Speed and capacity still head user list of sought-after printer improvements

When Spanish fishing boats were caught casting their nets in Canadian waters last March, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans put its printers to work immediately.

Geographic information system (GIS) co-ordinator Michel Comeau and his staff created detailed maps showing exactly where the Spanish ships were situated, giving the Spaniards a graphical view of where they weren't supposed to be.

It was just one of several incidents in which maps saved the day for Canadian fish. A few years back it was the French who claimed they were the only ones fishing in a certain area of disputed waters surrounding St. Pierre and Miquelon, two islands off the coast of Newfoundland. Again, Fisheries and Oceans staff were able to produce maps detailing where both Canadian and French ships were sighted.

We keep historical records of ship sightings," recalls Comeau. "We showed theirs in small blue dots of the disputed area and on top of that we put Canadian sightings as bigger red dots. It completely wiped out their presence and cancelled their argument that they had a bigger presence in those waters that we did."

Without a well-run mapping operation, Fisheries and Oceans would be hard pressed to properly manage more than 400 Canadian fisheries.

The department also enforces regulations for the Northwestern Atlantic Fisheries Organization, managing the waters for NAFO that are more than 200 miles from shore. Ships are inspected, log books are checked, catches are estimated and borders are patrolled.

That's where the maps fit in. Although they are created on computers, there's a constant need for printouts that are used for both internal department work and for publication.

When Comeau was shopping around for a suitable printer, he had but two requirements: 11- by 17-inch output for easy reading and the PostScript page description language for its high-resolution graphic capabilities.

His choice rested on Lexmark's Color Jet-printer 4079 plus, a non-impact color thermal inkjet printer that prints one page per minute in color and 1.7 pages per minute in monochrome.

A few months ago, Giga Information Group of Norwell, Mass., asked 150 IS managers what features they would look for in their next printer purchase. Eighty-two per cent claimed faster speed was crucial, 56 per cent wanted PostScript capability, 53 per cent ranked higher paper capacities as important, and 47 per cent said 1,200 dots per inch would be a sure bet. Color was important to 24 per cent of the managers surveyed.

Bill Fournier, director of research at Toronto-based Evans Research Corp. (ERC), says color, higher speed and manageability are factors that printer manufacturers must keep in mind for today's government and commercial users.

For most technologies, (it) starts in business and then filters its way down to the home," says Fournier, who expects all output to be done on color machines in five years time. "Computers started in business and now everybody has home PCs. That worked the opposite way with color. Yes, color started in business but it was niche market kind of stuff for people in production departments or doing presentations. It's being driven from usage in the home and therefore is becoming more acceptable and more economical in business."

In ERC's newly-published report on the Canadian printer market, the numbers reveal that color printers are gaining in popularity. Color printer revenues stood at $232.9 million in 1995, up from $134.5 million the previous year. ERC expects this year's revenues to rise to $295.8 million.

While monochrome printers are still the number one choice when selecting a printer, sales are steadily declining nonetheless. Revenues went from $645.6 million in 1994 to $627.3 million last year. Revenues for 1996 are projected at $565.9 million, according to the ERC report.

As for speed, Fournier calls it a big factor.

The whole network laser market is moving upward into the plus-20-ppm (pages per minute) products," says Fournier. "Seventeen-ppm products were standard for network applications but that's moving upwards."

Comeau would love to see printers become faster. He says it sometimes takes half an hour to print the first map in a series of requests, mainly because the document has to go through the PostScript engine.

That's okay if you're doing one (map), but if the client wants 20 copies you will have production problems," he says. "You end up making a nice map but your reward is you have to produce 20 copies -- one English, one French, one color, one black-and-white -- and that's where we bog down."

That's why Comeau wants to get out of the printing world completely, opting instead for mapping software on every desktop. Printing loses content, he explains. A little dot might represent a ship but there's no opportunity for the user to query the name of the ship, its estimated catch and any other related data pertaining to it. With a printout, only tailor-made information can be shown.

The trouble with putting (maps) on paper is it's a snapshot of what you have on your computer," he says. "There's a limit to how much information you can stick on a piece of paper."

Managing network printing needs has caught the attention of vendors. Xerox Canada Ltd. of Toronto has just released its 17-ppm DocuPrint 4517 network laser printer featuring a mailbox/collator that sorts documents into personal trays. Systems administrators can assign lockable, password-accessible mailboxes to network users, ensuring confidential delivery of private documents.

Xerox also offers Document Services for Printing (DS/P), software that scans all available networked printers for, perhaps, which printer is equipped with legal size paper. The user will only get a message back when the completed job is sitting in the printer tray.

Everybody is getting leaner and meaner and it becomes more important to address the productivity issues," says Jocelyn Eisenberg, product marketing manager at Xerox's Desktop Products Group.

Beyond feeds and speeds and resolutions, there's a productivity factor that needs to be addressed as both corporations and governments downsize their operations."

Fujitsu Canada Inc. of Mississauga, Ont., is focusing its efforts on the cost-per-copy issue, offering customers better toner and memory management capabilities. Its PrintPartner 10 and PrintPartner 14 network-network-ready laser printers incorporate a toner management system which continually recycles the toner within the print unit to minimize toner waste. And the company's memory management technology squeezes more performance out of fewer megabytes.

For the network administrator or the purchasing people, cost per copy is a huge issue now," says Gord Toms, product marketing manager of Fujitsu's Printer division.

I've had some government people comment to me that originally they might have made their purchase decision on who had the lowest hardware costs. It turned out that those (vendors) did not necessarily have the lowest running costs and they were really hurt by those decisions.

It's almost to the point where hardware costs are taking a back seat to running costs."

Copyright Plesman Publications Ltd. Apr 1996
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved