They get everything printed right the first time.
Then again, if their printing volume is too high, a snaillike printer
still will bog them down.
And if they’re using their computer system to store and print notes or
records, a faster machine is a must. That’s especially true if you’re
churning out nothing but long rows of numbers. If best impressions don’t
count, you might consider a high-speed dot matrix capable of more than
150 characters per second—or even 200 or greater.
My Panasonic dot matrix was somewhat of a compromise, with a draft speed
advertised at 180 characters per second and a near-letter-quality one of
around 33 cps.
_WARNING_: Please note that advertised speeds may be one-third or more
higher than the actual speeds. The advertised speeds may not consider
factors such as the time it takes the printer to go from one line to
another. This is particularly true the case of =unidirectional=
printers, which print only from left to right rather than in both
directions, as do =bidirectional= printers.
The only real way to judge a printer speed in your application is to try
it with your own sample material.
PRINT QUALITY
Here’s the hierarchy of printer quality:
1. =Draft quality.= The letters are too dotty for anything but drafts
and correspondence with enemies whose eyes you want to torture.
2. =Correspondence quality.= It’ll do for a letter to a forgiving friend
or business associate.
3. =Near-letter quality.= You can get away with it for book manuscripts,
especially if you already have a contract.
4. =Letter quality.= That’s typewriter quality.
A friend described my Microprism’s supposed “near-letter quality” as
looking like “an upscale grocery store receipt.” It was a long way from
a daisy wheel.
Still, Judith Axler Turner, a nationally syndicated computer columnist,
says dot matrix might actually help her at times; she can print the
letters larger than regular typewritten characters. Her manuscripts
command more attention.
A Washington lawyer fared worse using a dot-matrix machine without
near-letter quality. A judge threw out his brief.
We dot-matrix plebeians, before buying, should test the print quality on
a number of people, especially colleagues or clients. Are they happy
with the shapes, sizes, and quality of the characters? Do they feel that
our dots blend smoothly into each other? Usually, the more pins a
dot-matrix printer has, the better will be the printing. Many dot-matrix
printers in late 1984 had a matrix of seven-by-nine wires. In 1984 Epson
was selling the $1,500 LQ-1500 with twice that density and
“letter-quality characters to rival fine office typewriters.” I looked
one over. The typewriters were still winning.
Sales reps will bill the LQ-1500 and many other dot matrixes as being
capable of both (a) lightning speeds with draft-print quality and (b)
slower speeds with good quality. Is it “good” enough for you? If not,
consider buying a speedy dot matrix or ink jet for routine work and a
daisy wheel for the times you want the best impression. The combined
cost may be lower than that of a super-duper dot matrix.
If you’re doing serious work with graphics, look for a printer capable
of reproducing details as well as a good computer monitor does. Daisy
wheels won’t suffice because of the tremendous number of strikes; doing
one dot at a time is incredibly slow, and their preformed characters
don’t include the variety of patterns that good graphics require. You
really need an ink jet, dot matrix, or other alternative.
COST
With printer technology advancing so rapidly, I didn’t want to sink much
into a machine—hence, the $489 Panasonic. Sometime in the 1980s I’ll
forsake my cheapie dot matrix for a good ink-jet, thermal-transfer, or
laser printer when the price is down.
When pondering costs, don’t just look at a printer’s price tag. What
about ribbons? How many pages will they print? And how much do they sell
for? My IDS ribbons listed for around $12 apiece, but luckily I could
get around that by (1) buying at a discount place and (2) eventually
purchasing a little machine called a MacInker, which, for less than a
dime, let me reink a ribbon. It’s messy. Don’t inflict a MacInker on a
Fortune 500 secretary, or _any_ secretary, but think about one, maybe,
as a way of being frugal at home. The MacInker is available from
Computer Friends, 6415 SW Canyon Court, Suite #10, Portland, Oregon
97221. The telephone number is 1-800/547-3303, or 503/297-2321. The
gadget as of mid-1984 was selling for around $60 if you included ink and
shipping charges.
PRINTING VOLUME
I wanted to be able to churn out a book manuscript in one weekend
without overwhelming the printer.
Before you buy a printer, ask the manufacturer if it can handle not only
your typical workload but also your peak one.
