Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!scooter!neoucom!wtm
From: wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Some Random NeXT Thoughts
Summary: Pricing, also HP deskjet
Keywords: NeXT Speculation Cost Future Marketing
Message-ID: <1578@neoucom.UUCP>
Date: 14 Apr 89 16:09:54 GMT
References: <12017@ut-emx.UUCP>
Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Lines: 40


The cost of the cube to institutions is $6500 according to the NeXT
literature that I have on hand here.  Institutions, however, have
the freedom to add on whatever amount of margin they desire.  Looks
like the UT Austin book store is taking a cut of about 10%.

Re: the Deskjet.  The coputation engine in the Deskjet is a Z8
microcontroller, so it doesn't exactly have the kind of muscle
required to do postscript processing at a resonable performance
level.  At the moment, I believe the maximum RAM address space in
the Deskjet is 256K (two 128K RAM cartridges).  If you do graphics
that has a lot of black area, the Deskjet can get kind of expensive
to operate too; the ink carts go for about $20 and will do 500
pages of average typed output in full letter quality or about 1000
pages in 50% draft mode (even the draft mode looks pretty good).
With graphics, cartidge life can drop as low as only several
hundred pages.  Graphics with large black areas can also suffer
from a lot of wrinkle in the paper due to the water-based ink.
So, you see, the desk jet is sort of like buying a Porsche and
taking out a 15 year loan to pay it off; cheap now, but you pay for
a long time.  If you want to do a lot of graphics with a lot of
black area, the laser printers cheaper consumables will save you
money in the long run.  For mostly text output, the Deskjet is
about a break-even propsition.

What would make sense would be to port the Ghostscript Postscript
to HP PCL converter for the NeXT machine.  Ghostscript builds the
raster image of the output on the host machine and dumps it to the
printer.  This would work on the Deskjet as long as it works the
raster from the top of the page down.  On the Deskjet, you can't
execute a reverse paper motion command while printing because the
ink that has not yet dried could become smeared.

Please don't take this article as knocking the Deskjet.  I've had a
Deskjet for slightly more than a year and like it very much, using
it every day.  It would be difficult to make me give up my Deskjet.
I just wanted to point out some of the limitations.

Bill
wtm@impulse.UUCP