Re: Laser printer recommendations

Woody <usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Woody <usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[snip]

But when it comes down to it, computers are very cheap now compared to
how they were,

They're only cheap compared to what they were in the mid 1980s when the
absurdly expensive IBM PC and even more absurdly expensive Macintosh
prices had come to be accepted as `normal'.

anything in a case was expensive by todays standards. ie, anything not
in an easily destructable plastic case.

Ah! Of course - you put the hidden qualifiers on now, turning your
original bull*** claim into one that is true, but pointless and silly.

and not all of that comes from improvements.

I don't see that the original IBM PC - which was hugely expensive
compared to the competition - had /any/ technical merits over its
competitors.

It didn't. But it did have an IBM logo on it and a nice metal box.

And a lovely keyboard.

It was last decade's hardware run by last decade's
software and implemented in a very expensive and very clunky fashion -
but it took over the world.

Because people then and now are more driven by name than ability.

They're driven by fashion, by a desire to do what everyone else is
doing, by a desire to force everyone else to follow suit to validate
their own personal choice, and so on.

In short, people then as now are totally fuckwitted in general about
making decisions - nothing remotely resembling sense occurs in the heads
of most people when they make up their minds on anything.

In a fiercly
competitve world, if you can save $1 on the cost of a motherboard by
using cheaper capacitors, you have to do it.

You can say `We make reliable kit, but it costs a bit more' and get
sales that way because it is in fact more reliable.

Can you?

Yep.

Maybe a few sales, but when it comes to computer sales, the key
factor is price for most people.

<weary sigh> Yes, that is the point - and it's why we have such
shittily unreliable kit these days.

It's only the US consumer who's stupid enough to insist on the cheapest
thing all the time. It's why so much in the way of US consumer goods
are such poor quality.

I don't see the US consumer as any different than the UK consumer, the
purchasing habits are almost identical.

Not at all - it's why British bacon is generally excellent and why US
bacon is not. It's why British meat in general is a lot more expensive
than meat in the USA - UK meat production is more expensive than US meat
production because it's higher quality with much higher standards of
animal welfare because that's what the consumer wants in many cases.

The UK consumer is willing to pay more in many cases - for all that
*some* people will always buy the cheapest on offer. Not all of us are
that stupid, having found out that `cheapest' usually means `very poor
quality' - in many cases `such poor quality that it's fit for nothing
but the bin'.

(although I do have some toolbox sockets that cost me peanuts back in
the early 1990s. Made in Poland, they were - I had no idea if they were
any good or not, but I've been using them since and I seem to have got
one of those `fall of communism' bargains in this case)

[snip]

My powerbook 160/40 cost £1600 in 1992. How much does that compare with
my macbook pro at £1100 in 2007?

<shrug> Both are stupidly expensive compared to the £50 my dad paid for
the ZX81 in my cupboard back in 1981. Both are stupidly expensive
compared to the £235 he paid for the BBC Micro about a year later.

Obviously a model A I am guessing.

Yep.

I bought a model B and it was £399.

Model Bs started out at £335. Demand put the price up.

Allowing for inflation in the time, £399 is way more than I am buying
now.

`Way more'? How much is £399 (1983, say) in modern money?

Bear in mind that the BBC Micro Model B was the fully souped up version,
with all the bells and whistles that anyone could want including a set
of interfaces that makes pretty much all modern PCs look sick - not to
mention being the most computationally powerful 8 bit home micro ever.

If you're looking at the price of a BBC Model B, you want to compare it
to (say) a top of the line Mac Pro. How does it compare to that?

If you want to compare a cheap modern PC to a 1980s PC, you need to
compare like with like; put it up against Sinclair pricing.

If you want to compare a modern PC to (say) an Amiga, you need to
compare a fully souped up high end modern PC with a top line graphics
card suitable for pro work.

Compare like with like - it's important.

I wasn't counting the ZXs as they didn't even have a proper keyboard and
they weren't reliable enough to use for most tasks.

Which is just total bull***.

Both are stupidly expensive compared to the £400-odd that you'd spend on
an Arc or an Amiga from the 1980s.

I don't know. How much was an amiga or archemedies with a hard disk back
then?

<sigh> Why not just compare unlike things?

Hard disc drives were almost unheard of back then. Compare like with
like, that's what you should be doing.

What does that work out as now.
I know that in 1984 I went to buy a house that cost £25,000 and a couple
of years ago bought one that cost £150,000. at the same rate that would
make my powerbook the equivilent of £166 now.

Yeah, but house price changes have nothing to do with the matter at all.

