[hjlee]

Can any one provide some help? I'm in the process of looking for a color laser in the $3000 - $5000 price range. Looking for the following (in order of importance):

1. Accurate and consistent color output from Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, PowerPoint.

2. Must be reliable and compatible in a mix Mac/PC environment on an NT network. Easy to troubleshoot and maintain -- paper jams, changing toner, etc.

3. Sharp text.

4. Good printing speed. 2-3 PPM or faster (realworld performance) on high quality.

So far I've narrowed it down to the Tektronix 740DX and 840 Designer Edition, and a HP 4500N. I was at MacWorld SF and was pretty impressed by what Tektronix had to offer. However, my boss, who is a big PC guy, wants to get an HP (we have a couple of HP black and white lasers. They are reliable and he wants to standardize.) But since I'm going to be the primary user of this printer, I'm the one who gets to make the decision.

Can anyone help? Has any one used any of these printers? How about other printers you recommend? Thanks in advance.

Henry

[This message has been edited by hjlee (edited 01-23-2000).]

[duboy]

hjlee, I have had the opportunity to work with the Tektronix Phaser Series of printers. I must say that they are very reliable, and WYSIWYG. The tones come out very even and clear. I would suggest the Tektronix. :-)

[drewman]

Tektronix's printer division just got sold to Xerox. Make sure that you like Xerox's support before committing.

Who's to say the the Phaser series will be continued past the transition time. Sure, Xerox says they support it...

drewman

[shorton]

I have a Tektronics 740P (64RAM, 10BT, 1200dpi max) for a bit over a year. No problems with jams, media, printer at all. Apple's laserwriter with the PPD files from Tektronics adds several nice features to the driver. Time to first print due to warm up is slow (2-3 minutes) but once on and running am very satisfied with print speeds. Amount of RAM and network speed will influence this too I suppose and I don't have a disk drive connected to the printer but there is a SCSI port for one. It's also Postscript 3. Text is razor and graphics are very good, but not high end dye sub quality.

Xerox wrote to me as did my vendor assuring me of support, sales, toner, etc. etc. Made it sound like Xerox has every intension of continuing to sell and serivce the 740.

Standardization. What kind of crap is that? Who wants inferior products just so they can be the same as eveyone elses? Give me a break and tell me that anyone who can plug an ehternet calbe into the back and install software can't run the printer because it isn't an HP. Now I've heard it all...

BTW-Tek install CD has lots of sophisticated networking tools for an administrator to control the printer, log usage, etc. etc. Even can be set up with a TCP address for TCP access and remote management/administration.

Good luck.

What about the QMS printers? I am trying to decide between the Xerox and the QMS.

[hjlee]

Thanks everyone for your input. I ended up getting the Tek 740Plus after visiting a dealer who had both Teks and the HP. The HP is just plain ugly and huge, and there are quite a few design flaws with it. Another problem with the HP is widely reported paper jams. It also doesn't support PostScript Level 3 -- very important for Illustrator 8 and InDesign.

The output from both Teks are very good, but definitely not high end dye-sub quality. I decided on the 740 over the 840 because printouts were sharper and not so vulnerable to scratches.

Got the printer on Friday. Colors were pretty accurate, except for blues. But after a little tweaking with the printer settings, blues are coming out much better, but not perfect. Probably still needs further tweaking but I am quite satisfied. Output is slightly better or the same as the inkjets we have in the office. But the Tek is way way faster. This is a great production printer for cranking out larger numbers of color pages -- exactly what I need. Now those agonizingly long wait times with inkjets are over!

Henry

[This message has been edited by hjlee (edited 01-31-2000).]