On Jan 18, 2005, at 4:52 AM, Collin Brendemuehl wrote:
Remember NLQ? Near Letter Quality
Sure do. I even remember real typewriters, and being privileged enough in typing class to get to use the electronic typewriters (with daisy-wheels) twice in a single year!.
I even remember when we were allowed to start writing in pen instead of pencil (I think I was about 10). I think our writing had to be of a certain neatness. Of course, I still prefer to use a pencil.
When 24-pin dot matrix printers make nice results for a cheaper and quieter price than a Qume Sprint 3/5, NEC SpinWriter, or Xerox. Not quite as good, but close enough for the material's recipient -- for the customer.
The one thing I miss about dot matrix is the fan-fold paper. It's just brilliant for printing out a whole file of program code without having it broken up into pages. Oh and laser-printed ASCII art just has no soul :)
The high quality & expensive B&W digital ink prints I've looked at fit the same definition. From normal viewing distance they look fine. Nice smooth tones. No banding. Really, really nice. (Albeit from $2000+ Epsons.)
Now for the point I was actually replying to :)
Regarding banding, it does pay to keep an eye on it. I had banding appear in a test print the other day. Of course, it didn't help that I hadn't run the head alignment routine since I had bought the printer... after I went through that my subsequent prints were stunning.
Caveat: This information should be viewed critically. It may merit as much technical excellence as a CBS news report.
The TV news around here is getting worse... they're down to speak ing in sin gle syl lab les now. The only part of the news I watch these days is the weather girl.
Cheers,
- Dave
http://www.digistar.com/~dmann/
