo 36 in my System file, I can print Cairo 9 just great. Odd unscalable font sizes aren't any worse, and are often better, than the ImageWriter. Speed was a problem with the laser printers. Mostly because sending a full page of 300 dpi dots took a very long time -- several minutes. The DeskWriter, I assume, uses data compression techniques. When printing my Thesis, which is double spaced, the DeskWriter is printing the pages faster than I can read them. (Much better than even my old ImageWriter.) I tried screen dumping. I was able to do it by dumping to a file first (CNTL-SHIFT-3 I believe), and then using SuperPaint to print it. The direct print dump (CNTL-SHIFT-4 I believe) didn't work. I was impressed when I was able to print SuperPaint's laser bit images (those are the ones where you can edit dots at 300 dpi) and get hairline width drawings on the DeskWriter. Erik Kilk P.S. If you have any direct questions, please mail to me. I seem to be having a hard time mailing out unless I can use the r (respond) command to someone who has reached me first. (I'm too lazy to figure out all the mail addresses correctly.)