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From: laser-lovers@uw-beaver.UUCP
Newsgroups: fa.laser-lovers
Subject: Re: Cheap laser printer reported
Message-ID: <805@uw-beaver>
Date: Fri, 27-Jan-84 19:56:29 EST
Article-I.D.: uw-beave.805
Posted: Fri Jan 27 19:56:29 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 1-Feb-84 01:24:07 EST
Sender: root@uw-beave
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 44

From reid@Glacier Fri Jan 27 16:56:23 1984
Re: Terminology
  I have always preferred to use the term ``laser marking engine'' to
  describe something like the LBP-CX; it is not usable as a printer
  without the addition of a fairly complex controller.
  
  I like to use these terms:
	* marking engine: something that makes marks on paper,
	  controlled by a fairly complex set of digital signals.
	      There exist several marking engines that cost less than
	      $2000 each, of which the Canon LBP-CX is one.
	* laser printer: a marking engine combined with a controller
	  that can input the description of an image and some font 
	  prototypes and produce a printed page.
	      Imagen showed a laser printer built out of the LBP-CX at
	      a recent trade show. They asked me not to disclose its
	      price.
	* laser printing system: a laser printer combined with
	  appropriate fonts, font width tables, network spoolers, image
	  file editors, and so forth.

Re: Cheap laser printers
  The San Jose @i[ Mercury-News ], Silicon Valley's newspaper, in an
article dated 25 January 1984, quoted Apple's John Sculley as saying
that Apple would soon be introducing a laser printer for ``under
$5000''. It stands to reason that such a laser printer would be based
on a low-priced marking engine such as the LBP-CX. It also stands to
reason that such a laser printer would be compatible with Apple
computers, which is to say that it would not necessarily be compatible
with other computers; Apple does not have a history of building
industry-compatible computers or software.

Re: Image quality
  The image quality from the LBP-CX is absolutely breathtaking. It is
quite visibly better than the image quality from the Xerox XP-12
(a.k.a. QMS 1200, a.k.a. DEC LN01). I have some sample output from the
LBP-CX that I was given by a European colleague, which was printed by
Canon as part of a sales push for this device in Europe. It is
difficult to imagine that a xerography-based 300BPI raster printer
could be made to produce better output than this.

Brian Reid
Stanford