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From: laser-lovers@ucbvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.computers.laser-printers
Subject: Re: unreliable Imagen 8/300s
Message-ID: <8512161722.AA28721@mit-eddie>
Date: Mon, 16-Dec-85 11:45:28 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.8512161722.AA28721
Posted: Mon Dec 16 11:45:28 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Dec-85 01:26:46 EST
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Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, Cambridge
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Approved: laser-lovers@washington.arpa

I believe we have 3 imagen printers, the 8/300 with the canon engine,
the 24/300 with the xerox engine, and the 12/300 with the ricoh engine.
First, the canon seems to have the best quality output of all engines.
Second, the controllers for the machines SUCK!  We have lost 3 power
supplies in the past 4 months.  One lossage caused the cpu to go bad.
Each time Imagen gave us a hard time claiming it is not their problem.
After much duress Imagen gave us one free power supply but the other 2
cost a few hundred bucks a piece and the cpu $900+.  They don't seem to
understand that we were in the process of ordering 10 more of the
printers. Not anymore.

The controllers are turkeys. They have one fan blowing hot power supply
air over the multibus circuit cards. The power supply is an undersized
switcher which seems to die routinely. The machine crashes on occasion
requiring someone to power cycle the machine. While printing the
controller needs to access the floppy drive which slows the throughput
since spinning up the drive and loading the head takes time.

My opinion is that Imagen doesn't have it's act together.  It is too bad,
since they potentially have a good product.  If they offered some support
I would be satisfied with the occasional problem, but they don't. Unless
they have changed I would look at QMS.

Of course, these are just my opinions, not that of my employer.

Doug Robinow


Doug Robinow	MIT LCS		545 Tech Sq. Cambridge, MA	02139
rob@mit-vax.arpa	{harvard, ihnp4!mit-eddie}!mitvax!rob	617-253-8573