Beat The Blur By Bursting Into Color
The Age
Thursday February 9, 1995
IN ITS self-appointed role as computer sociologist, identifying the trends and behavior that spring from the highly complex and problematic relationship between human beings and information technology, this column would like to bring to your attention a phenomenon it has recently isolated and dubbed ``blur factor".
Blur factor occurs when people are confronted with large amounts of text on technical topics. The condition also manifests itself in the financial world, particularly viewing balance sheets or anything at all to do with the law, but if the legal and financial worlds expect this column to do their sociological snooping for them, they have made a serious miscalculation.
The blur factor's symptoms are easily identified. The subject's pupils become unfocused in severe cases they may even twirl or flicker and the victim demonstrates severe signs of urgently wanting to be somewhere else. ``This is extremely interesting," they may say, pushing the report back into your hands, ``but I have just remembered an urgent appointment in the Patagonian desert."
Blur factor is related to ``boggle factor", a phenomenon first identified in the book Media Lab by Stewart Brand, in which people become overloaded by technical jargon and specifications, causing a severe but temporary stalling of the brain. But where boggle factor usually occurs in the auditory channel, blur factor is exclusively associated with text.
Those of us whose livelihood depends on routinely having to explain complex technological matters in text to people who quite frequently would rather wish we didn't, quickly realise that if we are not to spend large amounts of time pursuing people into the Patagonian desert or the Amazonian rainforest we need to make this information more palatable. We need something to staple their little eyes to the page, so they don't go sliding off into space or to the next episode of Melrose Place.
The answer is, of course, color. Colored text, colored diagrams, colored charts etc. If the pathetic wretches can rest their eyes on a couple of these visual aids, they can usually be kept quiet enough until you can get the general import of your communication into their heads, before they go back to their normal, safe, non-technical activities.
It is now possible to buy a color inkjet printer for less than $1000; depending on quality, for much less than $1000. The output varies, but at the top end of this range of economical color printers, it is remarkably good. The top end, indisputably, is the Epson Stylus Color (after a price cut last week, $1040 rrp inc tax). I've compared it directly to the Canon BJC-4000, I've used the Hewlett-Packard 540C and I've seen the output of some of the other contenders, and nothing quite matches it.
I've spent a week or so printing things like home pages from the World Wide Web on the Stylus be warned, color printing is an addiction and the output is remarkable and surprisingly fast. You have to accept that events in the world of color ink-jets proceed at a leisurely pace generally it's a matter of minutes per page rather than pages per minute and if you're used to laser printers, you're going to be drumming your fingers while these things warm up and chatter away to themselves, but the Stylus in its lowest resolution of 360 dots per inch is pretty brisk. At the optional 720dpi resolution, you might like to go away and make yourself a nice cup of Queen Mary tea, and do some stress reduction exercises.
The Stylus is much faster than the Canon 4000, although on one particular occasion, when I printed out a quarter-page World Wide image, the Canon actually pipped the Stylus by a couple of seconds.
I'm still trying to work that one out. But in every case, the sharpness and the color saturation on the Epson was noticeably better.
At 720dpi which no competitor can match particularly on special imported, coated paper you can buy from Epson, it's no contest.
At $795 rrp, the Canon 4000 is a good workhorse printer you might mostly run with a black ink cartridge for quite fast monochrome printing, but will offer acceptable color output when you insert the color cartridge a simple procedure. Canon gives you a plastic container for the spare cartridge, which is a nice idea, but if you're as disorganised as this column, it's just another thing to lose. If you're only going to use color occasionally, the Canon 4000 might be all you need. But if youwant to do a lot of printing, it's easy to justify the additional cost of the Epson.
Hardware cost is only one of the factors you ought to contemplate before you invest in one of these machines. Color printing is by no means cheap and, as with Gillette, it seems the real profit isn't in the razors, it's in the razor blades.
If you're not willing to divert a substantial amount of your disposable income to Messrs Epson or Canon, you must develop some sensible strategies. Run the printer in the lower quality modes to save ink. Canon offers a high-speed or a high-quality mode, and Epson has three choices. Using 720dpi on standard paper is a waste. The printer lays down so much ink it tends to curl the paper and there's little difference in quality.
Both the Stylus and the Canon 4000 offer acceptable color resolution on plain paper, but for special projects you'll want to use coated paper, and when you do that, your costs per page spiral. It seems likely, incidentally, that Epson will shortly make a glossy paper available. That will be much more expensive, but it will provide something close to photographic quality.
Through Epson, coated 360dpi paper costs 22 cents per sheet at $44 (inc tax) for a 200-sheet pack, the higher quality paper is 25 cents per sheet and $50 a pack. Transparencies come in 50-sheet packs for $115 ($2.30 per sheet). Epson could be substantially more generous with those prices. In the US, you can buy the paper for the equivalent of roughly 15 cents and 17 cents, and transparencies for around $1.40.
In this area, its charges seem to be roughly comparable with those of Hewlett-Packard, and substantially cheaper than Canon's.
A cartridge is the most significant consumable item, Epson is significantly cheaper than Canon and vastly cheaper than Hewlett- Packard, which is an outstanding technology company, particularly in the field of laser printers, but needs to do something about its pricing structure.
Another factor in favor of the Epson is its technology. It forces the ink droplets from the nozzles mechanically, rather than the heating and cooling method used by companies like Canon and Hewlett- Packard. That means its print head lasts longer. But you'll have to clean both print heads from time to time, to avoid marked loss of quality. Fortunately, you can do all this just by pressing buttons.
Although none of the manufacturers tells you this when you're shopping for a color printer, the fact is that they are more sensitive than monochrome printers, even monochrome laser printers. If you're printing from Windows, and you have a Tseng Labs or Cirrus Logic video card, make sure you've got the latest drivers from those manufacturers. Keep up to date with the printer drivers too. You can download the latest version (1.04) of the Epson Stylus and, for that matter, all their other printer drivers, from the company's bulletin board (02 417 5090).
When I first installed the Epson Stylus, I wasted the best part of a day trying to work out why, when I attempted to print out an image, I got only a small section, followed by several pages of printer code, in glorious living color.
Eventually, in desperation, I tried changing the printer cable. I had my workhorse Hewlett-Packard LaserJet III on a five-metre cable and, although I know long cable leads can be a problem, it had never caused difficulties. Color printers aren't so forgiving. You'll need a full Centronics standard shielded cable, no longer than three metres.
I am trying to convince my wife I should buy a Stylus, to add to my collection of four printers. My wife does not necessarily believe in such concepts as competitive edges and the value of new technology. I have managed to keep her attention away from the bank statements never a pretty sight by printing off a new, full-color letterhead for her business and some ``dummies" for a new color brochure. So far, this is proving to be a wonderful application of the blur factor.
© 1995 The Age
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