[P1] Printing (Was: iApps and if Apple should concentrate on them)

[david]

On 1/6/03 9:56 AM, "Karsten Kühn" <karsten.kuehn at web.de> wrote:

> Hello Donald
> 
> we use 2 HP 1200 Laserprinters with  an USB connection and one Apple
> Laserwriter 4/600 which is connected to the ethernet port using the
> Asanté Ethernet To LocalTalk bridge.
> 
> In brief, my experiences so far are:
> 
> All printers print in excellent quality. As far as plain texts or
> business graphics are concerned there is no difference betwen the HP
> 1200 and the more expensive 2200 series.
> In regard of its age, the LW 4/600 still is an excellent printer.
> 
> All printers work fine under OS 8.6 and 9.2
> 
> None of the printers works fine under OS  10.1.5
> 
> The LW 4/600 doesn't work at all
>
I find this amazing...I have the LW 4/600 and home and have never had
printing problems with Classic or OS X - since OS 10.1 - Now I did find that
early versions of OmniGraffle sometimes overwhelmed it - memory over runs
but shortly before Jag came out that was solved. If you are having trouble
with multiple programs and this printer, I'd suspect that your problem
involves your account prefs or some utility you are using.
> 
> The two HP 1200ers are not printing any graphics from within the classic
> environment. Even if you just copy and paste a simple icon from a file
> or folder into MS Word or Ragtime postscript errors are  the result. We
> get dozens of pages with cryptic signs on them. After we accidentially
> tried to print graphics we have to shut down the classic environment and
> reboot it or, this happened about 10 times so far, reinstall the printer
> driver.
>
I have no experience with this printer...however I know these are cheap
consumer printers - they don't use PS do they? Or do they use a PS clone?
> 
> Every other print job fails in OS 10.1.5
> The computer says, that it couldn't print and asks if we want to either
> cancel, retry or postpone the printjob.
> We then open our print center, stop the printer queue, press restart
> printe queue and also click on the button "retry this printjob".
> Then it works (most of the times)
> 
> Although our LW 4/600 has only 2 MB of RAM, it sometimes is able to
> print PDFs, our two HP Printers with 8 MB won't.
> The cause may be that only the LW 4/600 has real postscript and the HPs
> only emulate it.
> 
> The USB cables are 5 metres long. This is the maximum length for an USB
> connection. But it also is the minimum length needed to place a
> Laserprinter ergonomically.
> 
> 
> I don't think, that it is only a problem with the printer driver for OS
> X. Needless to say that we already tried all printer drivers available.
> It's more or less a complex problem in/with the print center and the way
> how OS X is dealing with print jobs.

> I have already learned that companies dealing with postscript do not
> encounter these devestating problems (they are actually devastating for
> a small company). But after having read the discussions on Apples
> support pages I must come to the conclusion that there are problems with
> several types of printers which only emulate Postscript.
> Complaints about HP printers are quite often.
> 
I suspect you are right that the problem revolves around your choice of
printer. OS X uses V3 of PostScript as I recall. I do know that v1 PS
printers choke on OS X output. What do these HP1200 printers use? A PS
clone? If so, what version does it emulate?



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davidwb at spymac.com