CompuServe Messages

I'm hoping to get some reactions from people who use both the Apple Mac and the Epson Sylus Color printer for a story for the San Jose Mercury News. Epson has just acknowledged that the popular Stylus Color does NOT deliver true 720 dpi output when printing from a Mac. However, the Epson Stylus Color DOES deliver true 720 dpi when printing from Windows. Epson's explanation is that this is not a bug, but rather the result of a concious design decision within the Mac environment. "The Macintosh OS requires that system RAM be used in imaging print jobs," Epson says. "The amount of RAM required to draw and half-tone a 720×720 dpi full color image can be huge, depending on the application. "Also, the EPSON Stylus COLOR ink jet printer connects to the Macintosh via a standard Mac serial port. The throughput on this port is a small fraction of the throughput on a bi-directional parallel port, as in use for the PC interface. These factors result in very slow printing times on the Macintosh when compared with the PC on 720 dpi print jobs. "Realizing that the Stylus COLOR would be marketed based on photo realistic print quality, EPSON made a design decision intended to benefit the largest percentage of our target customers. The intent was to offer full output quality in color rendering, while optimizing throughput on the slower Macintosh port and minimizing use of the Macintosh's memory. The way this was achieved was to rasterize an image using 360 dpi data, but halftone it at 720 dpi." The resulting output is the best available in its class on the Mac, but it is not true 720 DPI, and it is not as good as what Windows users can get with the same image, same program and same printer. So what I wonder is, how do you feel about this? Does it matter that Mac output is somewhat inferior to Windows output? Do you feel you were deceived by Epson? Thanks for your comments… Bruce Brown for the San Jose Mercury News