nqdy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu (05/05/91)
Hi Folks, I am thinking of purchasing a Deskjet 500. I would appreciate any comments on this printer. Specifically, print quality, maintainance and available third party font support. I hear that one can use "Freedom of Press -- Lite" to print postscript files on this printer. Anybody done this with Freedom of press or any other postscript interpreter. How does it compare to Canon's Bubble jet printers ? Any help will be sincerely appreciated. Thanks in advance. sanjeev nqdy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
ksteele@epas.toronto.edu (Ken Steele) (05/09/91)
The HP DeskJet 500 is the best "compromise" I've seen anywhere. For the price of a dot matrix (HP currently offers student and faculty pricing on all its printers) the DeskJet 500 gives me almost the quality of a laser. I've enjoyed mine immensely for several months now, and have bought two others for family and friends. The primary strength of any HP printer is its remarkable compatibility. I have never before bought a printer I simply had to plug into my machine and run. Printer drivers are available for almost every piece of IBM software under the sun. I'm a very big fan of Windows 3.0 and Adobe Type Manager. Using those two with the DeskJet 500 printer driver, you can get more than enough fully-scalable fonts for most purposes. PageMaker, Corel Draw, Word for Windows, WordPerfect -- all produce very fine output! The key is to use specialty papers -- I prefer glossy laser paper (Lazer brand), slightly heavier than normal typewriter stock. The DeskJet's resolution can suffer if you use the wrong sort of paper, but on the right stuff it's great. Envelope handling is a breeze, printing is fast (compared to my old daisywheel) and quiet. The old smudging problem is of course also history! Best of all, unless you want to use downloadable fonts (and you don't, trust me) you never need to expand the DeskJet's memory -- unlike its bigger laser cousins. I'd highly recommend the DeskJet 500 to anyone who wants a laser printer, but can't afford the LaserJet IIP (or IIIP). Even directly from WordPerfect, for example, you can use the resident fonts (which now, thankfully, include a form of Times Roman PS) -- but Adobe TM produces the best results I've seen. Ken Steele ksteele@epas.utoronto.ca