Looking for a printer?

Posted in: Printers, blog by CW on 8 November 2010 | No Comments

Nearly every day a customer will tell us they’ve had it with their old printer and want to buy a new one, or that their inkjet printer has broken, no one will repair it, and so they’re in the market for a replacement.

When shopping for a printer, ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you need a printer that does photos and can print in color?
• Does it need to be able to duplex (print on both sides of the page)?
• Do you need a printer that can be connected to an ethernet or wireless network at home or at work?
• Do you need a portable printer for your laptop?
• Do you want to buy just a printer, or do you prefer an all-in-one scanner/copier/fax/printer?
• How often will you be printing?
• What price range are you considering?

Buy a printer based on your needs. There’s no reason to overpay for a machine that performs a ton of functions you’ll most likely never need. Consider what you’ve printed in the last year. If you’ve primarily printed only documents and rarely pictures or color images, consider a personal laser printer. A laser printer is also worth considering if you don’t print very often. Ink cartridges dry out if not used frequently.

Since you’ll be replacing cartridges more often than you’ll be replacing printers, you may want to start by considering which cartridge gives you the best value then searching for a printer that uses that cartridge.

Finally, don’t think that the only place to shop for printers is your local office supply store. They will only carry a few of the newest models. Even Frys only has so much space on their shelves for printers. Go online and check out the deals on NewEgg or Amazon. If you prefer to shop locally, see what’s being offered on eBay’s local classifieds or Craigslist San Diego.

Related articles

• Choosing the Best Windows 7 Compatible Printer for Your Needs (brighthub.com)
• The Best Wireless Printer for Windows 7 (brighthub.com)
• What’s a good monochrome laser printer? (ask.metafilter.com)

Buy a printer, get a tablet

Posted in: Printers, blog by CW on 14 October 2010 | No Comments

HP’s web-enabled printers already featured touchscreen control panels and wireless printing but now the company has gone one step further by including a detachable 7-inch Android with its new Photosmart eStation All-in-One printer. While the prospect of a printer with a free Android tablet might sound pretty tempting, there are some caveats. Although it’s possible to browse (and print) online content using the device’s web browser, there’s no access to the Android Market with apps and widgets limited to customized print-focused offerings from the likes of Yahoo, Facebook and Snapfish.

HP says it hasn’t included access to the Android Market on the device because applications in the market aren’t designed for 7-inch screens. Instead, users will be able to download additional applications through HP’s own application store. The company has partnered with 45 companies, who will develop print-centric applications for the device for printing specialized content such as weather reports, news, sports and finance info, recipes, maps and eBooks. Applications from the likes of Delta Airlines for printing boarding passes, Barnes & Noble for downloading and printing eBooks and NBA.com for accessing game schedules and information were just a few of examples named by HP.

The detachable Wi-Fi tablet is running a version of Android specifically retooled for the device and, although users won’t be able to play games, HP says the user interface is customizable and users will be able to access social networking applications such as Facebook, play music on the built-in music player, or use the device as an eReader. The tablet boasts 802.11n and, when undocked, will provide from four to six hours of battery life. It will also work with all HP wireless printers. The printer can also scan and fax documents without the need of a phone line.

HP obviously feels that allowing the control panel to be detached from the printer is the next logical step following on from its web-enabled printers released earlier this year that allow documents to be sent to the printer via email. By providing a tablet with the printer to allow for wireless printing, HP is no doubt aiming to make it as easy as possible for users to print anything at any time so it can rake in the cash from where it really makes its money – selling the ink. It is this business model that allows HP to bundle an (albeit hamstrung) tablet with a printer for a price comparable to some standalone tablets.

