Thumbs Up for New H-P Lasers
Plenty of companies make laser printers, but Hewlett-Packard introduced the first moderately priced PC laser printer and continues to update its line so that the company remains the price-performance leader. It dominates the market.
Its two most recent machines, the LaserJet IIP and LaserJet III, continue the tradition. With a suggested list price of $1,495, the LaserJet IIP, introduced last fall, is the first laser printer with a retail price of under $1,000.
The higher-end LaserJet III offers enhanced resolution, faster performance and more control over type size and style. It has a suggested list price of $2,395 but is available for under $1,600.
The LaserJet III can handle up to eight pages per minute and is recommended to handle up to 16,000 pages a month. That makes it suitable for local-area networks, work groups and other high-volume applications. As do most laser printers, it prints at a resolution of 300 dots per inch, but new technology allows the printer to vary the size and placement of those dots so that the results are better than what you’ll get with most other laser printers. It virtually eliminates jagged edges and assures smooth text and line art.
Scalable fonts are another major enhancement of the LaserJet III. Most laser printers limit you to certain type sizes that are determined by the printer itself, plug-in cartridges or “soft fonts” that are loaded into the printer’s memory from your computer’s disk. Scalable fonts, however, allow you to print characters at virtually any type size.
Until now, the only laser printers with built-in scalable fonts were those that are compatible with the PostScript page description language from Adobe Systems. PostScript printers such as the Apple LaserWriter are usually two or more times the price of the LaserJet III. The LaserJet III comes with two scalable fonts, CG Times and Universe, along with two sizes of Courier, a typewriter-style type face. Hewlett-Packard and several other companies also offer additional type faces on cartridges or diskettes. Optional PostScript cartridges are available from Hewlett-Packard and other companies. PostScript, which is preferred by some desktop publishers, comes with 35 built-in fonts.
I’m very impressed with the features and performance of the LaserJet III that I’ve connected to my IBM-compatible. I’ve been using the printer with Microsoft’s Word for Windows, a word-processing program that displays text and graphics in a “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) graphic display. The combination of the printer and software creates a word processing environment that rivals what you can do with an Apple Macintosh and an Apple LaserWriter--a setup that costs thousands more than the system I’m using.
The printer also works well with regular MS-DOS applications including WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3 and most other programs. It is fully compatible with software written for other Hewlett-Packard laser printers, including the popular LaserJet II series.
The printer can rotate text so it’s possible for your words to go across and down the page in four directions--all on the same page. It’s also possible to slant letters at various angles. Your software, however, might not support these advanced features.
The printer comes with 1 megabyte of built-in memory but can be expanded to 5 megabytes. Many users will do fine with the basic system, but the additional memory is necessary with some applications. Extra memory is also required to load in large numbers of fonts from disk or when using the PostScript option.
The LaserJet III is an excellent value. But if your needs are more modest, consider the LaserJet IIP. The machine is about half the size of the LaserJet III and makes practically no noise. At four pages per minute, it prints at half the speed of its bigger and more powerful cousins. That slower speed disqualifies the IIP for high-volume applications or for those who print very long documents. But if you’re using the printer for one-page letters, you probably won’t even notice the difference. The printer is recommended to handle up to 6,000 pages per month.
The IIP, as do most laser printers, prints at a resolution of 300 dots per inch. It lacks the extra resolution of the LaserJet III, but it’s still very crisp. The IIP doesn’t have built-in scalable fonts but it does come with 14 internal fonts and 512K of internal memory that can be used to load in software-based fonts.
There are options, however for those who want scalable fonts. Atech Software of Carlsbad, (800) 748-5657, publishes a program called Publishers’ PowerPak that provides scalable fonts in a variety of type faces, including Times Roman, Helvetica and Courier. It works with the IIP and most other laser and dot-matrix printers. There are several versions of the program, ranging from $79.95 to $199.95 (depending on the software you use it with). I was very impressed with the tests I did using the WordPerfect version of the program. The type looked great on a LaserJet II and surprisingly good on a $299 Epson dot matrix printer.
The LaserJet II’s built-in paper-input tray accepts only 50 sheets. However, you can purchase an optional 250-sheet tray that also turns the machine into a “dual bin” printer, making it possible to load letterhead in one bin and second sheets in another. Hewlett-Packard also supplies an optional envelope tray making it possible to use your software to print letters and envelopes without touching the printer.
If you want the ultimate in flexibility, you can equip your IIP with a $495 PostScript-compatible cartridge from Pacific Data Products, (619) 552-0880. The PostScript compatibility cartridge requires an additional 2 megabytes of memory, available from Pacific Data for $595. Hewlett-Packard has plenty of competition and it’s worth shopping around to settle on the printer with the best combination of price, performance and features. But it’s reassuring to know that the market leader remains on the competitive edge and isn’t resting on its laurels.
