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From: david@varian.UUCP (David Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.text
Subject: Re: Jasmine LaserPrinter
Keywords: Laser Printer Laserprinter Mac
Message-ID: <702@varian.UUCP>
Date: 14 Dec 88 06:56:53 GMT
References: <1055@naucse.UUCP> <81243@sun.uucp>
Distribution: na
Organization: Varian, Walnut Creek CA
Lines: 52

In article <81243@sun.uucp>, shiffman%basselope@Sun.COM (Hank Shiffman) writes:
> The Jasmine Laser Printer is manufactured by Qume....
> 
> Personally, I would want some more assurance about the compatibility
> of their PostScript-like language with the Real Thing(TM) from Adobe
> before I'd consider buying one of these.  If all the usual suspects
> work correctly with the Qume then it would be an awfully attractive
> alternative to offerings from Apple/QMS/etc.

Exactly how I feel, except I would like more proof of PostScript
compatibility than the usual suspects.  From my past (sad) experiences,
I'd say it's the unusual suspects (i.e. the less common programs) that
will cause you problems.  I used to work with a Qume ScripTen Plus,
which was supposed to be HP LaserJet Plus compatible.  I found it to be
just barely useful with MS Word (on a PC), it would produce output that
wasn't quite right with Ventura, and would croak entirely with some
unusual things like Textware's TPlus (troff post-processor) (Brent Byer
at Textware really knows his laser printers, and uses every trick in the
book to get lovely troff output from even the plain original LJ;
unfortunately, it appears that Qume didn't read the book).

In addition, the cartridge fonts had substantial differences in
character shape and width, and fewer cartridges were offered (in
particular, we eventually ended up standardizing on the "Z" (Microsoft)
cartridge on the HP, which has both Times and Helvetica in popular
sizes; at the the time, Qume did not offer an equivalent; I don't if
they do now).

Luckily we had some real HP printers around to compare the results.
After complaining to Qume over the course of several
months and receiving several PROM upgrades (after one upgrade,
graphics output from MS Windows stopped working), we finally gave up
and relegated the Qumes to word processing and started buying only
real HP's.

(The Qumes had other problems, like lack of indication lights or
control panel to let you know what was going on, incredible bulk,
the inability to add more memory beyond the standard .5mb,
and slow data transfer, even on a parallel interface, but these
are peripheral to the issue of compatibility).

Anyway, I would read lots of reviews (which implies that the printer
is actually shipping) and try out *all* of the applications that I
might want to run before I would be convinced of PostScript compatibility.
I would guess that PostScript would be harder to clone than HP
compatibility, and from what I've heard (PC Magazine had a review
about a year ago), none of the HP compatible printers on the market
are 100% perfect (except for HP...).   

-- 
David Brown	 415-649-4000
Orion Network Systems 1995 University Ave. Suite 350 Berkeley CA 94704
{pacbell,lll-crg,zehntel,ista,rtech,csi,kinetics}!varian!david