HP didn’t reveal a shipping date for the Photosmart eStation All-in-One printer but said it would cost US$399. Although the tablet will work with all HP wireless printers, the company didn’t say whether it had plans to sell the tablet independently. (Source – gizmag.com)

Related articles

• HP throws in a “free” detachable 7-inch Android tablet with new All-in-One printer (gizmag.com)
• HP’s New Printer Tablet Stays Away From Android Market (android-tablet.org)
• HP Shows off Tablet Device for Printer (pcworld.com)
• HP Photosmart eStation C510 printer / Android tablet now on sale (engadget.com)
• HP sticks an Android tablet into a printer (venturebeat.com)

Print Spooler Issues

Posted in: Printers, blog by CW on 7 September 2010 | No Comments

Jerry E. Pournelle, Ph.D., in a recent post to Chaos Manor Reviews, writes about a problem many of us have experienced, an issue with his print spooler. Yes, even Ph.D.s run into problems with their printers.

Just what is the print spooler?

In computer science, spooling refers to a process of transferring data by placing it in a temporary working area where another program may access it for processing at a later point in time. The normal English verb “spool” can refer to the action of a storage device that incorporates a physical spool or reel, such as a tape drive.

Spooling refers to copying files in parallel with other work. The most common use is in reading files used by a job into or writing them from a buffer on a magnetic tape or a disk. Spooling is useful because devices access data at different rates. The buffer provides a waiting station where data can rest while the slower device catches up.

This temporary working area would normally be a file or storage device. Usual uses of the term spooling apply to situations where there is little or no direct communication between the program writing the data and the program reading it. Spooling is often used when a device writes data faster than a target device can read it, allowing the slower device to work at its own pace without requiring processing to wait for it to catch up. Data is only modified through addition or deletion at the ends of the area, i.e., there is norandom access or editing.

The most common spooling application is print spooling: documents formatted for printing are stored onto a buffer (usually an area on a disk) by a fast processor and retrieved and printed by a relatively slower printer at its own rate. As soon as the fast processor has written the document to the spool device it has finished with the job and is fully available for other processes. One or more processes may rapidly write several documents to a print queue without waiting for each one to print before writing the next. Spooler or print management software may allow priorities to be assigned to jobs, notify users when they have printed, distribute jobs among several printers, allow stationery to be changed or select it automatically, generate banner pages to identify and separate print jobs, etc. (Source)

Here’s the problem Jerry encountered and how he went about fixing it. You may want to bookmark this entry for future reference, because at some point you will run into spooler issues.

It started simply enough when Roberta said her printer wasn’t working. I thought that ought to be simple enough to fix. It was probably a corrupted driver. Or maybe the printer wasn’t installed properly. I’ve been fixing Windows annoyances like this for years, and surely it will be easy enough with Windows 7.

Six hours later I knew better. The problem was that I knew too much, and my first attempts to fix things made it all worse.

My first attempt was to open notepad, create a “foo.txt” document (in my system any file named either foo or .foo can be deleted when found if you’re not actually using it at the moment) and try to print that. All went well. The system said it was printing. The only problem was, nothing happened. It wasn’t printing.

Next step is to check the cables. The printer is an older USB HP LaserJet that is attached to Roberta’s Windows 7 machine. It has never given us any problems. I disconnected the USB cable. The computer gave the acknowledging beep, then another beep when I connected the cable again. Not a cable problem. Power cycling the printer gave the same result. This is an HP LaserJet 1100 and doesn’t have much in the way of testing abilities – at least I wasn’t able to find any way to get it to self-test – so I wasn’t entirely sure that the problem wasn’t the printer itself, but nothing seemed to be wrong with it.

Next look at the Printers in Windows 7. This isn’t as simple as it was in previous versions of Windows. Actually it is in fact far simpler, but only if you didn’t know how to do it the old way and are just trying to find it in Windows 7 for the first time. The trick is to find the printer. That turns out to be done with Start > Control Panel > Devices and Printers > then right click on the printer. The HP 1100 was there. I could see its print queue: there were two documents in it, the older .pdf document Roberta had been trying to print when she discovered her printer wasn’t working, and foo.txt. Aha, thought I, and deleted the two documents. Only they didn’t actually delete.