Cheaper printers may overheat—just when you most need them.
A DECENT REPAIR RECORD
A printer is an electromechanical device. That’s a fancy way of saying
it may break down a lot.
An electromechanical device, after all, is partly mechanical—which makes
it less reliable than the gizmos in your computer system that are purely
electronic.
If you can afford backup machines, naturally the repair record won’t be
as crucial, but no matter what, do compare statistics on the mean time
between failures. Remember, they’re like EPA ratings for automobiles.
They’re wrong, frequently, and may not apply to the printer _you_ end up
with. But don’t shrug them off entirely.
QUIET (OR RELATIVE QUIET)
My daisy—with the little hammer pounding away—was too noisy for the late
hours. Older dot matrixes also can be offenders; they can almost shriek
with high-pitched sounds. Some of the newer ones may be better behaved.
Sharing an office-apartment or working from an ordinary office, however,
you might buy a sound-muffling box and wrestle with pulling paper in and
out of it.
When good, cheap ink jets and laser printers hit the market, these noise
hassles will end.
SPECIAL FEATURES
“Will it underline?” I asked. And would it offer =boldface=, the dark,
heavy print that books often use for emphasis.
And what about other special features? How about =proportional spacing=,
for instance, which prints the “M” wider than a “j”—making the type look
more like a book’s. That could make the print more readable.
Another question is, “Does the printer offer =justification=?” It’s
really a software issue. But we’ll group it here with the other special
features.
Justification evens out the spacing of both the right and left margins,
though that’s a mixed blessing. Justified margins look more impressive.
But =ragged right= margins, the normal typewriter kind, guide the eye
more easily and may be better for long reports as opposed to short
letters. I did _not_ justify this manuscript. But justification is just
the ticket for correspondence with the status conscious.
In the case of all these special features, keep remembering to ask:
1. Does the printer offer them no matter what computer or program you
use?
2. If not, will your hardware and software let you use the features?
3. For free, will the store modify your computer system to make the
features available to you?
4. Will your desired combinations of features work simultaneously?
Unfortunately, with my software, anyway, the Microprism 480 couldn’t
use boldface and proportional spacing at once.
OVERALL COMPATIBILITY WITH YOUR COMPUTER
1. Can you use a standard cable to connect the printer and the computer?
2. If not, can the store make one up for you? At what cost?
Remember, it isn’t enough for the cables to plug in. You also want the
right wires going to the right pins and for the computer and printer to
be on speaking terms electronically.
To connect up with a printer physically and electronically, a computer
uses a =port=—nothing more than (a) a plug or socket and (b) the gizmos
that let your machine exchange bits and bytes with the outside world.
“The outside world” may be a =modem=, which connects up with a phone, or
it may be simply your printer.
Two common styles of ports are =serial= and =parallel=. Data passes
through serial ports a bit at a time; through parallel ports, it passes
eight bits or more at once.
Serial ports commonly use an industry standard, the RS-232, which is a
kind of socket together with the related electronics. As with “IBM
compatibility,” this “industry standard” often can be elusive. One
brand’s RS-232 may differ from another’s.
The Kaypro has both a serial and parallel port, and with the Anderson
Jacobson, I had to wrestle with plugs whenever I used the modem, since
it and the Anderson Jacobson both required the serial port.
In between printing one of the last drafts of this manuscript today, I’m
adding another criterion—whether a printer has a =buffer=.
A buffer in this case is just some memory, in the printer, that lets
your computer pump a letter or report into the machine in a fairly short
time. Then you can return to other computer work while the printer runs.
You can of course buy a buffer if your machine lacks one and you’re
sadistic enough to deprive your secretary of a good excuse for a coffee
break. Wait. Come to think of it, your secretary herself might
appreciate a buffer if she’s trying to keep a nine to five job nine to
five.
You needn’t have buffering by way of your printer. Some programs, such
as Word Perfect, even let you “schedule” several printing jobs from
different documents on your disk while you’re still writing.
Big Blue’s Quiet One
Do you need a quiet printer that will turn out typewriter-like work
but won’t cost as much as a laser-style machine?
