One way and another, Xerox Corp, or the bit in El Segundo, California, knows a thing or two about building laser printers, and the company has extended its offerings with two new models, one of which is claimed to be the first production printer in the industry that approaches offset printing standards in generating high-quality publications and other documents from computers. The 4650 Professional Printing System and the 4090 Laser Printing System are pitched at the generality of machines through host mainframes through minicomputers to workstations and networked personal computers, and support incorporation of graphics, forms, logos, signatures and a range of fonts. The Xerox 4650 is the first laser from Xerox to feature 600 dots per inch resolution, making it suitable for use in data centres producing customer correspondence, statements and other external documents in which print quality is particularly important (Citibank Savings in the UK would not concur – the print quality on statements for its personal customers is almost unreadable). The 4650 prints at a competitive 50 pages per minute at top speed, so Xerox thinks that corporate publishing departments that produce manuals, directories, catalogues, price lists and other publications will find it attractive. As for the 4090, it offers up to four input trays and each tray can be feeding different paper sizes or stocks to the printer, intermixing them during a print run. The printing system can then automatically stitch and produce complete publications, including those containing covers and non tabbed section dividers, says Xerox. The 4090 prints at up to 92 pages per minute, but with the more commonplace resolution of 300 dots per inch. It is designed for medium and large data processing departments needing high-quality computer reports, financial documents and other forms-intensive output. Two-sided printing Both printers can save paper by doing two-sided printing, and documents also can be printed in landscape as well as portrait orientation. They handle any paper size from 10 by 8 to 14 by 8.5 – the old quarto and foolscap – in weights ranging from 20 lbs bond to 110 lbs card stock, as well as transparencies and other throughput materials.
Both support the Interpress Document and Page Description Language Commercial Set and a software release planned for next year will add support for the Publication Set of Interpress. The 4650 will be available in the US in second quarter 1989 with a typical on-line system with graphics starting at $171,000; with volume of 300,000 pages a month, on a two-year contract, prices start at $7,000 a month. The 4090 arrives sooner, being available in the US from this month. The purchase price for a typical on-line 4090 system starts at $190,000 and on a two-year lease, with a printing volume of 1m pages a month, the price starts at about $14,000 – but you’ll have to wait for the high capacity feeder and the stitcher/stacker options: they follow on in the second quarter of next year.
