Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!ucla-cs!lange
From: lange@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Trent Lange)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: How did they make the printer so expensive?
Message-ID: <16961@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 19 Oct 88 02:36:03 GMT
References: <5807@zodiac.UUCP> <17784@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>
Sender: news@CS.UCLA.EDU
Reply-To: lange@cs.ucla.edu (Trent Lange)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 29

In article <17784@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> jbn@glacier.UUCP (John B. Nagle) writes:
>
>     $2000 is not a particularly good price for a laser printer.  The going
>rate for HP LaserJet type machines is around $1700.  There are a number of
>dumb laser printers, with a bus interface to PC-type machines and processing
>done by the PC cpu, in the same price range.  The slight increase in 
>resolution (from 300 to 400 dpi) is not spectacular; there are already 600dpi
>machines out.

An increase from 300 dpi to 400 dpi is a nearly 80 percent increase in actual
resolution, which I call more than slight.  There are indeed 600 dpi printers
out there, but for nothing even *close* to $2000.

>Yes, it's cheap for a PostScript printer, but it isn't a 
>PostScript printer, it's a dumb printer with a PostScript emulator in the
>host.  No big deal here.

True, but that's why its so cheap, and that's the beauty of it.  NeXT
already has Display Postscript, so why pay Adobe for an extra
license for the printer?  Try putting a HP LaserJet on a Mac or something
else, and see whether you can get Postscript output.

>					John Nagle

- Trent Lange

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