Apple Gives Printer Line A Revamp
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday October 16, 1995
THE days when you had to buy an Apple printer for your Macintosh are long gone. Many manufacturers offer Mac-compatible printers, but Apple's inkjet and laser printers remain popular.
The inkjet range has been completely revamped over the last year or so. The cheapest model is the $695 StyleWriter 1200. Text and line art is printed at a resolution of 720 by 360 dots per inch, greyscale images at 360 by 360 dpi. The nominal print speed is three pages per minute, but the actual speed of any StyleWriter depends on the speed of the Mac and the document's complexity.
An upright design means the 1200 takes up little desk space. Although it is intended as a personal printer, the software does support sharing across a network but the printer must be connected directly to a Mac's serial port.
The Color StyleWriter 2200 is Apple's portable printer. With PowerBook-compatible styling, this 1.4 kg device costs $895. The print resolution is the same as the 1200's, but 360 by 360 dpi is also used for colour printing. The rated speed is up to 5ppm for black and white, and up to three minutes per page for colour. The 2200 driver includes native code for Power Macintoshes, and can print multiple scaled-down images on one page.
The software includes ColorSync 2.0 for consistent colour rendition from screen to printed page. Waterresistant inks (cyan, yellow, magenta and black) minimise smearing.
The colour cartridge contains one ink tank for the three process colours and a separate black tank to reduce wastage. The tanks are rated at approximately 40 pages. The extra capacity of the "high-performance black" cartridge - around 150 pages per tank - is handy for routine use.
The 2200 runs from a mains adaptor or an optional battery rated at 200 pages per charge. The battery kit costs $250; additional batteries are $155. The $895 Color StyleWriter 2400 is slightly larger than the 1200 but similarly styled, and prints at 360 by 360 dpi in black and white or colour using water-resistant inks.
It uses a cartridge and tank arrangement for colour (rated at 100 pages per tank) but the highperformance black cartridge is a sealed unit good for a nominal 900 pages.
ColorSync and printer sharing are both supported by the software, while an optional LocalTalk interface allows network use without a Mac acting as a print server. This interface costs $100 when purchased with the printer, or $199 as an accessory.
All StyleWriters include 64 TrueType fonts featuring normal, display, script and decorative faces. Plain, premium and glossy paper, plus envelopes, transparencies and backprint film are all supported. The 1200 and the 2400 hold up to 100 sheets of plain paper, and the 2200 accommodates up to 30. All models automatically switch themselves on and off as required for ease of use and energy saving.
Turning to laser printers, the LaserWriter 4/600 PS is a 4 ppm, 600 dpi PostScript Level 2 printer - the name is descriptive, if unimaginative. At $1,895 it is the cheapest of Apple's PostScript printers and includes LaserBridge software, allowing shared access across an Ethernet or Token Ring network.
The 4/600 can be upgraded with a further 4Mb of memory to accommodate documents using many downloadable fonts. The 16/600 PS is the mainstream workgroup printer with PostScript Level 2; LocalTalk, Ethernet and bidirectional parallel interfaces; and PCL 5 emulation.
The Ethernet interface simultaneously supports AppleTalk, IPX (NetWare) and TCP/IP protocols, making the printer suitable for mixed environments. All ports and protocols are switched automatically.
These LaserWriters include the same typefaces as the StyleWriters in a combination of TrueType and PostScript fonts.
Finally, we come to the Color LaserWriter 12/600 PS. At $11,995. You won't buy one for the kids to print their homework, but it does produce high-impact colour documents.
The nominal 12 ppm figure is for monochrome; the colour speed is 3 ppm, reducing to 1 ppm when printing on special transparency film. The standard paper capacity is 250 sheets plus another 100 in the multipurpose tray, but an optional 250 sheet feeder is available at $1,195.
Another important feature is the relative simplicity of routine maintenance, with just six consumables (four toner cartridges, the photoconductor and fuser oil).
The Color LaserWriter offers the same set of ports and protocols as the 16/600 PS, and includes 39 PostScript and 64 TrueType fonts.
© 1995 Sydney Morning Herald
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