January 1998
FIRST LOOKS
Alps MD-2300
Until recently, color printing was available only to people who could afford thousands for sophisticated prepress equipment. Before inkjets, the only color printers you could get for the desktop were inefficient dot matrix printers with four color ribbons or multi-pen plotters designed for technical work. Then inkjets came out and affordable color was available to everyone. The first color inkjet printers did not give very good quality. They were best suited to spot color. Color inkjets could do charts and graphs and simple drawings. When it came to printing photos, inkjets didn't give very good results. For photo quality color, other technologies were needed. The most popular were thermal wax transfer and dye sublimation. Early thermal wax and dye sub printers required a lot of maintenance and were slow and expensive. Even as color inkjet resolutions improved, they still could not do photo quality continuous tone prints. The Alps (San Jose, CA 408-432-6000) MD-2300 ($800) is a breakthrough product. It does both thermal wax and continuous tone dye sub printing for less than $1,000.
The color printing is truly stunning. Continuous tone prints look and feel just like photographs right down to the clear glossy coating. Wax transfer on plain paper, while not continuous tone, is very good. The only disadvantages are the Alps printer's slow speed and the relatively high cost of printing supplies. (Each ribbon costs $8-$10).
If you use a monochrome laser printer for routine printing but need color printing from time to time, the Alps MD-2300 is a great second printer.
