Kyocera Electronics may not be a name familiar to computer users, but within 18 months the company intends to change all that. This is the time limit Kyocera Electronics (UK) Ltd, in Reading, Berkshire has set itself to become number one in the laser printer market, and the launch of its high-end P-2000 PostScript compatible printer effectively throws down the gauntlet to its rivals. The new P-2000 is the fifth in the Kyocera range of printers (CI No 940) and claimed to be up to four times faster than the current crop of desktop lasers – well, 10 pages per minute at 300 by 300 dots per inch. The speed is achieved by virtue of the printer’s processor, using a 12MHz Motorola 68020 microprocessor, backed up with a Motorola 68881 arithmetic co processor, and the high memory capacity – 5Mb RAM, 2Mb ROM. The printer runs its own PostScript-compatible language, Kyocera Page Description Language, and has 35 resident fonts, including Courier, ITC Avant Garde and ITC Zapf-Dingbats. It also comes with two resident emulations, Diablo 630 and HP LaserJet Series 11. Priding itself on its optional extras, Kyocera has given the P-2000 manual or automatic sheet feeding and three interfaces: Centronics, RS-232C and an optional Local Area Network board complying with the AppleTalk protocol. It sells for UKP5,500.
