Glenn and I wrote two weeks ago:

> Glenn writes:
>
>  > > I appreciate Glenn mentioning [freecolorprinters.com].
>  >  > We'll see how it works out.
>  >
>  >  I hope you won't regret it.  We look forward to seeing your comments
>  >  on this; I know I do.
>
>  Regarding the free color printer offer from Xerox that Glenn mentioned, I
> wrote a few hours ago:
>
>  > Nonetheless, I used Glenn's URL (http://www.freecolorprinters.com/fcp_
>  > printer.cfm) for the free color printers offer at Xerox and applied to
>  > receive one of the devices. It takes 10 days for them to review your
>  > application. If we're accepted and we do receive one of the devices,
I'll
>  > give it a fair trail and report back.
>
>  Well, that didn't take long at all. We were accepted about an hour later:

The free Tektronix/Xerox color printer that Glenn mentioned on the list a few
weeks ago -- and for which we signed up -- arrived yesterday. Let me say that
my first, second and third impressions are very, very good. I'm actually
quite impressed.

While the printer isn't "free" [what you're doing is giving them is a
corporate credit card and letting them pay themselves $75/month every month
that you don't make your allotted number of prints (which I expect will be
every month), as well as promising to buy all supplies from them], it's clear
that from playing with the printer now for about 20 hours, it's not a scam.
It's actually an excellent, very well designed color printer.

We now have four high-quality color printing devices hooked to our HP3000s:
the HP755CM DesignJet large-format inkjet printer on which we print the
calendars (and the World's Largest Poster), a Tektronix Phaser 560 color
laser, an HP4500N color laser, and now this Tektronix/Xerox Phaser 850 crayon
phase-change printer.

At first I wasn't sure that we were going to keep the new "free" printer for
any length of time (you can return it at any time and stop your charges), but
after just one full day of experimenting with it, I'm sure that we'll now
keep it for several years. Each of these printers serves a different purpose
and has their own strengths.

For very high-quality, near-maintenance-free color printing, the HP4500N
wins, simply because it renders pastel colors very well, and its internal
routines blend colors unbelievably well (this used to be a substantial
weakness of all PostScript color printers, but you'd never know that there
was ever an algorithmic difficulty with this process if you've only used the
HP4500N or Xerox 850 printers). For doing business graphics on a
day-in/day-out basis, the HP4500 is the color printer of choice.

But let me say that this new printer also has its uses. If you want to print
brochures, where the colors, especially those of photographs, should be
bright and shiny (and because of the melted wax methodology, the colors are
automatically shiny), this is one nice printer. I printed out almost all of
the CSY marketing brochures that are up on the web in PDF format -- and
doggone do they look nice, better than they do with the HP4500 (and I thought
they looked really nice on the HP4500). In fact, they are essentially equal
in quality to high-quality commercial printing. Better yet, this "free"
version of the printer comes with an internal duplexer that works very well,
making it nearly the ideal device to print very high-quality brochures, on a
moment's notice, printing off only as many as you need.

The Xerox 850 also makes photographs look virtually as good as actual
photographs (when the printer is set to the very highest quality setting).

To keep faith with the original agreement of the free printer offer, you have
to establish a internet path to the printer so that it can email back a
status report every 84 hours to Xerox. I also have it emailing me the same
status reports. I gave the printer an AICS-internal IP address of
192.168.1.135, which is routable out to the world through our NAT-enabled
protocol, but not back in.

However, to allow the HP3000 to talk to the device (and all of our PCs,
simply because we use HP's JetAdmin software on all of the PCs, which is
identical in process to the HP3000's network printing), I also had to add a
second IP address (192.168.1.130), using an HP JetDirect EX Plus external box
connected to the printer's parallel port. This is a procedure we've had to do
with all "foreign" (non-HP) printers (and a few HP printers as well :-).

The Xerox 850 printer also has a particularly nice HTTP internal web server
and set of configuration pages (very much like the HP4500 color laser's, but
perhaps two or three times as functional).

I've already printed about a thousand pages through the printer -- and thus
had to order more supplies (large ink sticks). As part of the contract, you
must order these supplies through the Xerox free printer members web page. I
not only have no philosophical problem with that, it's also the easiest
ordering process I've ever experienced. Because they already have your credit
card, shipping address and billing address on file, all you need do is click
on the items and quantities that you need.

All totaled, this is not a bad deal. It's not free, but it's also one of the
nicest printers we've ever tried and one of the financially simplest
arrangements we've ever entered into.

Finally, Glenn, because you were first to mention this and asked for our
impressions, if you would privately email me your physical address, I would
be pleased to send you a sample of HP4500 and Xerox 850 output, printing the
same pages on both.

Wirt Atmar