From: John Champion <dedjhc@arco.com>
Subject: Re: Opinion on GCC Laser Printers
Organization: Arco Alaska Inc.
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 03:14:56 GMT

In article <20077.2B38A01F@zeus.ieee.org> Eric Choi,
Eric.Choi@zeus.ieee.org writes:
>I have seen ads by GCC regarding their line of laser printers. One of the
>claims is always the ability to print edge to edge using their
proprietary
>printer driver. I assume the ability to add more RAM helps also. GCC
printers
>are Okidata printers with GCC's ROM and may be more.
>
>I would appreciate any feedback about GCC line of printers, especially
this
>edge to edge feature. Also, are they quick in updating their printer
driver
>when Apple releases a new System?
>
>Can this edge to edge printing be achieved using a Apple NTX or the
IIf/IIg as
>long as extra memory is installed, or it is uniquely GCC's?

I had a GCC BLP Elite printer for about a year, and I thought I could
provide a little insight... I liked the printer overall, but there are 
both limitations and advantages you might want to consider.

The edge to edge printing is fabulous.  It actually will print right out 
to the edge of the page, but the toner doesn't stick quite right as you 
get very close to the edge (I'm talking about a very small distance from 
the edge, like about 1 mm).  To use edge to edge printing, you have to 
select the "Letter edge to edge" page size from the pull down menu on 
the page setup dialog, and you have to select "larger printer area" 
using the "options" button in the page setup dialog.  The edge to edge 
printing is a function of the Okidata engine itself, not the memory 
size.  It's not possible for the Apple Laserwriters to do this.

The print quality is quite good, although I always felt that it was not 
as good the Laserwriter II from work (only marginally though).  Printing 
speed is relatively slow for the BLP Elite since it's a 68000 CPU, but 
for pages of text it was not noticeable at all.

Upgrading the memory is more costly for this printer because it takes a
special board, rather than industry standard SIMM's.  Off the top of my
head, I think it was $295 for a 2 MB upgrade, but I could be wrong.

Updating the printer driver is really not a problem, because you can 
update it yourself by copying a few resources from the GCC driver to the 
updated apple driver (assuming you know how to use ResEdit).  The GCC 
printer driver is just apple's printer driver with a few custom page 
size rectangles added (offhand, I don't remember the resources, but you 
can find out by comparing the GCC driver to the same version of the
apple driver and see what was added).

I recently sold the printer to get an HP Laserjet 4M, but only because I
needed 600 dpi and more page memory for desktop publishing work.

I did have one problem with the printer.  A switch that detects when the
paper tray is in place got out of adjustment, so the printer thought the
paper tray was not there.  It was fixed under warranty without any
trouble.

I also know two other people who have the same printer at home, and they
are happy with theirs.

Hope this helps.
    -John
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John Champion  dedjhc@arco.com   Arco Alaska, Inc.  Kuparuk, Alaska
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