Then you might consider the IBM Quietwriter printer or the inevitable
clones that will follow. It uses a new kind of thermal-transfer
process—heating the ink so it goes on the paper without the ribbon
actually touching. The Quietwriter doesn’t need special paper. Its
sound is a polite swish. And its print looks typewriter-sharp.
IBM introduced the Quietwriter at around $1,400—less than half of what
the cheapest laser printers were selling for in late 1984 (not that
they aren’t coming down in price too).
Granted, drawbacks exist The Quietwriter’s speed isn’t as fast as a
laser printer’s—effectively a mere 25 characters per second if you use
Pica-sized type.
Also, the Quietwriter’s ink doesn’t sink into the paper as with some
typewriters or daisywheels; your work might lack the feel of a
_traditionally_ typed document. And because the ink is erasable, you
shouldn’t use a Quietwriter for legal papers. It won’t make carbons.
Moreover, the technology is unproven—at least to me as I write this.
Ask me again when the machine’s been out long enough for the
lemon-owners to fire off blurred letters of complaint to _InfoWorld_.
Just the same, Quietwriter-style machines are well worth
investigating. Hats off to Big Blue on this one.
■ ■ ■
BACKUP III ❑ The Lucky 13: What to Look for in Choosing Software
A friend warned me: Don’t water down your software advice with “In my
opinion”-type phrases and other hedges.
“That’s how it seems to me, anyway,” he joked.
Well, Rick, I’m sorry. Just as a critic once called _Citizen Kane_ “a
shallow masterpiece,” I’ll qualify my enthusiasm for WordStar. I’ll be a
responsible zealot.
Anyway, I like WordStar enough to use it to help explain the Lucky 13—my
general criteria for judging software.
ABSENCE OF BUGS
Programs are like people. “Mature” software is more reliable. It’s more
like a tried-and-tested salesman or secretary, less risky, say, than a
green employee hired off the street.
A complex creation like WordStar, with its thousands of lines of
instructions for your computer, won’t ever be 100-percent glitchless.
But it’s close. MicroPro, the company selling it, normally tests its
programs well before unleashing them on the market, and WordStar has
been around since the late 1970s, giving others the pleasure of
suffering bugs before you have a chance. Why should you pay for a
software maker’s education? Not that you should always buy “mature”
programs. Sometimes a newer one looks so promising that you might want
to gamble.
GENERAL EASE OF USE
WordStar’s easy for many people—not all but many—to learn and use.
Arthur Clarke picked up the ABCs of WordStar in days. A public relations
woman at MicroPro International says she was doing serious work with
WordStar the first day she used it. I believe her. My friend Michael
Canyes explained the basics to me on the phone; but my main training was
just hanging around computer stores and trying out Osbornes, which
included WordStar as part of the standard package.
WordStar exercise books exist, the computer version of typing ones, but
for me they would have been a waste of time. I was too eager to get to
work with my new software.
A millionaire swears by WordStar; he has four secretaries deftly running
it on Kaypros. A fifteen-year-old I know—smart, though not a
prodigy—does his homework on WordStar, and the son of MicroPro’s founder
learned it at age ten.
Yes, I’ve heard WordStar horror stories. You’re not dim-witted if
WordStar doesn’t come as easily to you as to me. Oddly, I found
Select—ballyhooed as a beginner’s word processor—to be more of a puzzle.
Oh, well. One person’s dream software may be another’s kludge.
Keep in mind, however, that you must often suffer trade-offs between
easiness, speed, power, and versatility. Although WordStar _might_ not
give you instant gratification, its speed and power may justify the
struggle. Ditto for some of the best spreadsheets and other software
categories. The big question is, How much word processing or
spreadsheeting, or whatever, do you do? Not much? Then place ease of
learning ahead of speed. Ideally, though, a program will give you both.
MicroPro has tried especially hard to do this with WordStar 2000, an
improvement over WordStar in learnability. Like nearly any powerful
program, however, 2000 still takes practice to get up to full speed on.
_Whether you’re buying a word-processing program or an accounting one,
look for software with logical commands._
WordStar, in this way, triumphs. Consider the famous SEXD diamond that
you use with the Control key. S is the diamond’s leftmost key; it will
move your cursor over one space in that direction. E is the uppermost
key and indeed moves you up. X, the diamond’s lower point, takes you a
space down. Rob Barnaby, in short, has done a superb job of letting me
get from place to place on the screen.
