I’m one of the Editors-in-Chief of our school newspaper, and I am currently attempting to get us some new equipment. We’re currently working with Pagemaker 6.5 on a 200 MHz, 5 year old Power Mac, which is a pain in the ass. I’m going to get an iMac and a dedicated, just for the paper digital camera, but my third and most important purchase is a printer that can handle 11x17 (tabloid) for as cheap as possible. I’ve wasted two possible printing days running around the school looking for a suitable printer since the one we usually use, a LaserWriter 8500 in the Development Office, was down. The only other one I could find doesn’t have the fonts we need. It needs to be either directly Mac-compatible or networkable, and must print black and white pages with decent resolution for newspaper-quality pictures.
Can any Dopers make a recommendation that won’t make the budget department scream?
The Only common printer series I’m familiar with that will Print 11x17 sheets is the HP LaserJet 5si, 8000, or 8500s (An HP 4si may be able to do 11x17 but I’m not sure).
Cheap they are not. You may be able to find a refurbished or used one somewhere, and Mac compatible nic cards are available.
handy, that might make sense if this was a one time need. The opening post mentions a newspaper. To me that suggests a continued need. In that case, it is certainly more economical to publish in-house. Also, there is certainly a benefit in having the ability to review printed drafts before publishing.
SanibelMan - I know you asked for laser, but I have an EXCELLENT inkjet that does a dandy job on 11x17. Actually, it goes up to 12x18, so you could actually do a full bleed if you wanted to. It’s a Xerox DocuPrint C20. It cost us about $720 eighteen months ago. It handles PostScript and PCL emulations nicely, and just about any kind of paper you’d want to toss into it. It works with Mac or PC.
Another opinion - if you’re upgrading your computer, upgrade your software, too. Switch to Adobe InDesign. I made the switch from PageMaker to InDesign two months ago, and it’s such a joy. You can get it at upgrade prices from Adobe.com as a PageMaker user.
If you’re familiar with Photoshop or Illustrator, InDesign is dead easy. The interface is the same as in those two programs - that was always a stumbling block for me with PageMaker. It might take you all of an hour and a half or two hours to feel comfortable with InDesign, and no more than a day to reach a comparable level of skill as you have with PageMaker. And the things you can do with InDesign compared to what you can do with PageMaker… gradient fills, importing native Photoshop files, transparency… it’s super!
So how much of a learning curve is there going from PageMaker to InDesign?