Inexpensive, Fast, and Slow to Acceptance

Dave Andrews

Whether they're based on Microsoft's At Work or Destiny Technology's (Santa Clara, CA) WinStyler printing architecture, Windows printers can deliver high-quality output, fast printing, and, through bidirectional feedback, instantaneous, user-friendly information regarding a print job's status.

Also, because they use a desktop PC's CPU and RAM to off-load tasks such as rasterization, which previously required a powerful RISC processor and memory in a traditional printer, Windows printers are inexpensive. For example, Destiny predicts laser printers based on its 1200-dpi WinStyler solution will ship in the second half of this year in the $750 price range.

Even so, market analysts and managers at leading printer vendors see slow market acceptance of this printer category. One of the problems with Windows printers has been incomplete networking. Printers based on the WinStyler technology can currently communicate only with the desktop PC to which they are connected. Current At Work-based printers, such as the LexMark WinWriter 600, are networkable, but only the PC that is directly connected to the printer gains the benefit of bidirectional feedback through the graphical At Work interface.

Destiny planned to improve WinStyler's networking capabilities by shipping to vendors in August a solution that delivers bidirectional feedback to users on NetWare and Windows for Workgroups networks; printers based on this new technology should start appearing in the first half of 1995. And Microsoft says it will add bidirectional communications over networks in a future release of its At Work software.

Another problem with Windows printers is their incomplete DOS support. For example, printers based on the current WinStyler technology requir e you to print from MS-DOS applications inside Windows, but not all applications can print this way.

Analysts at BIS Strategic Decisions (Norwell, MA) believe that as more users buy new Windows PCs, Windows printing will eventually take off as a product category: Until then, the engineers and marketers in Santa Clara and Redmond will be busily working on new versions of their solutions and educating the market.

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Windows printers: pros and cons

PROS                                  CONS
-- Fast printing, thanks to a         -- Networking is currently incomplete
   high-speed parallel interface      -- Trade-offs with printing
-- Inexpensive                           inside DOS applications
-- Bidirectional feedback             -- Benefits are hard to communicate
                                         to end users