Comments on: Giant printer arrives, is assessed, leaves http://www.freyburg.com/giant-printer-arrives-is-assessed-leaves.html Freyburg\'s take on media, politics and nerdery. Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:30:41 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Jean-Paul Samson http://www.freyburg.com/giant-printer-arrives-is-assessed-leaves.html#comment-302 Jean-Paul Samson Sat, 19 Jan 2008 22:42:21 +0000 http://www.freyburg.com/giant-printer-arrives-is-assessed-leaves.html#comment-302 I bought a Brother laser printer five or six years ago, an HL-1870N. Never again, let me tell you. It is a black and white network printer with duplexer costing over $1000. Brother didn't license high quality fonts, instead using their own inferior versions. So I ended up shelling out another $150 to buy the font upgrade for the printer so printed text wouldn't look like a cheap Chinese knockoff. And then there was the other problem... Pages with substantial graphics content would take an hour or two to print. Yes, that's right. A single page would take hours, if it ever printed at all. So I upgraded the memory to 144 MB, thinking this would solve the problem. No benefit whatsoever. So the printer was useless for outputting high-resolution graphics work. Brother uses their own knockoff PostScript interpreter, BR-Script. Maybe that was part of the problem. And yes, I did do my homework. The printer was well reviewed at the time, offering good image quality and a useful feature set for a reasonable price. Next time, I'd probably look at buying a Xerox laser printer. We had one at my former workplace, and it was a speed demon. I bought a Brother laser printer five or six years ago, an HL-1870N. Never again, let me tell you. It is a black and white network printer with duplexer costing over $1000.

Brother didn’t license high quality fonts, instead using their own inferior versions. So I ended up shelling out another $150 to buy the font upgrade for the printer so printed text wouldn’t look like a cheap Chinese knockoff. And then there was the other problem…

Pages with substantial graphics content would take an hour or two to print. Yes, that’s right. A single page would take hours, if it ever printed at all. So I upgraded the memory to 144 MB, thinking this would solve the problem. No benefit whatsoever. So the printer was useless for outputting high-resolution graphics work. Brother uses their own knockoff PostScript interpreter, BR-Script. Maybe that was part of the problem.

And yes, I did do my homework. The printer was well reviewed at the time, offering good image quality and a useful feature set for a reasonable price. Next time, I’d probably look at buying a Xerox laser printer. We had one at my former workplace, and it was a speed demon.

]]> By: jabberwocky http://www.freyburg.com/giant-printer-arrives-is-assessed-leaves.html#comment-300 jabberwocky Sat, 19 Jan 2008 19:29:16 +0000 http://www.freyburg.com/giant-printer-arrives-is-assessed-leaves.html#comment-300 Picture of size comparisons please. Picture of size comparisons please.

]]> By: Darren Barefoot http://www.freyburg.com/giant-printer-arrives-is-assessed-leaves.html#comment-299 Darren Barefoot Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:11:14 +0000 http://www.freyburg.com/giant-printer-arrives-is-assessed-leaves.html#comment-299 Yeah, they're pretty big, aren't they? I'll be curious to get back to Canada and actually, you know, lift one. Thanks for the review! Yeah, they’re pretty big, aren’t they? I’ll be curious to get back to Canada and actually, you know, lift one. Thanks for the review!

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