At this point I could have solved my problem in about thirty seconds had I known what to do. The proper solution to the problem would have been to go Start>Computers>C:\>Windows>System32>Spool>Printers, find the .pdf document in the spool queue, and either move it elsewhere or delete it. Delete foo.txt while I was at it. Restart the computer, and all would be well. That is eventually what I did, and it worked; but by that time I had mucked up the system into a near FUBAR state, and six hours had passed.

Instead of doing that, I tried the print troubleshooter wizard that was offered. That led me to reinstall the HP 1100 print drivers (easy enough and free, but it takes time) and try to reinstall the printer. That led to a persistent error saying “I can’t add a printer because the Spooler Service is not working.” That led to a lengthy Internet search, some command line stunts to start and restart the Print Service (I won’t go into the details because it’s not really likely you’ll have to do this), and a bunch of other futile and time wasting efforts. By the time I was finished I had three instances of the HP 1100 printer installed. Whichever one I selected as default inherited the Spooler queue with the unprintable .pdf document, and no measure I could take would remove that document from the print queue.

In other words, the problem is in Windows 7: the user access to the print queue doesn’t work (or doesn’t always work) if you do it the Windows way. Eventually when all else failed I kept searching the Internet to find where Windows 7 actually spools documents, and came up with the location in System32; but had I not done that, I would never have solved the problem. Example: at one point I deleted every print installation on the machine. I reset the system. Then I reinstalled the HP 1100. Of course as soon as I did and let it be the default printer, it inherited the unprintable file and stopped working, and, of course, I could not delete the unprintable file from the Control Panel access to the printers. Nothing I know of can delete a bad file except going to System32>Spoolers and doing it by hand. That works.

If you prefer the “official” word on solving spooler issues, here’s Microasoft’s advice.

Symptoms:

You cannot print from any program, and you may receive any of the following error messages when you try to print a document:

System error 1068 has occurred.
The dependency service or group failed to start.

Spooler SubSystem App has encountered a problem and needs to close.  We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Operation could not be completed. The print spooler service is not running.

Resolutions:

To fix this problem, reset the print spooler.

That’s why so many of us do not depend on Microsoft to give us the best solutions to problems with their products. You’ll probably get better, more detailed answers to your Windows questions by Googling the exact problem you’re having to see what others have posted about it or visiting a good help forum like Scot Finnie’s Newsletter Forum. (Full disclosure: I’m an administrator on that forum, which is the reason I know you’ll get prompt and useful information there.)

Related articles by Zemanta

• How do you move the printer spooler (edugeek.net)
• Papercut, Windows 7 and GPP printers (edugeek.net)
• HP 2600n/2605dn Printing Problems (edugeek.net)
• Find, Install, and Troubleshoot HP Printer Drivers for Windows 7 (brighthub.com)

Other ways to print

Posted in: Printers, blog by CW on 18 August 2010 | No Comments

Most of the time when we discuss “printing” we are talking about a traditional computer-printer setup; the printer connected to the computer with a parallel or USB cable and print jobs sent from a word processor or image application to the printer.

But did you know there are other ways to print?

Many modern printers are being sold with wireless capabilities. Used to be if you wanted to connect your printer to your wireless network you had to buy and configure a print server, one of the most frustrating and problematic pieces of technology released to the public. When I worked on the help desk of a major networking hardware manufacturer we used to hate receiving calls about print servers. Not very many home users saw the need for print servers, most were sold to businesses. The difficulty with configuring them and getting them to stay connected to the network made them unpopular.

This was before the wireless device revolution we’re now experiencing. Now your cell phone can connect to your wireless network, you can connect external storage devices, MP3 players, cameras, iPads and the list goes on and increases almost daily. Eventually all of our electronic devices will be able to network together and send data from one device to another.

A printer that’s a part of a wireless network can receive print jobs from any other device on the network. My camera can send an image to be printed. I can print out the webpage I’m reading on my wireless laptop. You no longer have to be sitting in front of your computer at a desk in order to print.

