🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <8802021704.AA24124@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> GASPARD@HROEUR5.BITNET writes:
>>First - does it make a great deal of sense to by the laser engine for
>>$2K when right next to it is an HP going for $1.7K, which has .5 Meg of
>>memory, and the ability to upgrade it to almost anything. (Postscript
>>included).  Is the quality of the Atari Laser so great as to outweigh
>>all other factors?
>>
>>Second - consider the following two scenarios.  I buy a mono-mega4 and
>>an atari laser printer for $4.5K, and lets say Word Perfect, a page
>>publishing program.
>>
>>-or-
>>I buy a mono-ST for .9K and a AST Turbo Laser for $3K -> for a total of
>>$3.9K.
>>I have the same software.
>
>
>I'm using the Atari laser for about two months now and I find it
>wonderfull. Just compare its 'black' with most other lasers.
>

I did, and I wasn't terribly impressed - but then it could have been a lot
of other factors including that the salesman didn't show it off to its best
advantage.

>But let me ask you same questions:
>
>Do you have a 'GDOS'-printerdriver for the AST-turbo-laser?

Who cares - I haven't seen GDOS out of atari yet and I won't spend $2000 to 
get it.

>Can you make a screendump to the AST-laser?

I've taken a total of 2 screen dumps - mostly to see if the printer was hooked
up.  That isn't what I want a laser printer for.

>The programs that you have or you'll have in the future, are they
>supporting the AST-laser?

Since the AST runs postscript, I would imagine that the number of programs that
support it far outnumber those that support the Atari Laser.  In addition,
there are a lot of folks out there who know postscript.  It simply blows away
all other page description languages (in my opinion!)

>Do you have a 'epson'-emulator for the AST-laser? (a German-company is
>selling one for the Atari-laser)

Maybe I'm missing the point, but why buy a printer that costs an order of
magnitude more than the epson so I can emulate the epson?  The epson is
a simple printer and anyone who can write a program around a finite state
machine can write an emulator for it.

>I think, if you are sure you don't sell your ST in the near future, you
>will be better of with the Atari laser.
>I'm very sure some smart company will make a RS232- or centronics-
>interface for the Atari-laser.

Well don't hold your breath, but I would not care to add $200 to an already
overpriced printer to make it useful to other machines - besides, since the
Atari laser has NO memory, the interface would have to run at a speed matching
the construction of the image - I don't know that the serial line can do it,
and even the Centronics may be too slow. (A full graphics page takes about
2 minutes to download at 9600 baud - that's why you want the printer to have
some smarts and build the image itself.)

>I'm sure some smart guy will write a fonteditor for the Atari-laser.
>
>I agree, it's sometimes a wast of time waiting to get the ST back when
>the laser is printing.
>

And paying double for the privilege is a real insult.

>
>Bert Rozenberg
>Dutch ST-foundation.

	Had this printer had a street price of < $1K, it would be a deal, but
at double that ... Sorry.

	< dave.