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From: laser-lovers@uw-beaver (laser-lovers)
Newsgroups: fa.laser-lovers
Subject: 
Message-ID: <827@uw-beaver>
Date: Fri, 10-Feb-84 01:37:05 EST
Article-I.D.: uw-beave.827
Posted: Fri Feb 10 01:37:05 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Feb-84 20:48:52 EST
Sender: root@uw-beave
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
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From shel@ima!cfib.UUCP Fri Feb  3 22:37:00 1984
We have had a 6670 for the past three years hooked up to our ONYX
computer.  We have run about 80000 sheets/month so I think we can
give you some good experience.  Point by point:

- can be loaded with up to 2700 sheets of paper
   Quite true, in addition it has an alternate paper tray for
   letterhead and the like, but unfortunately you cannot switch
   back and forth within a single print file.  You either have your whole
   document on the alternate paper, or just the first page (letter mode)

- all point addressable - graphics, fonts, etc.
   theoretically possible, but probably not very practical.  In addition
   we were told these features would only be available from 370/4000 series
   of IBM machines.  I wouldn't depend on it.

- down loaded fonts
   once again only available on 370's.  They told us the transmission codes
   were proprietary and would not be available.
   
- rotation mode - portrait or landscape
   Yes but once again you cannot switch within a single print file.  Your 
   whole file has to be printed rotated.  We did need this feature and ended
   up breaking up the print file into many pieces  In addition only a few
   fonts are available in the rotated mode.

- is both a copier and a printer
   Absolutely, but you should watch out for the per page costs.  They run 
   about 3cents per which is very expensive for a copies (most copies run
   less than 1 cent per)

- can print on both sides of paper
   True.  If you need duplex this beast is for you.


- Cost of basic unit (hmm, does the basic unit do all those things?)
  would be about $31k to us (don't know how that relates to the rest of
  the world).
   We leased ours.
   
- It uses EBCDIC, but the salesman claims knowledge of code
  converters from ASCII.
   We were fortunate to have direct Bisync communications available
   on our ONYX directly.  We did play around with some protocol
   convertors and actually got the beast going pretty well,  we did have
   some problems and did not get everything going correctly.  There were 
   some funny problems with telling the convertor when the end of the file
   was reached and doing some special character translations which were 
   necessary.

- I have heard from one person already that
  the paper path is quite baroque and that the IBM repair people spend a
  lot of time fixing paper jams; anything else?
   This is true, the paper changes speeds 3 times in the printing process,
   we only started having real trouble up around 75K copies/mo.

Some other comments:

IBM service is all you have heard about it (at least here in Boston).
The sales people are always available to help out and the service people
park themselves at your site to fix problems usually within 4 hours.

The machine is built like a tank and is designed to run about 75-100K
copies a month.  This is the real issue with this machine in comparison
to 2700's or Canon based machines.  These other machines are based on
desktop copies transports usually rated at about 20K copies a month.
I can easily see the canon blowing up trying to do 60K copies a month.
In addition the IBM has a real output stacker which offsets jobs and
holds about 2000 pages.  The 2700 and canon would probably hold
a few hundred.  Same with input trays.  The 6670 main input is
2000 sheets plus 700 in the alternate tray.  2700/Canon a few hundred.
6670 supports duplex and if this is necessary you have little choice
since neither the 2700/canon support this.

A major drawback is the limited fonts available.  There is really only
one proportional font and it is only available in one size, so forget
big titles and small footnotes.  However the print quality is excellent
due to a very unusual toner system they use.  If you want font
flexibility either the 2700/canon will serve you better.

Where are we today?  Our 6670 is being removed in 2 weeks, We had a
Xerox 8700 installed 2 months ago and are in love with it.  We have
it completely interfaced with troff, it prints 70 pages/minute and has
a monthly duty cycle of about 1 million pages.  It is a bit pricey
however, about $350K.

Hope this is of help.
Sheldon Laube, The Consumer Financial Institute, Boston, 617-969-2632
decvax!yale-co!ima!cfib!shel, ucbvax!cbosgd!ima!cfib!shel,
{allegra|research|amd70}!ima!cfib!shel