You may disagree violently. Fine. Software is personal. You’re letting a
stranger—the writer of the program you use—influence your working
habits.
Ideally, however, the writer’s logic and yours will be the same, so
that, in the end, the stranger becomes a friend. He might be thousands
of miles away. He might even be dead. Or you might loathe him if you
meet him in person rather than on your disk. But in running his program,
you still get the feeling Holden Caulfield got in _Catcher in the Rye_:
you want to call up the author after he’s done such a fine job. Holden
was talking about novelists. I’m talking about programmers. Ideally,
they’ll touch your brain the way Holden’s literary heroes touched his
heart.
GOOD DOCUMENTATION
People say WordStar’s manual nowadays is better than the past ones,
which _Personal Software_ likened to “the Russian-language version of
_War and Peace_.” Don’t memorize even the improved manual, however. Home
in on MicroPro’s simple list of WordStar commands, a sheet smaller than
a restaurant menu with which I learned the basics.
My WordStar version also included a spiral-bound book with exercises
similar to a typing guide, but I didn’t get lost in them. I was too
eager to get on with my _real_ work with WordStar.
There’s one other resource nowadays—a tutorial disk, which, because it
came only in an IBM-style version, I hadn’t tried as of this writing.
Normally, however, I absorb new wisdom better the old-fashioned way: via
bound paper.
More than twenty books on WordStar exist—maybe because of the old
manuals’ failings—and one of the better guides is Arthur Naiman’s
_Introduction to WordStar_. Published by Sybex Computer Books, Berkeley,
California, it’s generally as intelligent and helpful as the program
itself.[101]
Footnote 101:
Ironically, Naiman wrote _Introduction to WordStar_ with another
program, WRITE, the creation of a friend of his, and WordStar itself
is far from his favorite word processor. He compares it to a big
Cadillac or camper loaded with too many features. My thinking is
different; I _want_ to have many to choose from; I’ll gladly ignore
the others.
Remember the basic criteria for evaluating manuals of any kind, factory
supplied or not:
1. The general logic of the manual. The author should have written it
from your viewpoint, not his—from the viewpoint of what you _do_ with
the program, not how the programmer coded it. Ideally, you’ll find
descriptions of related commands in the same chapter.
2. The quality of the index. I’ll charitably assume it’s there to begin
with. It should list even the most obscure commands—telling on what
pages you’ll find them.
3. Simplicity of vocabulary and sentence structure. A manual shouldn’t
impress; it should _teach_.
USEFULNESS TO OLD PROS AND BEGINNERS ALIKE
WordStar adjusts to different levels of skill. You have some =menus= to
guide you, to help you decide, say, whether you want to print or see
material you’ve already written. But most of the time you won’t need
menus during composition. Not after you’re experienced, anyway. Some
rival word-processing programs have menus that bog everyone down,
beginners and old pros. But not WordStar. It has four “Help” levels,
including one that keeps messages constantly on the screen to guide you.
But you can zap all this once you’re a WordStar pro.
WordStar is only as “friendly” to you as you want it to be. It isn’t
like a puppy leaping up on you and licking your face at the wrong time.
SPEED
WordStar lets you do your job in a hurry. Well, basically. If you’re
_just_ turning out short business letters, for instance, and don’t want
to store them on your disk, try something else. WordStar makes you
electronically save your words there before you can print anything. And
that takes time. For swapping words around, however, for additions or
deletions, few programs could surpass this one. Were I writing long
sales pamphlets or annual reports, WordStar would be my choice.
Now, I’ll qualify my “speedy” verdict. WordStar will slow you down when
your computer has to reach instructions that the program hasn’t already
sent on to the RAM—the temporary memory. That means a time-consuming
electronic trip to your floppy disk. Also, if you type in a certain
amount of material, WordStar will automatically lock some of it on a
disk if the RAM is running out of room. WordStar is a =disk-based=
rather than a =RAM-based= word processor.
That has its virtues, however, since, by farming out the runover to a
floppy, WordStar lets you work with longer files. Some RAM-based
programs may limit each document to only 15 or 20 pages in many
computers unless you electronically splice them together.
