Clay, although the current 24-pin impact printers are very good, their
output is still visibly inferior to a good 300dpi laser printer. The 360 x
360 dots per inch specification is true, but you must keep in mind that the
dots are much larger than 1/360th of an inch in diameter. That is why the
output from a laser or the Deskjet still looks crisper – the dots are
smaller.
Besides that, I'm not sure that the 360×360 capability is used in normal LQ
text printing – I believe it is a special graphics mode which must be
driven from the appropriate software. I'm not sure about this last point –
but you want to make sure that if you buy a printer for its super-high
resolution, that you have an application that will take advantage of it.
Joel