The Silicon Jungle by David H. Rothman

paper in patterns forming letters and numbers; and the noise level is low, maybe 50 decibels, compared to 65 or more that a daisy wheel might inflict. What a boon to apartment dwellers and people in already-noisy offices. While I was shopping for the Anderson Jacobson’s replacement, I didn’t take ink jets very seriously because of the broken-up letters that came from them. A year later, however, I talked to Richard Sugden, a Wyoming M.D., the owner of a PT-88 ink-jet from Siemens, selling in the $900 range, who may have had a limited solution. He used the 88 with a special printing program called Fancy Font and high-quality paper that soaked up the ink neatly. The program slowed his printer down to a fraction of the usual 160 characters per second but greatly improved his print even if it still couldn’t pass for a daisy wheel’s. You can also team up Fancy Font with some dot-matrix machines, especially those from Epson. Then you can print in a number of sizes and styles, including “olde English.” Don’t overdo. “Fancy,” as its makers joke in a printing sample, “may either kill or cure.” In printer shopping for myself, I used these criteria: SPEED Yes, actually I could have afforded a new daisy—one of those $450-$1,000 models. The problem was that most crept along at less than 20 characters per second. That sounds fast, maybe 200 words a minute; it isn’t. You must redo an entire page if you want perfect typing but wish to make one change in material already printed; you can’t just white out the wrong word and stick in the correct one as you can with a typewriter. Often, after completing a supposedly final version, I see _many_ changes I should have made on-screen. Somehow my editing eyes are sharper with paper. People less fallible than I can make do with 20 characters per second. 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: