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May. 2nd, 2008 11:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaI finally got an account number for my new grant!
That means that I get to start buying stuff now. Like computers. We've been anxiously hovering over our e-mail, waiting to hear from the Business Office, because the word is that starting June 1st you won't be able to buy a PC with Windows XP on it anymore. And I'm damned if I'm going to run Vista.
On my shopping list: a desktop and a laptop for me. A desktop for Steve, who is my right-hand man on this grant. 24-inch monitors for both of us. I've got $3000 budgeted for "office supplies" - that buys an awful lot of file folders and pens. Let's see... a cashbox. Thumb drives. Software? A fun twirly office-supplies organizer? Some of the supplies money will have to go for postage, thanks to a fairly ridiculous IRB call.
I have no idea how to spend $3000 on office supplies. What a lovely problem to have.
(Sorry, don't mind me. This is the first time I've ever had untrammelled purchasing power, and it's going to my head a bit.)
That means that I get to start buying stuff now. Like computers. We've been anxiously hovering over our e-mail, waiting to hear from the Business Office, because the word is that starting June 1st you won't be able to buy a PC with Windows XP on it anymore. And I'm damned if I'm going to run Vista.
On my shopping list: a desktop and a laptop for me. A desktop for Steve, who is my right-hand man on this grant. 24-inch monitors for both of us. I've got $3000 budgeted for "office supplies" - that buys an awful lot of file folders and pens. Let's see... a cashbox. Thumb drives. Software? A fun twirly office-supplies organizer? Some of the supplies money will have to go for postage, thanks to a fairly ridiculous IRB call.
I have no idea how to spend $3000 on office supplies. What a lovely problem to have.
(Sorry, don't mind me. This is the first time I've ever had untrammelled purchasing power, and it's going to my head a bit.)
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Date: 2008-05-03 03:09 pm (UTC)The solid ink technology these use is fast, quiet—after the initial startup/warmup clunking and thunking—and high resolution (full is 2400x560, plenty for functioning as a photo printer). It's also resolution/colour independent for speed, because it's a one pass process. (Text and full page photos come out at the same speed.) Better still, the ink comes in small solid blocks, and involves no heavy metals or major amounts of packaging or specialty recycling.
Because it's a surface sublimation thermal process, you can print on more or less anything in the way of paper, and water beads off the ink. Prolonged pressure—being stuck to a steel cabinet with a rare earth magnet for six months—will cause the ink to stick to some plastic surfaces (the non-slip disk on the rare earth magnet).
Xerox claims the 88** family are the same cost for colour as for black and white; since their claims for the 85** family (I have one, and so does my team at work) are conservative, I suspect you can trust them on this point.
Oh, and they're true Postscript—certified Adobe Postscript 3— so they play very well indeed with Macs and PDFs.
The 8850 at work has had something north of 20,000 sheets put through it; we have had not one paper jam. (Various other teams have now bought four more of the things. Since we're supposed to be standardized on HP and this involves much hoop jumping, I am not the only person impressed with the output.)
And no, I don't work for Xerox. But I think this tech kicks the laser printer's behind.
-- Graydon