Color Printer A Useful Toy

January 15, 1989|By MICHAEL HIMOWITZ, Washington Post/Los Angeles Times

About a year ago, a friend asked me to help her set up an IBM-compatible computer system. For her printer, I chose a Star Micronix NX-1000.

At the time I thought the Star, a nine-wire dot matrix machine with decent near-letter-quality print and a variety of typefaces, provided a lot of bang for the buck -- less than 200 bucks, in fact.

So when my son told me he was interested in word processing (a skill that all students should learn early), I figured I`d hook up an NX-1000 to his Apple IIe.

But then I noticed that Star made a color version of the printer. It was about $80 more than the standard printer, but my son likes graphics programs and I thought having color might be fun. So I bought the NX-1000 Rainbow, hooked it to my PC for test purposes and had such a great time that I almost didn`t give it up.

First things first. Why does anybody need a color printer? The average guy probably doesn`t. Even if you can print out nice color charts, it`s doubtful that you`ll be able to reproduce them unless you spend a lot of money on color printing or copying services.

On the other hand, kids love color. It can add pizazz, if not dignity, to letters, school papers and reports. And there are a variety of graphics programs, including the phenomenally popular Print Shop, that will make good use of color if it`s available.

The NX-1000 Rainbow uses a four-color cartridge ribbon with black, red, blue and yellow stripes. It makes complex colors by repeated passes over the paper with two or more of the primaries.

Besides emulating the most popular IBC and Epson black-and-white machines, the Rainbow will accept color codes from any software that can drive an Epson EX-800 color printer.

With its three native fonts and eight different character sizes, it is possible to produce almost any kind of document you want with the Rainbow. In fact, there`s an incredible temptation to junk up your text with special effects.

The manual accompanying the printer is one of the best I`ve seen. Printer manuals tend to be among the most arcane documents the average computer user is called upon to decipher. This one provides clear setup information in normal English and even does a tolerable job of explaining the mysteries of printer control codes.

Once you`ve read the manual, you can consult a quick user`s guide to mechanical operation as well as a pull-out reference card that covers control codes and other features. There`s even a cheat-sheet decal to stick onto the top of the printer that shows how to use the front panel switches.

At 11 by 15 inches, the 10-pound Rainbow is a compact machine. It prints 120 characters per second in draft mode and 30 characters per second in near- letter-quality type. This makes it pretty slow by today`s standards, but it`s certainly adequate for light-duty work.

It comes in two models -- one that will handle every computer except a Commodore 64 and one that`s specifically set up for the Commodore`s non- standard output. This makes it great for Commodore owners, who frequently have problems making non-Commodore printers listen to their computers.

The Rainbow lists for $380, but like all Star products, it`s heavily discounted. I was able to buy one for $230 from a mail-order house. If you buy it from a local store, you can expect to pay somewhat more. Shop around. I did, and I found some incredible price differences.

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