Budget printing

By Donald Jenner

Printing from microcomputers has changed a lot since the days of the ubiquitous Epson MX-80 and assorted daisy-wheel printers.  Classy printers are all over the place, usually at deep discount.  What's the best price/performance choice?

Color printing is "must" if you're a serious graphics user.  The neatest choice is Canon's dual purpose Color Laser Copier -- but its ca.-$100Gs pricetag makes this a Fortune 500 and service bureau buy.  

Color thermal transfer printers are a good choice if a mid-four to low-five figure sum is not a problem.  QMS's ColorScript printers used to have pride of place in this market.  The company also offers a non-PostScript line, called "ColorGraphics," and driven by the more sophisticated Texas Instruments graphics processor.  These printers come in two sizes and are supported by all serious illustration programs, either directly or through Windows.  

Mistubishi (the company which makes the color thermal transfer engines for most of the other players) and its sister company, Shinko, compete actively in the same market, along with Tektronix.  Unlike the ubiquitous QMS ColorScript, these printers can have different personalities; among others, they can be driven by Zenographics SuperPrint, at greater speed and with superior efficiency than PostScript offers.

But if budget is a major concern, consider a color inkjet printer.  Our favorite is the Hewlett-Packard PaintJet.  Corel Draw users will like this one a lot.  A print-out of the Corel Draw "Process Color Chart" file from the PaintJet reveals a remarkabl match between its output and that of standard four-color printing (used in Corel's version on the help card).  

The printer comes in two models, one for the desktop and one intended for department printing on a network.  The desktop model fits places where fancier printers won't (it is the smallest of the available color inkjet printers), offers acceptable proof-printing and can be remarkably nimble.  It costs about $1,000 on the street.  Plan to use a range of drivers; SuperPrint works well for most things, but we've found that the Micrografx Windows driver is a "must" for use with Designer (though the new version of Designer may fix that).  As a bonus:  This printer makes the nicest overhead projection foils and acetate overlays we've seen.

For black and white printing, there are two choices:  Buy a laser printer -- HP LaserJet IIPs are being advertised for around $750, and IBM small-footprint laser printers rarely hit $900 at the deep-discounters these days.  Or look at an HP DeskJet -- and pay between $400 and $450.

The DeskJet (for use with IBM-compatible machines) and DeskWriter (for use with Apple Macintosh machines) offer exceptional print quality on plain paper, in a small package, with less noise and ozone polution than a laser printer.  For most office automation applications, this represents an attractively priced printing solution.  Even in networked offices, a couple of these printers pair well as backups with the central laser printer.  

Laser printers represent the most complex printing solution.  Every vendor has one or more to choose from.  Most vendors use one of three basic engines -- from Canon, Ricoh or TEC; one notable exception is Kyocera, which builds its own.  The difference in laser printers boils down to features in the vendor's on-board firmware.

Of the various printers tried over the years, Hewlett-Packard's LaserJet III stands out for one reason especially:  The company's "resolution enhancement" technology produces smoother curves and more nearly perfect print than its rated 300 dots per inch suggests.  In fact, the type looks as good under the loop as a 600 dpi Varityper printer.  The quality difference, when compared to other 300 dpi laser printers, is visible even without the loop.  Raster images -- scanned photos, etc. -- can be printed using screen frequencies close to those normally associated with typesetting systems.

As this story developed, HP announced a new LaserJet IIIP.  This is a compact version of the LJIII, using the smaller, slower engine also used in the IIP model, but including a faster processor and more memory.  Most important, the IIIP includes the latest version of Hewlett-Packard's Printer Control Language, PCL5, and resolution enhancement technology.  HP did not make one of these available for testing on the bench, but reports suggest the machine has the print capabilities absent the speed of the full-size system.  One major trade publication has reported a flaw in the implementation of PCL5 in this machine, which results in the printer being unable to print bitmap graphics at greater than 72 dots per inch.  Another possible problem area is the paper path in the smaller machine; there is a sharp curve to be negotiated, likely to be jam-prone with thick stock.  On the up-side, the LJIIIP has a multi-size paper tray (unlike the "full service" machine).

This new printer lists for $1,595 and already competition is forcing that down to the $1,000-$1,200 range; the standard LJIII goes for around $1,800 with a couple extra megabytes of printer memory.  

If you >must< have PostScript -- and there are times when PostScript is simply indispensable -- HP offers a superior PostScript add-on.  The weakness in HP's PostScript solution is that the printer cannot switch between native (and HP-proprietary) PCL and PostScript without out a powerdown-and-cartridge-change.  Pacific Data Systems, used to one-upping HP, now advertises a better-than-HP PostScript cartridge with just such a feature.  Since the resolution enhancement feature is an entirely different printer subsystem, no matter which way you print (PostScript, native PCL or something else), you'll still get better results on the HPIII series.

There is a weakness in some laser printers; this one seems to be a flaw in the Canon printer engine.  Printers based on this engine appear to have problems with heavy paper.  Heavy stock is used for report covers and special work (name tags and the like) and a laser printer should handle this without demur; Canon-based printers balk at it.  The toner does not fuse properly, and will flake off, especially if the stock has a "laid" finish.  Other print engines seem to do better; in particular, the Kyocera printers we've used appear to combine toner and fuser technology to make a superior print on heavy stock and envelopes.  Sadly, Kyocera is not a widely marketed brand, and the company has grandiose pricing notions; look to spend at least 50 percent more for the Kyocera label (and you still won't get that super HP resolution enhancement, which means spending a lot of money and still getting jaggies).

Is there a place for impact dot-matrix technology?  Indeed there is, and not just for the data-processing mavens who think visible dots are neat.  Low-cost dot-matrix printers can deliver remarkable results; driven with SuperPrint, an Epson LQ model could actually do half-decent halftones.  For people with deep pockets and special needs, perhaps the finest dot-matrix printer we've seen is JDL's 850 series.  This printer has a machine variant of multiple-personality disorder; it thinks it's a printer and a plotter -- it even has a parallel port for the one, and a serial port for the other!  Running through the usual hard-to-read-LCD menu choices allows selection of several different color printer and plotter choices.  Output from the 24-pin head -- in black and 15 other colors -- is exceptional.  In plotter mode, the lines are very nearly as clean as those from a standard pen plotter, and the print quality from the printer mode exceeds anything short of a laser printer.  But this is a specialty product, targeted to CAD users mostly, who need both plotter and printer capabilities, but who have limited desk space.  Consequently, this over-size printer (it does poster-size drawings) costs substantially more than an average laser printer plus a desktop color inkjet printer after on-the-street discounts.


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