#Printer choice
11 messages in this thread
My Panasonic printer died and would cost as much as a new one to fix
so…what are the latest options? This was a nice 24 pin dot matrix. What
are some of You folks using? I tend to crank out some hefty text files but
would also like to dabble in color ( Citizen 24 pin color ?).
Is the Paintjet impractical for letters, doc files? Can we take full
advantage of the laser jets and lack of drivers?
Any thoughts or comments would be most appreciated,
Paul
–pt–not seattle– 😉
Paul, I don't know what your needs are, but I'll take a shot. The printer I
am using is the DeskJet Plus. (I'll upgrade to the 500 someday). The
printer is a 300 X 300 DPI device, and is around 120 CPS NLQ, 240 CPS Draft
Graphics are great, and you can get full color using the Inkmun Inks'
color refills. The Paintjet is only about 180 X 180 DPI. (You better double
check that resolution on the Paintjet, but I recall that as being correct.)
The physical page registration is spot-on, so passing your page through the
printer 4 times is quite painless, and the results are GREAT! The printer
will accept legal and letter sized paper, as well as #10 envelopes with no
problem. I have also passed heavy parchment through the Deskjet Plus with
great results. I have seen the output of the Star 24 pin Rainbow at 360 X
360 DPI, and can say that the Deskjet Plus seems much better even at a
lower density. For doing 4 color seperations, Pagestream, and Propage will
do the job nicely. (Saxon publisher does 4 color seperations but I'm not
familliar enough with the product to know if it will output to other than
postscript devices.) The Deskjet will also print in several internal fonts
, has font cartridges available, and can download "soft fonts" basically yo
r adobe fonts into a ram cartridge, and make these soft-fonts resident. The
printer driver DJ HELPER by CREATIVE FOCUS gives you tremendous control
over allaspects of your printer (puts preferences drivers to shame) and
will let you download "soft-fonts" to your printer. The Deskjet will also
print in landscape as well as portrait page orientations. Any specific
questions, just drop me a line. Bob Felts,
72767,642
For just a couple of hundred more than the DeskJet 500, you can buy a 4ppm
HP LJIIP. A meg of ram and card brings it to 1.5 meg and there are many
Postscript and font cartridges for it. I have one on my Amiga at work (I
switch it between my '386 and A500 super machine. Also have a Paint Jet
there.
IIP wins hands down.
Rick, do You know if the HP DeskJet is the only printer that has 3rd party
color devices? From Inkum ( I think ). Paul
–pt–not seattle– 😉
I really don't know. It's the only one I've seen them for. But then
again, the only other inkjets I've worked with are the PaintJets and Canon
BubbleJets.
My biggest problem with using a DJ for color is having to make several
passes, using cartridges of differnt color inks. Someone on here said it
keeps very tight registration, but the whole process could be a real pain.
As in having to use one of the DTP programs to generate the color seps, and
then printing on the page 4 times (black plus the three primary colors).
While this would work, it requires you to own a rather expensive DTP
package, takes a bit of time, and eliminates the use of many other programs
for color printing.
If you're going to be doing a lot of color printing, you'd be better off
going with a color printer like the PaintJet. At least there, it's done in
one pass, and can be used in the color mode by any Amiga program.
Bob, thanks for giving it more than a shot 🙂 I had no idea that a DeskJet
Plus could do color! Could You maybe touch on the Inkmun process? The help
is very much appreciated.
Paul
–pt–not seattle– 😉
Paul,
what do you use for printing to the DJ? So far I've resorted to
importing images into Art Department, blowing them up and converting them
into dithered, 2-color images. This seems to give the best result as far as
levels of grey are concerned; I don't care for normal printing through
DJHelper, since it starts out with only 16 levels of grey and you lose
several of them when adjusting the input/output graph for best output. I
would love to find a program that will print any IFF, even IFF24, at 300
DPI on a DeskJet with correct dithering.
Blaq! – via Whap!
The Paintjet is great for color graphics, but the text is pretty lame.
My favorite home use 24 pin color printer is the Star NX2420 Rainbow.
About $339 (at least that's what we sell it for). According to their
specs, it runs about 300 cps draft, 100 cps letter quality. It's closer to
280 draft/80 LQ since most people don't use the 12 cpi for normal stuff.
Your choice of rear or bottom feed, push or pull tractor, no paperbail
(uses a very wide guide attached to the printhead… keeps it from jamming
on narrow lables, etc., and 7 or 8 built in fonts. Also comes with a 2
year warranty.
As for the color, it uses a multicolor ribbon and is very easy to program
for. For just using color text, just insert the command ((C))x in your
text to change colors. x is a number from 1-7. When a color ribbon is
detected in the printer, the printer intercepts the ((C))x and changes to
the proper color.
Rick, thanx for the info. Can the Star NX2420 handle IFF graphics and/or
dithering ?
Paul
–pt–not seattle– 😉
I haven't tried one on the Amiga yet… but yes it can handle it. I've
seen printouts of HAM pics on the NX1000 Rainbow and they were acceptable.
The NX2420 is prolly (99.9% sure) capable of doing the job, but the actual
results depends on the quality of the printer driver.
If all else fails one can use the Epson JX80 printer driver I think, or
something similar as it fully emulates the Epsons and IBM printers.