All The Type Fit To Print, With Jet-set Price Tag

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday March 3, 1994

MARK CAMM

PRINTERS are the bane of your computing life, if only you knew it. If you've been fed a steady diet of dot-matrix mediocrity, there is every chance a story pleading for you to improve printing performance will fall on deaf ears.

But if by some Visa-card miracle you own an inkjet or laser printer, chances are it is sitting at home doing very little.

The cost of the printer + cost of the ink cartridges + cost of the paper +cost of the PC make that a very expensive letter to write.

So, where do you go with this dilemma?

A PC without a printer is like having a telephone and no-one to call. PCs just beg to have their files printed, preferably to typeset quality (because that's how the words and pictures look on the screen) and in full, glorious colour (because, like Everest, it's there).

But how do you justify it?

Reviewers love to wax lyrical about expensive, top-end components while ignoring the price.

Generally, this is because, unless your middle name is BHP or your bank balance is in rude health, precious few mortals are going to get to play with these expensive items to trip the reviewers up and tell them they're wrong.

Still, there is the vicarious thrill of reading about something you would be hard-pressed to justify buying for home, or even small-business use, just as there are cars that are little but a Lotto dream, yet people still love reading about them.

Such is Hewlett Packard's DeskJet 1200C/PS . This is a wonderful, marvellous full-colour industrial strength printer which has PostScript and network cards built in (as against the slightly cheaper 1200C which doesn't)and, at almost $4,000, is probably worth twice as much as your PC and printer combined.

So, why am I writing about it?

* The 1200C/PS, while expensive, is still cheaper than a top-end laser printer, yet you would be pushed telling the difference in print quality. If you need a printer to produce high quality documents all day, or from time to time you need to produce something in full colour, maybe the 1200C/PS is a good compromise between desirability and dollars (and producing your own colour documents is substantially cheaper than going to a commercial printer)

* It's total memory is four megabytes (the review printer had eight. Eight| The 1200C standard has a mere two), which means that very large files or complex graphics can be printed, in colour, without greatly affecting your PC's performance.

* It comes ready-made to work in a network (so, in a business sense, the cost can be justified). The 1200C can work within a network, but needs an add-on card.

* It speaks several printer languages such as PCL and PostScript, giving most software a comfortable ride to published stardom. The 1200C is monolingual, speaking only PCL.

* It prints on special HP glossy paper (for the very best results), on trashy photocopying paper, and transparencies. (A trick with inkjet printers: to stop the ink "bleeding" on poor-quality paper, rub the paper with a cloth before printing to knock the fine burrs off. Print reproduction is thus much sharper.)

* Will work with Macintoshes or IBM compatibles, while the 1200C will work only with IBMs.

* Works with Windows or Dos and supports Adobe, PostScript and TrueType typefaces (the 1200C doesn't support PostScript unless the PostScript card is added on).

* Is built to work all day - just feed it paper, and ink cartridges ($60 for colour cartridges, $52 for the black and white, but they last for a long time and come with a built-in level indicator).

* Is a snack to install and use. Plug in, load the printer drivers into Windows (or Dos programs), load the paper tray and print. It's as simple as that.

The 1200C/PS tested produced sparkling, high-quality results from a variety of software, from word processors to CD-ROM encyclopedias.

The only program where it spat the dummy was a Broderbund children's program, Read With Me, which has within it a paintbox program. It was only later I learned that the program does not support colour printing, so Hewlett Packard 1, Broderbund 0.

However, with some Microsoft Word text files (those created before the printer was installed) the panel lights on the printer indicated it was waiting for paper to be fed into it manually, and so wouldn't automatically take up paper from the tray. However, Word files created after the 1200C/PS's installation printed perfectly.

The colour in pictures reproduced from, for example, Microsoft's CD-ROM encyclopedia, Encarta, was simply beautiful. On the special HP glossy paper, in full-quality tilt (you can print more economically in draft form)reproduction was not quite up to photographic standard, but not far away, either.

Graphics such as charts and drawings were spectacular.

The results punch out of the printer very quickly. After the 1200C/PS has digested the file the PC wants printed, it is capable of printing half-a-dozen pages a minute - more for less complex jobs such as text files and less for full-colour pictures - and never vary in quality or temperament.

As a long-time victim of dotmatrix printers, the 1200C/PS was for me a revelation.

Even though it rattles, shakes and wheezes when initialising, and sometimes makes a hissing noise reminiscent of a truck tyre deflating - which I am told is peculiar to the machine tested - what comes out of the business end is worth any petty annoyances in between.

Strangely, though, the 1200C/PS's basic niceties and printing quality are available, minus some bells and whistles, such as networking and printing speed, in Hewlett Packard's 500C and 550C, medium range inkjet printers costing about $800 and $1,500 respectively.

While the 500C might not stand up to the workload the 1200C was designed for, and while its colour capabilities are not as good and not up to the 550C's true colour abilities, it's interesting that printers from each end of the price spectrum, and from the same maker, can each produce such fine work.

Identical, some might say.