Nec Superscript 3000M

From: ADHunter@aol.com Subject: NEC SuperScript 3000M (review) I got my NEC SuperScript Color 3000M printer and have had a day to play with it; here's the report-- <you may want to archive the following--it may be a bit long for inclusion in the digest> It comes with abbreviated sample dye and wax ribbons instead of the full sized ribbons that one would buy as stock supplies for the printer. This makes sense when you figure that the purchaser will want to see what kind of output the machine is capable of before committing to it, but it needs to be taken into account when purchases are made, i.e., you will VERY shortly have to buy extra ribbons if you intend on doing much printing. The demo ribbons are good for (according to the manual) 10 prints each, whereas regular ribbons are good for 25 sheets (dye-sub) or 107 sheets (thermal-wax); you get a dye-sub ribbon, a thermal-wax variable-dot ribbon, and a plain-jane thermal-wax ribbon. You also get two (not three, but also not just one) ribbon carrier, which makes it easy to swap ribbons (the printer only holds one type of ribbon at a time), and you can (apparently) order new ribbon carriers if you think you will be using the printer in more than two different modes. It comes also with abbreviated paper supplies instead of the full sheaf of paper that you would buy as stock. Again, you get 10 sheets of dye-sub paper and 10 sheets of thermal-wax paper. The plain-jane thermal-wax process can be used with plain old Hammermill-type photocopier-grade paper, but the other modes require the special paper. A regular sheaf of dye-sub paper is 25 sheets, whereas a regular sheaf of thermal-wax (variable-dot) is 200 sheets. The printer is downright cute in appearance for a printer of its class--it looks like a StyleWriter's big brother, perhaps because of its predominantly vertical orientation. It fits elegantly onto desktops and other surfaces that would be significantly more swamped by a DeskJet or a LaserWriter. Hookup is simple enough to forego a peek at the manual, although when it comes to hooking up a $1000 peripheral I'm more inclined to look anyway, and did; and the instructions are clear and uncluttered. Took 20 minutes to connect it to the PowerMac including the time it took to open the shipping box. Software is a regular Chooser device (rdev) and the Print and Print Setup dialog boxes are sparse and clean despite an assortment of options (such as speed versus number of colors, saturation controls, printing mode, etc.). Irritatingly, the dialog box that lets you pick the printing mode gives new and potentially confusing names to the printing modes that are described in advertisements and other product literature: to print in dye-sub mode, you pick "PhotoColor"; to print in thermal-wax variable-dot mode, you choose "GraphicColor"; to choose regular plain-jane thermal-wax mode, you simply pick "3-color" or "4-color" or "Monochrome", depending on what type of ribbon you have in the machi…