Altogether, I’d say that WordStar, evaluated as a disk-based, fully
featured word processor, is fast. And new wrinkles like hard disks will
make it run still faster, even without the speed improvements that very
likely will come. MicroPro, in fact, recommends hard disks for users of
WordStar 2000, even if it will run with two floppies. Very soon most
office micros will contain hard disks.
POWER
WordStar is powerful. You can, for instance, type “@” instead of a long
name used commonly in your work. Then, when you’re ready, you can plug
the name in where the “@” appears. This =search-and-replace= feature is
common to every advanced word-processing program; but WordStar
implements it better than many rivals.
You can also use it with an accessory program, MailMerge, so you can
type a list of names and addresses just once, then automatically plug
them into the right spaces in a form letter. Only, it’s individually
typed, so people needn’t know they’re getting a form letter.
Of course, “power” isn’t a virtue just in word processing. The best
electronic filing cabinets, for instance, boast clever wrinkles to make
it easier for you to enter new categories of information or to change
individual records. Consider this story, which is true, about a reporter
whom an editor was on the verge of firing. The severance pay was ready.
The editor changed his mind at the last minute, however, and the final
check stayed in his desk. Then, not long after, the paper’s auditor
stormed into the city room. “Why didn’t you fire the son of a bitch?” he
asked. “Now we’ll have to spend all this time straightening out the
records.” Had the paper had a good, powerful electronic filing system,
the nonfiring would have been a little less traumatic to the auditor.
FEWER CHANCES FOR BOTCH-UPS
WordStar limits the chances for careless errors in the first place.
While you’re working on a file, for instance, you can use the
=Control-KJ= command to delete everything _but_ the document you’re in
the middle of.
Granted, WordStar isn’t perfect. Arthur Clarke, for instance, complains
mildly of the underlining procedure. If he turns on the underlining,
he’ll occasionally forget to turn it off, meaning that, unwittingly,
he’ll underline everything that follows. WordStar 2000 corrects this
problem by showing you true underlines on the screen, not just symbols
at the beginning and ends of the underlining.
In record-keeping programs, especially, the anti-botch-up features can
be real lifesavers. One technique is to limit the range of numbers
entered. An elementary school, for example, might guard against typing
errors in new files showing pupils’ birth dates. The computer might then
flash its skepticism if a clerk said a first grader was born more than
six years ago.
THE JEWISH-UNCLE EFFECT
Without bogging you down, WordStar lets you reconsider some drastic
actions. Suppose you’re about to erase an entire =file=; that is, a
whole document that you’ve worked on: say, a letter or a sales report.
If you press the control key and the letters “K” and “J,” WordStar won’t
act immediately. Instead, it will ask, “Name of File to Delete?” You can
even get out of most commands before they’re executed. It’s simple. Just
hit the “Control” and “U” buttons, then the “Escape” one. WordStar, in
short, is good for the hotheaded. You feel as if Seymour Rubinstein—the
MicroPro founder—is watching over you like some kindly, protective
Jewish uncle.
A good record-keeping program would react similarly if you were about to
erase 8 million names. A payroll program might inquire more than once if
you wanted to register the firing of five hundred people. A spreadsheet
program could ask if you really wanted to wipe out dozens of numbers
that you’d entered. A graphics package, ideally, would do likewise if
you were about to erase an electronic equivalent of the Mona Lisa.
Some programs, in addition to saying you’re messing up, will offer you
alternative courses of action. The older WordStar isn’t as advanced as
some other programs in this respect. But normally the error messages are
self-explanatory and the corrections obvious.
DAMAGE LIMITATION
WordStar limits the damage if you or your machine goofs in a big way.
It rarely sends you back to the operating system of your computer.
What’s more frustrating than getting, say, an A> prompt—the computer
equivalent of, “Buddy, you’re back at square one”? Then you’ll have to
reenter your work.
WordStar 2000 corrects one feature missing from the original program.
Plain old WordStar doesn’t let you delete a paragraph, then restore it
without zapping other changes you made since you last saved your work on
your disk. That is, there’s no =yank-back= feature to undo erasures or
other recent modifications.