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Back to the Forum Archives Now, what does all of that mean? Ledger size is the name we give to paper that is 11" x 17". That is equivalent to two standard letter pages. I use this size for my catalogs and for cover proofs of my books. For my catalogs these pages when folded in half make a nice 8 & 1/2 X 11 catalog. For sure, this assumes I lay the pages out correctly. Auto duplexing is also handy for catalogs and proof printing. All it means is the printer will print on both sides of the paper automatically I don't have to mess around printing one side then feeding the sheets back through manually. That is how I used to print duplex. I can state for the record, no printer I have ever owned can do that without ruining half of the pages on the second pass. This can get very expensive in materials and in my time, to say nothing of frustrating. For me, auto duplex has become a must have feature for printers. Single pass printing means exactly that. The page goes through the printer once for all four colors. It has a print cartridge for each of the colors and the page passes through each one in order before it goes through the fuzer. This is how the 30 PPM print speed is achieved. Of course this is not true for duplex printing. For that, there is a unit inside the printer that grabs the page and feeds it back through. So duplex printing is about 15 PPM, give or take. While we are on that point, all the numbers I give on this printer are based on one side of an 8 & 1/2 x 11 page. The 30 PPM is for one sided printing. Both sides would be two pages or about 15 sheets per minute. For both sides of a ledger sized sheet we would get 7 & 1/2 sheets per minute. That's still quite fast. The 500 MHZ processor and 20 GB hard drive means the printer has a mind of its own, so to speak. The printer controls itself rather than relying on the processor power of the computer feeding the jobs to it. As it was explained to me, the hard drive is a way of having a kind of print on demand. If we store a file on the printer's hard drive, all we need do is tell the printer to print that file. It will not be necessary to spool it to the printer again. I have not checked out that feature yet. When I do my next catalog, I may try it. Adobe postscript 3 and PCL5 are page layout languages used in the printing industry. PCL5 is a Hewlett Packard proprietary language. Postscript is, of course, proprietary to Adobe. All it means is, the printer will not have to interpret files in either of these formats. It will recognize them and print them correctly. This kind of technical stuff is usually not important to normal people using a computer and printer. It becomes very important in my business, book publishing. It means, when I print a Postscript type document on this printer it will be a real proof. When my book manufacturer prints it, it will look exactly the same. I can tell you, when I am laying out several grand to get a book manufactured, I want reliable proofs. Now to the Pantone color standards. Pantone is the name of a company and of a proprietary method for defining color spaces. In publishing, we cannot be as loose with color definitions as, say, the auto advertizing people. Estate Green, may be a jazzy name for a van color, but you can believe the paint company has an exact formula for that paint. It will be stated in percentages of some basic colors. It will be the same every time they mix it. Pantone color definitions are done in the same way. If we are working in the CMYK color space a particular color will be defined in percentages of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. CMYK is the standard color space for the printing industry. Pantone provides, at a cost of course, charts of all the colors that can be defined. Each color on the chart is assigned a number. Then, instead of specifying Estate Green, we would specify Pantone 348 CVC. Now everyone we deal with will know exactly how to generate that color. This new printer will also know how to produce the color. Thus, when I do a color proof on this printer, it will be a real proof. When I proof a new book cover, I can be confident that the book cover will actually look like that. There is a lot more to this business of color space. Necromancy and prayer for example, but that is the general idea. Notice that I have two large paper tray. This means I can load one with letter sized paper and one with ledger sized paper. I don't have to mess around switching paper all the time. I simply specify which tray. There is also a manual feed tray for those occasions when I want some special paper, like photo quality. Speaking of photo quality, the output from this printer really impressed me. I was a bit dubious about the print quality at first, but a visit to the local dealer sold me. He showed me output from this printer and the Xerox 7700DN. He made the point that the 7700 is a bit better. Sure enough, when I took out my jeweler's loop and pressed my nose against the paper, there was a vague difference. In this case, I decide that what I could not see with the naked eye would not hurt me. I went with the 7300 and I have not been disappointed. The prints I have made so far compare in quality to the color pages of a slick magazine, like Good Housekeeping. Now we can talk consumables. As to that, this printer came with a full set of consumables. That is not usually the case. There is a classic dishonesty among many companies who make and market products that use consumables. That is to ship the product with a cheater set of consumables. Many printer companies do this. You get enough to get through a trial period. then you must order more and you are suddenly stunned to discover the true cost of the product that seemed so inexpensive a week ago. Next let's talk about other myths. All of the consumable costs that printer makers use in their color printer advertising is based on 5% coverage. That is pure bull and everyone knows it. It is dishonest as hell. When we shell out for a color printer it is not because we want to highlight the first paragraph in a letter or pop in a cute clipart. We want to print colored photos, invitations, and full coverage graphics. Xerox gives us a better approach for this. They offer a page cost chart based on percent coverage for more typical applications. This allows us to honestly estimate costs for atypical document. For my typical catalog pages, the cost is about $0.15 per 8 1/2' x 11' page. It is not nearly as cheap as the ads make it out to be. On the other hand, it is an order of magnitude less that the equivalent inkjet costs would be. And, the output is slick magazine quality. You only need place a high quality inkjet output beside a high quality laser output to see the difference. It is unmistakable. While we are on it, the inkjet manufactures carry the Gillette motto to an extreme. He is alleged to have said, "Give them the razors. Sell them the blades," and he did just that. While the inkjet makers do not exactly give us the printers, they do sell them at very low cost. Then they more than make up for that with the outrageous costs of consumables, namely the inks. On any printer, be it inkjet or laser, the true cost of the printer will be reflected in the ongoing cost of the consumables rather than the initial printer cost. The bottom line is, if you really want color, the overall costs are lower with a laser printer that with an inkjet. You get much better quality with much lower cost and solid durability. If you want to do a lot of high quality printing that will last, the color laser printer is a no-brainer decision. Now let's dwell on this issue of durability. The manufacturers will tell you all kinds of bologna about the durability of inkjet output with respect to sun and ultraviolet exposure. What they will not tell you is the ink is water soluble. They will not tell you how it will stand the most likely hazard, a coffee spill. If you get an inkjet document damp, it will be ruined. Not so with a laser output. The dye is fused to the paper when it is output. I have heard rumors about inks that are not water soluble, but I have never seen one. Now this printer is big and not cheap. If I did not need ledger
size it would be much less in size and price. This one cost,
don't gasp, $5450.00. It weighs about 200 pounds with its stand
and both paper trays. It is about 2 feet wide, 2 feet deep, and
about four feet high with its stand. As to the size, I have room
for it. As to the price, I cannot look at it as the cost of a
printer. I must look at it as part of the per page cost. I expect
to defray that over thousands of printed pages. It will become
a couple of cents per page. Within two years this printer will
become less expensive than the crummy inkjet printer I was using.
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