Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!boulder!sunybcs!bingvaxu!leah!uwmcsd1!ig!jade!ucbvax!cbosgd!ihnp4!ihlpf!rtb
From: rtb@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Todd)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Atari Laser Printer
Message-ID: <3322@ihlpf.ATT.COM>
Date: 11 Jan 88 14:15:03 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 41
Keywords: first impressions






  I was in my local computer store on Saturday and I saw 
an Atari laser printer hooked up to a Mega ST. The salesman
showed me some Publishing Partner flyers that he printed out and they
looked really good. No "jaggies" on the larger letters like you
sometimes get on HP laserjet printers. The printer comes with several
disks that have a lot of fonts. All fonts for this printer are software
loadable (which means they should be cheap compared to font cartridges).
At the last minute Atari switched to the Cannon engine, eliminating a lot
of the problems associated with the liquid toner of the ricoh engine.
There is an additional box that goes between the printer and the computer
which might be used to chain the DMA port, this box was small enough
to sit nicely on top of the SM204 hard disk. The retail price of the
printer is $1995 but I think I could get it for $1600 from this
particular dealer. One of the emulations this printer can do is
Diablo 630 making it compatible with any word processor that can
talk to a Diablo 630. As most of us know by now the laser printer
uses the computers memory instead of its own. An advantage of the
printer using the computers memory is speed. I did not test the printer
in depth enough to determine how fast or slow it was.

We talked about about the wisdom of buying a printer that can only
be use on one computer. Like anything else there are advantages and
disadvantages. Normally, the biggest advantage would be support.
Unfortunately, looking at Atari's past track record my biggest
fear would be that some bug would be discovered that would make the
printer a nuisance to use and we would be waiting two years or more
for a fix. This fear is compounded by the fact that my SM204 seems
to be a victim of ATDI's (or whatever that hard disk utility is) inability
to properly mark bad sectors. I bought the SM204 because I thought it
would be the most compatible and have the least problems and I am finding
out the opposite is true.

I decided to take a wait and see attitude before I buy this printer. If
I feel I will get the support I need I will probably buy one.

							R. T. Bradstrum