DeskJet 1600C: New standards in color printing

DeskJet 1600C: New standards in color printing

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): Let's face it: The age of black and white
printouts is clearly over. Nowadays you can buy a cheap inkjet
printer and chances are it will be color capable. All you'll need
to do is spend a little more money on the so-called "color kit"
and, presto, you're printing in color! The Nov. 7, 1995 issue of
PC Magazine reports that no new black-and-white-only inkjet
printers were launched this year. If you read my recent roundup
of HP products, you should be aware that even the lowest-end
inkjet printer from this printer giant, DeskJet 400, comes with a
color option.

For nearly a year the world-wide sales of inkjet printers have
exceeded the sales of dot matrix and laser printers combined.
Inkjet technology has improved tremendously, its speed has
increased and the price now easily competes with letter-quality
dot matrix printers. The only reason people still buy dot matrix
printers is because they have lower operating costs. They also
can print on multi-part forms, which neither the inkjet nor the
laser printers can.

However, as far as color quality is concerned, low-cost color
printers won't give you stunning color output, though it may be
acceptable for most purposes. In any case, the color printout is
far better than the ones you used to get from a Citizen or Epson
color dot-matrix printer just two years back.

On the highest end of the family of color printers, you could
buy a color laser printer. In one of my articles several months
ago I gave a report on the three color laser printers from Xerox,
QMS and HP that appeared on the market at about the same time.
Today we have more of them (six, according to the article in PC
Magazine) but their prices remain out of reach for most. The HP
Color LaserJet, for instance, carries a price tag of around Rp 16
million locally.

Fortunately, in between the two extremes we have plenty of
choices. If printout size is your main consideration, Epson has
brought us what is probably the first B-size color inkjet
printer, the Stylus Pro XL. Lexmark has followed suit with its
A3 capable JetPrinter 4079 Plus. If quality of color printout is
what you're after, the choice is even greater.

If you have been following my articles, you'll know that I
have been using the HP DeskJet 1200C color inkjet printer for
more than one year. Though it deserves much praise, it is now
back with its real owner.

I have just acquired my new baby, the DeskJet 1600C, for my
DTP activities. Ever since its birth, this particular printer has
earned rave reviews from computer magazines, including
PC/Computing, Windows and PC Magazine. Having read so much about
it, I felt confident enough to make the investment of more than
Rp 3 million. And, so far, it has lived up to my expectations.

By the way, the picture of HP DeskJet 1600C that you see in
the accompanying illustration was taken with the Logitech Pixtura
digital camera which I reviewed two weeks ago. Not bad, is it?

Features

I have reported on this premium color inkjet printer twice in
this column. The first was when it appeared for the first time in
one of the computer magazines I was reading, and the second time
when I did the HP roundup about a month ago. You'll find a
complete list of its features if you go back to those articles.

However, here are some important highlights: The printer comes
standard with 4 MB of RAM. When I printed a page of a PageMaker
5.0 brochure, which was full of tiled fills and scanned photos,
this amount of RAM proved insufficient. The printer printed "Not
enough printer memory" on the bottom of the page, and it failed
to print all the photos. So I added another 4 MB of RAM, which
cost me about Rp 360,000, and it worked flawlessly. In fact, the
quality of the printout was noticeably better than that of my old
favorite, the DeskJet 1200C.

Unlike the DeskJet 1200C, the 1600C has only one multi-
function button on its front panel. Everything, including the
print mode, the ColorSmart enhancement, and on-line/off-line
switch, is controlled through the software, which comes in three
3.5" diskettes. The multi-purpose button functions as the self-
test button, resume button, manual feed, etc., depending on what
situation you're in.

During my test, I deliberately took out the magenta ink
cartridge to see how the bi-directional communication between the
printer and my PC worked. Sure enough, the Printer Status monitor
window popped up and instructed me to take out and re-insert the
magenta cartridge. I did as I was told, and the monitor
instructed me to put down the printer cover. Only after I
followed the instructions did the monitor inform me that the
printer was ready. The straightforward diagram shown in the
window is clear enough to tell any non-English speaker what he's
supposed to do. It's amazing how printers can be made to talk
back to us.

