🚀 go-pugleaf

>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?

You're right. The HP offers more value for money.
Output quality of the HP LaserJet II is among the best in small laser printers.
Very nice blacks etc. The fundamental difference between the HP and the Atari
engine is that the first is a so-called write-black and the Atari is
write-white. Write-white has a theoretical advantage when it comes to
printing large black areas. Write-black is better for fonts though, especially
at the 300 dpi resolution of these printers.
On the whole I doubt you'll see a lot of difference between the output of these
two printers.
The HP has easier maintenance. You replace one cartridge every 4-5000 pages.
No messing about with (nasty) toner. The Canon-engines of the HP have built
up a very good reputation in terms of reliability.
The Kentek engine of the Atari laser is used by Oasys for its laser printers,
which, by the way, are even cheaper. But I have never heard about any long-term
experiences.

>
>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.

The AST has a major advantage; it supports Postscript. This alone, I feel,
makes it a much better choice than the brain-less Atari laser. Everybody
supports Postscript these days. You can safely assume that it is the standard
for the next 3-5 years.
The AST is based on the Ricoh engine. And I found none of the Postscript
lasers based on this write-white engine (e.g. Texas Instruments 2108/2115,
Digital Scriptprinter) to have very satisfactory output. Every font looks
bold.
The Postscript option on the HP laserjet II involves a board for a PC. You
won't be able to use it with any ST in Postscript mode.
The Postscript language (but not the Adobe fonts and font-manipulating
algoritms) is in the public domain. With 4 Megs of memory it should be
possible to implement the Postscript RIP in the Mega ST and send the
page bitmap to a dumb laser printer such as the Atari. But I have yet
to hear of anyone announcing such a product. I'm afraid the market may
not be large enough to make it interesting.

I faced exactly the same dilemma as you are in three months ago. I ended
up buying a NEC LC890 Postscript laser (approx. $ 3.3k, also 3 Megs of
memory, write-black, two paper bins standard, etc). Apart from the fact
that there is still no satisfactory desktop-publishing software on the ST,
I also wanted to print from a PC (using Ventura Publisher; when are they
finally going to port that to the ST?). And, most important, Postscript
files can be sent to a typesetter; I don't think Linotype or any other
mayor supplier of typesetting equipment has plans to support GDOS. Let's
face it; even Atari hardly supports it.
And I must agree with other owners of the NEC; you'll never want any
other printer (except of course that 2500 dpi colour laser for $ 2k).
Apart from Postscript (with all the LW+ fonts) it offers HP LaserJet and
Diablo 630 (very useful for program listings) emulation.

Has anyone managed to print to a Postscript printer (such as the LaserWriter)
with the Magic Sac? Serial communication is no problem, but how does the
Mac Postscript driver behave with the ST?

If you want more info on laser-printers join Laser-lovers, Postscript and/or
the Desktop Publishing list.

Gaspard de Jong
ST foundation, the Netherlands
Erasmus University Computing Center