NEC P2200
Kurt: I have both an Epson FX-80 and an NEC P2200, so I hope I can answer
some of your questions.
I really like the NEC. The fonts are sharp, you have a good variety of them
(I particularly like the ITC Souvenir), and the choice of paper feed systems
is great (I'm currently using the front loading system–it works fine).
As for printer drivers, I have been using the P6 driver from the data
libraries
here. It has worked fine for text –word processing, database, etc. For
graphics, tho, I've run into problems, primarily with PageSetter. PageSetter
won't accept the P6 driver (I have an early version of the program) and so I
have a choice of printing elongated copies with the Epson printer driver, or
using the FX-80. I haven't tried the printer driver with other graphics
programs, such as DPaintII, so the jury's out. As for PageSetter, I may be
replacing it with another program anyway. Hopefully, Workbench 1.3 will help
solve some of this.
The NEC has proven to be reliable so far. It's not built for heavy-duty use,
but it has handled everything I've tried so far (including a 200-piece
mailing).
The bottom line? I'm glad I got the NEC. I'm optimistic about using it for
graphics in the long run (as long as I can't afford laser printers, I'm
staying with what I've got). The quality of output is certainly fine for my
purposes, and has surprised many folks who think you just can't get quality
type out of a dot matrix printer.
===Ken Roberts