The HP ColorSmart technology is pretty smart too. It can
detect whether our print job consists of text, business
presentation using spot color, or graphic images using continuous
color tones, and print accordingly. If you're adventurous enough,
you can experiment with ColorSmart by manually changing the
printed color control; you can tell the printer to use vivid
colors, to match the screen or to print without any adjustment
whatsoever. The half-toning method can also be adjusted to
achieve the best result. And, yes, the printer can also be
calibrated to match the screen. The procedure takes only about
one minute to complete.

At the back of the printer there is a slot for feeding
envelopes, labels or letterhead. The tray can hold up to 180
sheets of plain paper. The printout fall on the receiving tray
faces up in the wrong order, so you may want to tell your
application to print out in the reverse order--particularly if
you're printing a long document.

Heavy-duty

The printer is rated for 12,000 print cycles a month, which
means that you can push it to its limits to churn out almost 500
pages a day. Not many people would have the heart to do that.
According to an informal test done by PC/Computing, the DeskJet
1600C prints color 30 percent faster than the DeskJet 1200C.

Talk about speed, this printer prints up to nine pages of
black and white text per minute, although it's rated at 8 ppm.
Despite such a high speed, the printer doesn't shake as much as
the DeskJet 1200C. Monochrome printout comes at 600 DPI, and with
HP's proprietary Resolution Enhancement Technology, or RET, the
edges are very smooth and the text looks crisp. Color printout
comes at 300 DPI. While it may sound out of date when compared
with Epson Stylus Color's 720 DPI, HP ColorSmart technology makes
this difference in DPI virtually meaningless.

If the need arises, I can add a PostScript SIMM to the printer
later. I can further add the JetDirect I/O card, and this DeskJet
1600C will become a DeskJet 1600CM. The JetDirect card enables me
to connect this printer through LocalTalk or Ethernet connection
with a PC and Mac network.

Final word

The biggest complaint that I have is that it still cannot
print on paper larger than legal size. According to HP, they
still have no intention of making a B-size inkjet printer in the
near future.

In addition to the print size limitation, the warm-up and
power-on test procedure produces a funny noise not heard from the
DeskJet 1200C. I still don't know whether the noise is typical of
this printer or whether something is not quite right with this
unit.

Unlike the steel-cased DeskJet 1200C, the printer top cover is
made of hardened plastic, so I have to be careful not to put
heavy stuff on it -- which, unfortunately, happens to be one of
my habits.

Apart from the above glitches, this printer will certainly do
my presentation proud. The colors are brilliant, particularly if
I use the glossy paper specially made by HP for color printers.
Black and white text rivals many of the current laser printers.
In fact, I no longer know what to do with my perfectly-good HP
LaserJet 3P now that I can print text at a lower cost and at a
higher speed with this new printer.

If you want to save some money, however, run immediately to
Glodok Plaza and buy one of the remaining HP 1200Cs. The DeskJet
1200C costs much less and its print quality is still outstanding.
Beware, though, the DeskJet 1200C comes standard with only 2 MB
of RAM, so you'll need to add another Rp 800,000 to buy 8 MB
additional RAM to make it really fly.

Individual users

If you don't want to spend that much on a color printer, but
you want high quality color printout, you could opt for what HP
has targeted as a personal color printer for individual users.
The DeskJet 850C costs about one-third less than the DeskJet
1600C, while the print quality is basically the same.
Unfortunately, it is non-expandable and slower, two rather
significant drawbacks.

One tip for you if you buy a DeskJet 1600C and intend to move
it around and use it with different PCs instead of connecting it
to a network: You had better put all three software diskettes in
a plastic bag and tape it to the inside of the top cover. You'll
definitely need to have the software driver installed before you
can use the printer optimally. I still remember the frustration
of the people who borrowed the DeskJet 1200C but forgot to ask
for its printer driver.

Finally, here's one general tip for choosing a good color
inkjet printer: For the best color print quality, you should
avoid models that use three inks only -- cyan, magenta and
yellow. Better quality prints come from printers that have all
four ingredients, which are those three plus black ink.