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From: laser-lovers@uw-beaver
Newsgroups: fa.laser-lovers
Subject: Re: Some rebuttals (specifically, LaserJet)
Message-ID: <957@uw-beaver>
Date: Tue, 26-Mar-85 00:03:41 EST
Article-I.D.: uw-beave.957
Posted: Tue Mar 26 00:03:41 1985
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From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@uw-beaver.arpa

> >>>But for a lot of straight text printing, it's just great, at half
> >>>the cost of the competition.
> I thought we were comparing the LaserJet with the LN03.  The difference
> in list prices is not "half", it is about 20% (about 33% with extra ram,
> not counting the price of an HP rom cartridge).

I was referring to the price of the Apple printer, actually; I haven't
seen a Canadian LN03 price list.  For that matter, I haven't seen an
LN03 yet.  (This is not quite such a trivial observation as it might
seem, since Dec is notorious for long delivery on new products...)
Note that you can get a LaserJet for noticeably less than official list
price if you are willing to shop around, or so I'm told.

> 2) enough font memory to print most any reasonable document, even those
>    pages with the scattering of headers and equations along with the body
>    fonts.

I thought I said reasonably clearly that the LaserJet *can* print such
things, and does, 20 feet from where I am typing this.  This is admittedly
a triumph of intelligent software over stupidly-done hardware, but it
*does* *work*.

> 4) collated output in a REAL paper tray.

As mentioned in previous mail, this is easy to achieve on the Canon
engine, although it doesn't come standard with the beast.

> 5) limited bitmaps at 150dpi rather than 75.

Depending on how you define "limited", the LaserJet can do this too.

> 6) availability of the DEC's CompuGraphics font library.

Not having seen these fonts or their prices, I'm not sure whether this
is a virtue or not.  There are font libraries and there are font libraries.

As I've said earlier, the LaserJet is far from perfect.  The feed tray
is too small (although this is less of a problem than you would think,
because changing paper is easy enough that users can be trusted to do it).
The absence of downloadable fonts is a terrible botch, which HP is doing
something about (or so I am told).  And HP was very slow about decent
font cartridges.

On the other hand, it does a lot of things well.  It's cheap.  It can
print any document which doesn't play really fancy font games, given
suitable software support (which is not trivial).  You replace much of
the guts every time you change toner cartridges, which eliminates some
maintenance sore spots.  (Changing the drum on the LN03 may be an
interesting exercise, given that Dec trumpets the infrequency of this
operation as a virtue.)  It's available, and has been for some time.

The LaserJet, although imperfect, is under-rated.  Don't write it off.

				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry