Laser Printer for a Small Network of Suns?

[Henry Spencer]

>The only advantage of the HP is that it's cheap.  Its major disadvantages
>are that it can't print in any combination of font, size, and orientation
>(only those that are supported by your font cartridge), it has limited
>memory, so it can't print high resolution rasterfiles, it has no graphics
>capabilities other than bitmap printing, it doesn't run postscript which
>makes it impossible to use all of the neat postscript stuff that gets
>posted to the net all the time.  and it's next to impossible to mix
>graphics and text.  The HP series II has more memory, but I don't know
>whether that makes much of a difference...

Sounds like you've got the original LaserJet, which was indeed pretty
dumb.  It is still possible to do typesetting on it if you go very easy on
the fonts; there is nothing hard about mixing text and graphics, and
missing characters can be drawn in by suitable software.  The later
models, starting with the now-obsolete LaserJet Plus and including (I
think) all current ones, have more memory, downloadable fonts, and
somewhat improved graphics, and are generally better.  They are arguably
superior to PostScript machines for bulk text printing, because the
speed/dollar ratio is much better -- PostScript is hard to interpret
quickly without spending a lot on hardware.  We've used them for years and
are very happy with them.  You do need suitable software; they trade off
hardware smarts for cost, and so the host has to supply the intelligence.

If you are doing serious graphics or are prone to the "ransom note" style
of typography, however, you definitely want a PostScript printer.  We now
have one of those too.

                                     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                 uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu