Printer Bargain Hunting by Ralph Parrott The large type in the ad declared AFTER CHRISTMAS SALE, COMPUTERS and accessories. Now that is my kind of advertisement. $40.00 off selected printers. And I had been waiting for some one to make that type of mistake. Not one but three of the giant supply houses were declaring the same printer for a sale price that was sure to sell their entire stock within hours. How to decide which establishment to go and steal a dream deal from?. I asked for advice from family members and all declared which is the nearest location; little did they realize that the waiting period for this opportunity had been long and tiring. Many were the times I had almost fallen into a higher priced advertising trap which at the time seemed appealing. Just to show the family members the savings in dollars this event would deliver, I recovered the previous sale papers to compare. The current sale price was $199.99; the previous sale price was $229.99, the $40.00 savings were worth waiting for. The item of opportunity was a CANON BJC 4300 printer. The bubble jet printer was one I had heard discussed frequently; much has been published in the trade papers. The item does not visibly resemble a printer that Commodore users are accustomed to. The unpacking and assembly were rather simple. Why not--the visual instructions were in half a dozen languages. Remove the tape from...assemble parts 2 & 4 shove them into slot 5 as shown; if they don't fit, try slot 7. After assembling parts 2, 4 and slot 5, 7 I was ready according to the instructions to plug into the power system. Apprehension seized me to the tune of a phone call to fellow member Doug Cunningham who is far more knowledgeable about printers than me. Assuring me that I had assembled the parts and slots according to instructions. We selected the geoPaint program for the maiden trial. The printer engaged and started to print. "HEY COOL!" After the first sheet of paper was ejected (it was a 1 page document) the printer continued to print! "PANIC TIME!" With a serene look on his face, my advisor said it must be the printer driver. There only being scads and scads of printer drivers, where to start? Aha--phone calls to the other BJ owners. The advice was varying, from I used a certain driver to I really don't know to I really don't care; who would want to use GEOS anyway? Finally after endless discussions with Dick Estel, we rounded up all the printer drivers in the club library and started to eliminate them one by one; on the third night the EPSON 24 PINCOLOR driver was the answer. There are so many various and varying printer drivers that just trying to designate them would be tremendous task. Now the printed material is almost as good as the advertising claims. GEOS in the 40-column mode does a very good job of reproducing what is shown in color on the monitor screen. When you buy your bubble-jet, do make sure you can bring it back if you can't get satisfactory results! From The Interface, newsletter of Fresno Commodore User Group