[snip]

I am almost decided on getting a laser. I looked at the HPs, but
the thing that puts me off is the reports of them telling you
they are out of toner when they are far from it.

I don't think those reports are true.

I have no way of saying as I don't have one, but there are quite a lot
of reports saying that is what happens.

Yeah, but can you trust the data collection? In this case, I think not.

I neither trust or distrust it. Currently there are people that say it
happens and people that say it doesn't. It is enough to create doubt.

Why not pay attention to the details of what really happens?

I did, but what happens to you may not be what happens to everyone.

Of course not! But what I see might well be what happens to /most/
people - you don't seem to want to consider that possibility.

I don't see any reason, based on my understanding of people, technology,
and how people interact with technology, that what I see is any
different to what people see when they complain about the `low toner'
warning turning up too soon.

Now I'm thinking about it, I've met people whinging about a `low toner'
warning before now. There's a certain kind of person who thinks that
the warning is wrong if it turns up *before* print quality has begun to
deterioriate - whereas, of course, the reason for the warning is so you
can get a new cartridge in stock so that when you need it, it's ready.

Never mind the opinions - get away from the opinions, and find out what
goes on. I've told you something about the way it really works, about
what's going on.

Has anyone else done that?

I have read views from other people who have said what went on as well.

What went on, exactly?

FWIW, I got another 5000-odd pages (IIRC) out of my nominally 6000 page
cartridge before print quality became iffy enough to worry about.

And I don't think the `low toner' warning turned up too soon.

[snip]

Tektronics, surely? Anyway, Tektronics 'scopes are always the really
impressive ones.

Yes, that is them.

Actually i was never a huge fan of Tektronics scopes. Their normal
analogue ones left me fairly cold. Their digital ones were far better.

<snort> You've never met the good kit, then.

I have met the really really good kit. I did that for a living for many
years.

Okay, so you've got no soul.

I've got a Tektronics
storage 'scope that's as old as I am. 150MHz, dual beam, purely
analogue (heh - a '67 'scope in a '67 house owned by a '67 bloke (no,
really). I suppose I should get myself a '67 bike in the garage, too.)

It's lovely - and no-one's come up with a better analogue 'scope control
arrangement that Tektronics.

That is a bit historic for me. I was refering to new equipment used day
to day as the principle piece of equipment.

I met Tektronics 'scopes in the 1970s.

I didn't get on with the tektronix, I was more a philips guy,

(admittedly, this particular 'scope is unrepairable and has a few things
that don't work quite right on both channels but sod it, it's history.

Yes, history. There are some interesting historic things, but not much
use on a day to day basis.

If the knobs all worked, it'd be super for daily use.

[snip]

Technically the HP was better but the tektronics was much faster to use
and had better triggering.

<puzzled> Surely that means the Tektronics was technically better?

The HP had more channels and was a faster (stored a faster waveform)
scope. I needed the extra channels and the speed, as I was doing digital
stuff rather than video. The tectronix exceled at the video stuff.

Righto. Somehow, that doesn't surprise me - the Tektronics 'scope was
better as a scope, but the HP 'scope had the extra channels and fancier
looking spec.

Tektronics excelled at vectorscopes, but luckily I didn't have to do
much of that. HP did make very good logic analysers, although a bit
expensive.

I never liked the HP logic analyser I met, because the manual was ***.

The manual did the job for me.

It failed to provide information on operational principles, so it meant
I could not use the device at all.

That was a different time, different place though. I now don't do
electronics but did buy a handheld 20MHz digital scope that runs on
batteries. Technology has got so trivial now.

How do you mean?

When I was an electronic engineer, a handheld LCD digital storage scope
that ran on batteries was the stuff of dreams. Or at least one that I
could afford was.
Now they are cheap. Not just that, lots of electronic things.

Ah - so you're not talking about technology in general, just some
aspects of it.

I think you're referring to the unremarkable effect that's been
continuing for thousands of years: what used to be rare and expensive
high-tech becomes trivial and commonplace with the passage of time.

Once upon a time, a steel knife was a pinnacle of high technological
achievement that hardly anyone had access to. Now, we've all got a big
stash of 'em in the kitchen.

It's no surprise that the same thing is happening to electronics kit.
If you had any historical perspective, it'd be unremarkable to you too -
but I know that you treasure your wilful refusal to learn about the
world around you and bury your head in the sand and ignore the past.

The last bit of HP electronic test gear I used had a manual that
made it impossible to learn how to use it. All you could do was
look up the procedure for performing particular tests - nothing
about operating principles or anything to permit the novice user to
learn about the instrument and how to use it.

From my point of view, that is what I wanted.

