Selecting a Printer by Eric Kaljumagi Recently, a power surge took out my trusty Epson FX compatible Sears SR1000. Consequently, I embarked on a search for a new printer, hoping to upgrade at least a little bit while maintaining the FX80 compatibility that many older Atari programs rely on. This article is a summary of what I found through the telephone-book thick Computer Shopper magazine and multiple conversations with multiple people. Before I continue, a caveat is in order. I am not a printer technical "guru". Everything in this article has come from conversations with people supposedly more knowledgeable than I, but the accuracy of their information is unverified. Therefore, although I believe that this article may help those who are in the market for a printer, please do not assume that everything in this article is perfectly correct. Introduction It is a much lonelier printer world than it used to be. Gone are Citizen, Fujitsu, Genicom, Star, Amstrad, Anadex, AT&T, and Commodore. Gone too are DEC, Diablo, Harris, Honeywell, Mannesmann Tally, NCR, and Printronix. The vast majority of printers available as of August 1996 are from Panasonic, Okidata, Epson, Hewlett Packard (HP), Lexmark (IBM), Brother, and Canon. While this is still seven in number, the options are clearly more limited than in the old days. Atari users are limited in the types of printers they use due to the fact that printer drivers for Ataris are not shipped with printers. Consequently, we must verify that we can drive any printer we purchase. My copy of SpeedoGDOS 4, for example, has drivers for the Canon BJ-10 (which lives on in the BJC- series), the HP DeskJet 500 (a 550C driver is available via Genie), the Epson FX80 (9 pin) and LQ570 (24 pin), the HP LaserJet, and the now obsolete HP PaintJet. Good PageStream, Calamus, Papryus Gold, and SpeedoGDOS drivers exist for the new Epson Color Stylus as well, and these are also available on Genie. Despite this rather limited selection, many more printers are available through built-in emulation. The Brother HL-660 Laser Printer reviewed two months ago (May 1996), for instance, emulates the Epson FX850, the IBM Proprinter XL, and the HP Laser PCL5e codes. Here is what I've found: Dot Matrix Printers Yes, they still make 9 and 24 pin dot matrix printers. The main reason for this is cost -- the 9-pin remains by far the cheapest way to get ink on paper, and the 24-pin is nearly as inexpensive. In addition, only dot matrix printers can print on carbonless multiple form paper, which is a requirement for many businesses. Currently, there are four companies I've found that offer dot matrix printers: Epson, Panasonic, Lexmark, and Okidata. Of these, Lexmark and Okidata seem to be sell printers geared towards business use as they feature extra wide platens, higher print speeds, and prices that seem to be somewhat above those of Epson and Panasonic. Therefore, I didn't attempt to find out more about these printers, and instead concentrated on the Epson and Panasonic lines. Panasonic printers greatly interest me, for they have an inexpensive color-capable 9-pin (KX-P1150 -- $140) as well as several nice 24-pin models of various speeds and at various price ranges from $180 - $320. One printer that seemed an exceptional value was the KX-P2130 ($200), which is color-capable, reasonably quiet and fast, and can emulate the Epson LQ860 as well. Unfortunately, Panasonic doesn't want to be talked to. A call to their service number (800-726-2797) sent me through fully automated channels to another phone number (800-222-0584) that provided another automated service that refused to recognize any of the models they sell and hung up (several times) after two attempts to use their system. There is a feature for talking to a technician, but you are asked, upon selection of the feature, for your credit card number for a $20 charge. Customer service like that I can do without. The Epson printers didn't offer color as a rule, but at least Epson answered the phone (although they also charge for detailed information if the printer is over two years old). A friendly voice explained that Epson no longer had separate drivers for its 9-pin and 24-pin printers. Instead, all Epson printers now sold use ESC/P2 protocol, which (in theory at least) can decipher the instructions intended for older printers. This has been a feature of Epson printers for several years, but other printers, like the Panasonic KX-P2130 above, are still advertised as emulating specific Epson printers. Although the LX300 can be upgraded to color, I liked the FX 870 (9-pin, $290) and the LQ570+ (24 pin, $250) the best, with the LQ570+ being my favorite choice among the dot matrix printers. Even though it is more expensive than several inkjet printers, the LQ's extremely low printing cost ($6.50 for a 500-1000 sheet ribbon) make it a good choice for moderately heavy use, such as my 200 pages of progress reports twice a year. If you would like to talk to Epson yourself, their number is 800-922-8911. InkJet Printers Inkjets are the most popular printers nowadays, and there are more of them than other types. Due to the lack of printer drivers available for the more uncommon models, I decided to stick with the main brands: Epson, Canon, and HP. Epson manufactures a compact pair of Inkjets called the Stylus Color II and the Stylus Color IIs that are both inexpensive and seem fairly well supported. The Stylus II is a 720 dpi printer that has a 100 sheet paper tray and is four color CMYK. The Stylus IIs is only 360 dpi and is three color CMY. Although black (the "K" in CMYK) is theoretically producible through equal amounts of Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow, in practice CMY produces a very dark evergreen or gray, which is usually not what is desired. The CMYK printer, however, has an actual black cartridge on board, and so produces true black. I suspect the Color II is worth the additional $90 ($300 vs. $210) for this reason. Canon makes a pair of portable BubbleJets (the BJC30 and the BJC70) and at least four desktop BubbleJets including the BJC210 ($180), the BJC610 ($430), and the BJ230 ($400 -- black and white only). Of these, the BJC210 is certainly the best value, but the BJC610 may be of interest to those who do a lot of color printing, for its Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow are housed in separate cartridges. This long overdue "no waste" system found only in the BJC610 in printers under $1000 means that you will no longer have to throw out a cartridge that still has ink in it just because you are out of one of the three colors. On the minus side, Canon has an annoying habit of entirely overhauling its printer drivers, so although the printers listed above should work on your Atari, the next generation of their printers may not do so. The king of the Deskjet hill in general, however, is HP. They currently make (although the list changes several times a year) the 400 ($250), the 600C ($220), the 680C ($300), the 820Cxi ($380), the 855Cxi ($470), and the 1600C ($1300). The 400 is brand new and uses the same cartridge (and probably the same print engine) as the 500, although it resides in a new, compact package. The 600C is black and white or CMY capable, while the similar 680C is fully CMYK with the additional feature of being able to print banners. The 1600C is semi-professional (600x600 dpi, 9 ppm, separate ink cartridges for CMY) but expensive, and the 800 series is a bit unusual, containing "professional" printers as well as those with "Windows95 only"" drivers (see the warning below). I have used a DeskJet 500 with excellent results, and I suspect the 600 series and the 400 would work well in Ataris, since its HP drivers are designed with backwards compatibility in mind. On the minus side, these printers do not have controls on the printer itself. Consequently, font switching, line feeds, and repriming the cartridge need to be done via software. Fortunately, a freely distributable .CPX program exists that does most of this. Laser Printers Laser (or their near cousins, LED) printers are probably a poor choice for being one's sole printer, being without color and only marginally better at printing than inkjets. Nonetheless, they are quite popular, and are sold by Lexmark, Brother, Okidata, Texas Instruments, Panasonic, HP and others. I did not do much research on them, but it seems that the PCL5e printer emulation language is pretty much universal, save for a few new models by HP that use a superset of PCL5e, namely PCL6. Whole families of similarly named but significantly different computers exist, such as the HP 5, 5N, 5L-FS, 5P, and 5MP, which run from under $500 to several thousand dollars. I would recommend the HP5L, a 4 Page Per Minute (PPM) printer with 600x600 resolution for around $450, or the Brother twins reviewed in the May 1996 issue of Yackity-YAC. Corporate Raider of New York (800-453-3555) has the 600 dpi Brother HL660 for $465 and the Brother HL641, its 300 dpi sibling, for $325. The Okidata OL610e ($520) is also worth looking at. Beware of inexpensive laser printers (and apparently a DeskJet or two)! A number of printers coming on the market are designed to use the computer's memory for page setup, much like the Atari SLMs did years ago. While this does effectively reduce the price since the printer has little or no on-board RAM, these printers cannot accept data the way most printers do. Since these "Windows" printers are universally provided with Windows drivers alone, they are completely incompatible with any other computers, including Ataris. Examples of these computers are the Brother WL660, The Texas Instruments microLaser WIN/4, and the Okidata Okipage 4W. Do not buy these printers! Conclusion After considering all my options, I narrowed my decision to two printers. The Epson LQ570+ ($250) would provide a modest upgrade to my departed SR1000, and would likely print from most of my applications without my having to alter any settings in my software. On the other hand, the Brother HL641 ($325) seems to be a great laser printer which would clearly be an asset to my desk. Since I have an HP DeskJet 500 with Epson FX emulation cartridge, I am not in the market for an inkjet printer, but if I were, the HP Deskjet 660C or 400 would have been my first choice. What I actually did after all this research was to purchase a used 24-pin Epson similar to the LQ570 from another YAC member. It's not the newest or greatest, but it'll do.