| I bought the printer at the Sears Business Center in Burlington
($566). They had about the best non-mailorder price. Here are some
"on-the-fly" comments on the printer:
The Epson LQ-850 is a 24-pin printer with numerous convenience features
including a number of built-in fonts, high-speed draft and
letter-quality modes, two font cartridge slots, push/pull tractor
feed, auto paper load, and much much more [does this sound like
an ad yet?].
The printer is quiet, relative to my RX80, and does quite a splendid
job of printing graphics. Using Fred Kohler's printer driver for
the LQ-800, you can select 4 different densities for graphics printing
- 90x90, 180x90, 180x180, and 360x180.
Print speed is conservatively estimated at 264 cps in 12 pitch draft
mode and 88 cps in letter quality mode. Letter quality fonts built-in
are Roman and Sans Serif. Pitch sizes are 10, 12, 15 CPI and
proportional.
Paper is loaded by flipping up the two tractor push feed latches
at the rear of the feed patch and inserting the paper. Flip the
latches down, press the LOAD/EJECT button and the paper automatically
moves to the top of the form. The top of form can be adjusted in
increments of 1/180" uses the FORM FEED and LINE FEED buttons while
ON LINE. The printer then memorizes the setting and will move to
that setting after subsequent loads and unloads of the paper. To
use single sheets or envelopes, just push the LOAD/EJECT button
to move the tractor feed paper out of the transport path and move
the tractor sheet lever to SHEET. Drop your sheet into the supplied
sheet feed guide and hit the LOAD/EJECT button to load the paper.
As long as the tractor/sheet lever is in the SHEET position, the
tractor feed paper remains out of the way.
After printing the first couple lines, the rollers (bail?) drop
onto the paper and help to "pull" the paper through. That means
jam-free paper movement! If you are using tractor feed paper, the
perforation automatically advances to the tear bar. When the next
print job begins, the paper automatically returns to the top of
form. That means no paper waste. Its all quite remarkable.
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