But unless you have instruction on the operating principles, you cannot
rely on any measurement you make with the instrument.

Of course you can. It is a logic analyser, all the measurements are
relative to the other measurements.

You obviously don't understand what I'm on about at all.

I knew the opererating
principles

How can that be, if the manual does not explain the operation of the
instrument?

Because I already knew how to use an HP logic analyser. They are
reasonable simple bits of equipment.

<pained> No, I'm talking about the internal operation of the device -
about how it goes about doing its measurements.

and the manual is there to look up a section that is unclear.
Well, I saw the logic analyser manual, I only read parts of the
oscilloscope manual as I was bored at lunch one day (actually i was
bored at lunch many days).

So there was no way I could trust any of the data it gave me - a very
expensive and scientifically totally useless bit of test gear.

These were worth every penny, and a lot of pennies were involved too!

Test gear's worthless unless it can give you verifiable valid data, and
you can't get that unless you have a thorough understanding of the
operating principles and you cannot get that without a manual to explain
it all or doing it the hard way by reverse engineering.

Of course you can.

How? Mind reading?

I was using the logic analyser and the oscilliscope
to repair equipment, not to write some thesis.

So what? I've only ever used electronic measuring equipment to get
data. I want verifiable data no matter what. It's impossible to get
that without a good understanding of the operating principles of the
instrumentation you're using - and you can't get that without a manual
or reverse engineering (or equivalent).

And I did it day in, day out, as many engineers across the world do.

Yes, using data that you cannot rely on. For sure it'll get you where
you want to go most of the time - but unless you understand the
operating principles, it will trip you up and mislead you at other
times.

These are really, really simple pieces of equipment

Or quite astonishingly intricate, sensitive, flexible, and subtle from
other points of view.

Dismissing an oscilloscape as a really, really simple piece of equipment
is - well, so wrong it's insanity.

and apart from
marginal differences between them they are remarkably similar and very
simple to use.

Yes, that's the sort of reasoning that I've met which has caused people
to approach me and say `What the hell's it doing this for, eh?'

And it's taken me, me who got pilloried for *reading the manual and
finding out how it worked* to explain to these cowboys (of the same sort
as you) what they'd got wrong - and it's always basically assuming the
sort of stuff you assume.

I know you can't understand anything without a manual,

And I know that no matter how often I try to explain the *real*
situation, there's no way of getting any understanding into your tiny
brain encased in its thick skull.

but I can, we
have had this conversation many times before.

Yes, and it seems you've never understood my point of view at all.

What on earth would you expect to gain from the manual of an
oscilliscope?

A full understanding of the operating principles, of the patholologies
and limitations of the device, and so on.

It's especially important with digital 'scopes.

But I suppose that's the difference between someone with a scientific
background and someone with more of a technician's attitude

True, I was doing a job.

Engineers need to take the same line that I took - technicians don't.

understand the above point thoroughly, whereas you seem to disregard it
entirely, taking the line that if the instrument says something, it must
be true.

No, the instrument may or may not be saying the right thing (or there
may be something else involved). However, it gives you an indication of
an area to look.

*IF* you interpret the data correctly - which you can't do without a
proper understanding of the equipment.

A scientist is looking for something completely different to an
engineer.

Bollocks.

A scientist is trying to prove a point or obtain some
evidence, and largely speaking has a lot of time to do it in.

This is just so totally wrong I don't know what to say.

An *experimental* scientist is trying to *test* a point, find out if
it's true or false. That's exactly the same as what engineers do when
they make measurements - `does reality match my model' is the basic
question in both cases.

Engineers - if they're competent to build a bridge, say - pay as much
attention to getting verified answers as scientists, it's just that
engineers are more like experimental scientists than theoretical
scientists in that they're happy to accept solutions without firm
mathematical proof.

Theoretical scientists are only interested in experiments after the
results are in - and they just want to know what the results are.
Ignore 'em - they can barely make tea without practical assistance.

An
engineer is trying to get something working and generally has a time and
financial constraint.

You have a problem in that you don't understand the practice of either
science or engineering as far as I can tell.

Scientists always have tight time and financial constraints on them -
/much/ tighter financial constraints than engineers and the time
constraints are often insane; the only reason they can be met at times
is that academics can re-arrange their work schedules with great
flexibility. I should know; I'm married to an academic scientist.

Scientists are trying to get something working too - and just like
engineering, it's got to work properly.

Just like engineers, scientists need the real data. Unlike an engineer,
if a scientist gets it wrong, the bridge doesn't collapse killing
hundreds: it's a lot more important for an engineer to be certain his
data is fully reliable and verified.

Rowland.


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