Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!apple.com!casseres
From: casseres@apple.com (David Casseres)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Imagewriter trouble & possible replacement
Message-ID: <5571@internal.Apple.COM>
Date: 4 Dec 89 19:03:18 GMT
Sender: usenet@Apple.COM
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.
Lines: 50
References:<5330@internal.Apple.COM> <256CECDD.14888@paris.ics.uci.edu> <5403@internal.Apple.COM> <937@maytag.waterloo.edu>

In article <937@maytag.waterloo.edu> jb@aries5.uucp writes:
> In article <5403@internal.Apple.COM> casseres@apple.com (David Casseres) 
writes:
>  |Just a couple more observations about the ImageWriter.  First, in 
>  |spite of all the flaming going on here ("substandard printer" 
>  |etc.) there are a hell of a lot of people out there who say they 
>  |LOVE their ImageWriters.  
> 
> Who are they?  Where are they?

A couple of them have spoken up in this newsgroup.  A lot of them send in 
the customer survey forms that come with Apple products.  Some of them are 
my friends.  I didn't invent them out of thin air.

>  |They are mostly using their IW's the way they were designed to be 
>  |used: as strictly personal, low-load printers, sitting right there 
>  |on your desk and running while you are sitting there -- i.e. no 
>  |remote or unattended operation.
>
> Is this an official opinion from Apple?

No.  However, it's a historically correct observation about the design of 
the ImageWriter.

> Are you saying that we should
> not be using the ImageWriter as a printer in an educational classroom
> environment, where all the students must print their assignments and hand
> them in?

You apparently missed my first posting in this thread, where I said that 
it was my _personal_ opinion that an ImageWriter on a network is the 
punch-line of a joke.  Having said that, I'll also say that a hell of a 
lot of classrooms have exactly that, because it's very cheap, and they 
have not been so unhappy as to force Apple to create a new product for 
that environment.

> Or does Apple have a high-load printer designed for
> remote or unattended operation, that they haven't told anybody about?
> (low operation cost is important, buying LaserWriter toner cartridges for
> class assignments seems wasteful).

The cost of buying reconditioned toner cartridges for a classroom (or 
multi-classroom) LaserWriter strikes me as a poor reason for dealing with 
overloaded ImageWriters.  I'm no expert on this, but it seems to me the 
cost of cartridges would be a pretty small item in a school's computer 
budget.

David Casseres

Exclaimer:  Hey!