Next-generation color lasers from Apple and Tektronix set high standards for print quality, connectivity, and convenience
Tom Thompson
The first generation of sub-$10,000 color lasers, introduced last year, suffered from complicated setup and lackluster out-of-the-box network capabilities. In short, they didn't work as advertised.
Enter Tektronix, the color printer kingpin, and Apple, creator of the desktop publishing market. Both companies know the color market well, and it shows in their latest color lasers: Apple's Color Laser 12/600 and Tektronix's Phaser 540. (The Phaser 540 Plus became available just after this review; it's a 540 with legal-size printing capability and a somewhat faster printing speed for the same $8995 price.)
Both of these printers
readily manage true 600-dp
i output; are easy to set up, thanks to a monocomponent print technology that dispenses with the developer cartridges; and are platform-agnostic, coming with drivers for Macintosh, PC, and Unix systems.
Apple's Color Laser 12/600
Big and heavy, the Apple Color Laser 12/600 occupies a 21- by 23-inch area and weighs in at 110 pounds. A 25-MHz AMD 29030 RISC processor manages the printer's smarts, and 8 MB of ROM houses an Adobe PostScript Level 2 interpreter, 39 Type 1 fonts, and code that handles AppleTalk, NetWare IPX, and TCP/IP protocol stacks. Custom ASICs manage data compression and decompression and accelerate Apple's image-enhancement software.
Because the printer receives compressed image data, it needs less RAM than most color printers -- only 12 MB (which comes in the base $6989 configuration). The board holds up to 40 MB of RAM in two industry-standard 72-pin SIMM sockets.
The controller board sports a medley of I/O ports: Ethernet (Apple AUI [attachmen
t unit interface] connector), LocalTalk, and IEEE P1284 bidirectional parallel, plus an HDI-30 SCSI port for adding font-caching hard drives. The controller scans all ports for data and can field incoming jobs of different network protocols. The Canon HX LBP print engine generates up to 3 pages per minute for color output and up to 12 ppm for monochrome.
Phaser 540
With a 19.5- by 27.4-inch footprint and weighing 117 pounds, the Phaser 540 is also a bruiser. It uses an AMD 29030 controller (running at 32 MHz instead of 25 MHz). The ROMs provide Adobe PostScript Level 2 with 39 Type 1 fonts and include a PCL5 (Printer Control Language) interpreter. Standard RAM is 20 MB, expandable to 52 MB. A P1284 bidirectional parallel port and a SCSI-2 port are both standard.
You can attach the $1695 Phaser CopyStation option to add color-copying capability. An optional Phaser Share board ($595) provides either an Ethernet or a Token Ring network interface; both support AppleTalk, IPX
, and TCP/IP (which is an extra $295). The controller switches between network protocols and emulations automatically. The Phaser 540's KME print engine can produce 3-1/2 ppm for color and 14 ppm for monochrome at 600 dpi.
Blazing Colors
Setup for both printers is as easy as it gets: Basically, it takes around 15 minutes to insert the photoconductor drum/belt and the four toner cartridges. Overall, the Phaser 540 handled print jobs faster than the Color Laser 12/600 because of its faster processor. The overhead of data decompression may also slow down the Apple printer. The Color Laser 12/600 processed the BYTE color PostScript test (which measures the speed of the PostScript interpreter) in 129 seconds, while the Phaser 540 fielded it in just 59 seconds.
The Color Laser 12/600's operation was initially marred by its acute sensitivity to a bad cable on BYTE's network. The printer lost data packets and had them resent until it finally timed out. After we removed the fault
y cable, the printer operated flawlessly. However, the Phaser 540, a Hewlett-Packard LaserJet IIID, and an Apple LaserWriter Pro 630 -- all located within several feet of the Color Laser 12/600 and connected to the same network -- experienced no network difficulties from the bad wire. Apple is aware of the problem.
Both printers handled Mac and Windows print jobs without a hitch. Plain-paper output from these printers is simply outstanding, and output with photographic images is good enough to threaten sales of dye-sublimation printers. There is little overall quality difference between the two printers, although the Apple unit appeared to do better on more types of images than the Tektronix unit did.
If you're running lots of Windows applications that speak PCL5, consider the Phaser 540. If you're dealing with PostScript, either printer is suitable. While the Phaser 540 is substantially faster, it also carries a higher price tag. An Ethernet-equipped Phaser 540 with TCP/IP support costs $9885,
while the Color Laser 12/600 comes with Ethernet standard (including TCP/IP support) for $6989.
Product Information
Color Laser 12/600 $6989
Apple Computer, Inc.
Cupertino, CA
(800) 538-9696
(408) 996-1010
Phaser 540 $8995
Tektronix, Inc.
Wilsonville, OR
(800) 835-6100
(503) 682-7377
photo_link (66 Kbytes)
Sub-$10,000 color lasers: the Tektronix Phaser 540 (left) and the Apple Color Laser 12/600.
Tom Thompson is a BYTE senior technical editor at large with a B.S.E.E. from the University of Memphis. He is an Associate Ap
ple Developer. You can contact him on AppleLink as "T.THOMPSON" or on the Internet or BIX at
tom_thompson@bix.com
.
To Print a Rainbow
