My Canon Starwriter 30, similar to the one shown, purchased in 1995, still works just as well as it ever did. I wrote a letter on it today to send by fax, and my almost-as-old 1996 Sanyo Fax Machine works equally well. I'm quite pleased that both of these well-used but carefully cared for machines are still able to do their thing as well as ever.
The Canon word processor might have been a real world-beater, except for two things: Windows 95 came out right on top of it, and its computer language isn't the most popular one used by the vast majority of computers. But for its time, it did (and still does) some amazing things. It can type in 20 languages, in case you know that many and most of us don't of course, and it can calculate using formulas and add columns, and even print your own greetings with illustrations, if you wish. And if you ran out of ribbons, it can use the heat-sensitive fax paper, if you're absolutely desperate - but you wouldn't want to use that for anything you were sending out, of course. This word processor is very possibly the best of the breed anywhere, and I've written thousands of pages on mine, and it is still working just as well as the day I first unpacked it from its shipping container. And it's 19 years later. That's a pretty good testimonial for Canon, and it's a shame it got clobbered in the market by full-blown computers, because it is about 95% computer itself. If it had a built-in fax machine, you could probably throw out your computer and avoid all that malware, and still be able to transmit messages just the same.
Well, Ray the last time I plugged in my orgional IBM PC-1 it worked just fine. Wonder if it still would now.. Maybe when I have nothing better to do I'll check it out.
ReplyDeleteI tried the Starwriter 30 because I don't own a printer, and I wanted to do a letter that would look like it was meant to go somewhere, so it was a happy ending to a problem.
ReplyDeleteI had a Lexmark printer, but I got tired of spending more than it cost me just to get more ink cartridges for it. It took two (colored + black) and they were each $45, but the printer only cost $80, so it was a losing proposition. I quietly threw it out.
Luckily, my old word processor and fax machine still work fine, and I've got a dozen spare ribbons stashed away for the word processor, so that won't be a problem for a while.