Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!labrea!polya!rokicki
From: rokicki@polya.STANFORD.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: >=300dpi printer HEEEEEELLLLLLP!
Message-ID: <2684@polya.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: 25 Apr 88 01:51:10 GMT
References: <2249@louie.udel.EDU>
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 47
Summary: My perspective . . .

Hi, Ron!  You wanted some data on printers; I thought I'd give my two
cents.  All the printers I mention I support with AmigaTeX.

First laser printers.  Everyone should get a PostScript printer, if
they can afford it.  These things do more magic than anything else
out there, and are guaranteed to be the best supported printer for
many years to come.  They will last you through several computers,
and give you many fun hours playing with PostScript.  The QMS PS-Jet
Plus is a great printer; the Apple LaserWriter is okay.

Next on the list is the LaserJet Series II.  This is a fast, very
nice laser printer, and somewhat expandable.  It will do TeX very
nicely.  A LaserJet Plus is fine.  I recommend the Canon SX engine
(the one that the paper feeds out and stacks on top) or, failing
that, the Canon CX (standard LaserWriter or LaserJet Plus material.)

Finally, a good cheap printer strictly for use with AmigaTeX is the
QMS Kiss or SmartWriter.  Both of these can be modified to be
PostScript printers.

I don't know anything about ink jet printers.  I will give you my
feelings about the HP DestJet, though, from looking through the
documentation.  It appears to be a capable printer, but it is not
as smart as a laser printer.  It looks like a dot matrix printer to
the software, so TeX has to be sent as a bit map.  It does have some
good smarts for compressing that bit map, though, so it will probably
be reasonably fast, and of course the output quality is very nice.
I'm not sure that the HP LaserJet Series II isn't worth the
differential cost though.

On to dot matrix printers.  My personal favoriate is the Epson LQ 850,
but you can't go wrong with any of the Epson LQ series or the NEC P6/P7
series.  These are both fine printers, fast, high quality, 180 dpi in
both directions (or more!)  The emphasis here is on speed; one of these
can do TeX output much more quickly than any other dot matrix printer.

The venerable Epson MX and all of its cousins are good, cheap printers.
For TeX, they are slow, but the high quality output is quite nice.  For
this and all following printers, the pins are so large that fine details
in characters tend to be way overemphasized; the type looks heavy, even
if it is not very black.

The ImageWriter II works okay with TeX as well; it was designed for
graphics and shows it.

Well, that's my two cents.  Anyone have anything else to say?

-tom