"Business Imaging System" Uses Windows Imaging Model
 
Microbytes Daily News Service
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Alacrity Systems quietly rolled out at Comdex its "business
imaging system," a single-slot AT-bus board that provides both
display control and laser printer control using a single imaging
model, the Windows Graphical Device Interface. A daughtercard
that uses an additional slot will control a scanner, permitting
scanned images to be displayed or printed directly, without
crossing the bus, or to be compressed and shipped off to main
memory. Alacrity claims that its Exact-2000 challenges the single
imaging model of OS/2 with Presentation Manager, but does it
today, for less money, and using existing low-cost laser
printers.
 
The $2395 Exact-2000 contains a 40-MHz TI 34010 processor, 2 to 4
megabytes of DRAM, and 1 megabyte of video RAM. It can control
both a 1600 x 1200 display (Alacrity will sell a 19-inch
full-page monochrome model for $995 and also supports displays
from Moniterm, Sigma Designs, and Display Tech, among others) and
a laser printer such as the HP LaserJet II, Brother HL-8, or
Canon LBP8-II. Using Bitstream fonts, the Exact-2000 can create
"on-the-fly" scalable, rotatable fonts on screen, for real
WYSIWYG representation, and then use the same outlines to print
the page to non-PostScript printers. Alacrity claims Exact-2000's
raster image processor can print in as little as 30 seconds pages
that would otherwise take up to 20 minutes.
 
By using the Microsoft Windows GDI imaging model for printer
control, the Exact-2000 skips the time-consuming process of
converting pages to H-P PCL or PostScript, while supporting
transparently Windows applications such as Aldus PageMaker,
Micrografx Designer, Corel Draw, Computer Solutions Arts &
Letters, and the AGA family of image retrieval systems.
 
The Exact-2000 will be available in December, the vendor says.
Models that handle only printer control or display control are
$1695; the scanner daughtercard varies from $395 to $550
depending on configuration.
 
Alacrity Systems, 88 Bartley Sq. C-6, Flanders, NJ 07836; (201)
584-0116; fax (201) 584-3185.
 
                              --- Andy Reinhardt
 
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