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From: carlson@gateway.mitre.org (Bruce Carlson)
Newsgroups: misc.wanted,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: HP Thinkjet portable printer
Message-ID: <48388@linus.UUCP>
Date: 7 Apr 89 20:32:32 GMT
References: <7713@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Sender: news@linus.UUCP
Reply-To: carlson@gateway.mitre.org (Bruce Carlson)
Organization: The Mitre Corporation
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In article <7713@pucc.Princeton.EDU> BVAUGHAN@pucc.Princeton.EDU writes:
>I was recently at a workshop in China, where one of the other participants
>had brought along her HP Thinkjet printer. I was impressed with its small
>size and quiet operation, which are two things I require in a home printer.
>(cramped quarters, thin walls, late nights) The print quality was much
>better than what I've seen in similar printers (Diaconix Ink Jet, for
>instance.) The owner hadn't had it for long, so couldn't help me regarding
>reliability, etc. She said that some of the cartridges seemed to have lost
>their vacuum seal on the plane ride and had to be discarded. Also there
>seemed to be some problem with the cable as sometimes it would appear to
>be on-line but nothing happened. Can anyone give me more information about
>about the reliability of this printer? I probably would not be travelling
>much with it, and do most of my printing at the office.

An organization I worked for during 85-88 bought about 60 of these
printers and they were the 'standard issue' to use with each person's 
PC.  I vaguely remember one breaking, but I don't remember what was wrong
with it.  As far as I can tell they were very reliable.

There are limitations:

requires special ink-jet paper - more expensive
ink cartridges dry out sometimes and must be reprimed (easy to do)
some ink cartridges seem to be short-lived, some are okay
the printer cannot print to the edges of the paper (only prints 8 inch width)
the epson emulation mode is not perfect, it misses a few features

Good points:

extremely quiet
very reliable (as far as I can tell)
very small
available in serial or parallel versions


Just my opinions

Bruce Carlson