There are even wireless printers that, by means of a modified browser, allow you to surf and print directly from the internet, no computer required.

Another technology that has become nearly ubiquitous in cell phones and other personal electronic devices is Bluetooth. Bluetooth is a wireless technology with a shorter range than the 802.11 b/g/n routers most of us have, generally 30 feet as opposed to the average 300 feet of 802.11 wireless devices. Bluetooth is ideal for sending data to another device quickly and securely. Bluetooth in a printer is less beneficial than is wireless since the distance is more limited by Bluetooth. In some homes and offices you could easily be too far from the printer for it to connect.

There’s also been an increase in the number of ethernet-networked printers. These printers are connected to your network’s router with a standard ethernet cable like the one connected to your computer. Connecting to the printer by ethernet cable instead of making a wireless connection requires more cables running everywhere.

Finally, did you know you can “print” without even owning a printer?

Most word processing applications offer a means to “print to file” instead of sending a print job to a printer. This option is a bit different than simply saving a document. By printing to file you are saving a copy of your document as it would appear if printed out. Some applications also allow you to “print” your document to a file in PDF format.

Some people believe they need to print out every interesting thing they get in email or see on the web. You could save paper and ink by printing instead to a folder on your computer or external storage device.

PostScript printers

Posted in: Printers, blog by CW on 22 July 2010 | No Comments

I had a customer the other day who was receiving some documents from an employer  and the employer required that she have a PostScript printer installed on her computer. She was not familiar with Post Script printers and had no idea if she had one or not.

First, there’s an easy way to check if your computer has a PostScript printer installed. Most all programs install a PostScript printer to the same place on your computer that any other printer will show. So just navigate to the Start menu in Windows (System Preferences on Mac OS X) and then click on Printers & Faxes (Print & Fax on Mac OS X). In this section you may find virtual printers created by desktop publishing applications like Microsoft Word and PDF printers. This is also where a PostScript printer will show up if one is installed on your system.

For a brief overview of just what a PostScript printer is let me quote from About.com:

Simply put, PostScript is a programming or page description language. It is a way of describing what a page should look like. Another such page description language is PCL (printer control language) found in HP printers. For the differences between PostScript and PCL see PS and PCL Comparisions.

Printers print dots. How these dots (raster images) are arranged on the page determines what you see, how the page looks. A printer uses an interpreter (printer driver) to translate digital documents created by your software into a raster image that the printer can print.

Some types of documents such as those created by graphic designers and desktop publishers, contain an intricate combination of fonts and graphics that are best described using PostScript. The PostScript language and a PostScript printer driver then tell the printer how to print that document. PostScript is generally device-independent, that is, if you create a PostScript file it will print pretty much the same on any PostScript device.

Do you need a PostScript printer? Click on over to About.com and find out.

Related articles by Zemanta

• How Do I View EPS Files? (brighthub.com)
• Quick and basic PostScript programming tutorial (mostlymaths.net)

Do you get crashes when printing in Leopard (OS X 10.5)?

Posted in: Printers, blog by CW on 30 May 2010 | No Comments

If so, here’s one possible cause and solution from the excellent macosxhints.com website, posted by Tom Neale:

Several models of HP LaserJet printer are known to crash or hang when certain documents are printed from 10.5/Leopard machines. The culprit may be a bad or corrupted font, in particular, version 6 of the Papyrus font. In short: replace the font file with one from a 10.4 installation to stop the printer crashes.

The longer version: I have a Color Laserjet 3800n and also a 2430dtn that crash any time a document that uses the Papyrus font is printed from a machine running Mac OS 10.5.x. They display an Error 49.4 C02 code and the printer must be powered cycled to clear the problem. HP lists this code as ‘A critical firmware error has occurred;’ not particularly useful or informative. The same problem did not occur when printing from 10.4.x machines.

This all led me to look at the font itself. The file always passes the verification tests in Font Book; there is nothing overtly wrong with it. But, it clearly does not get along well with these HP Laserjet printers. The version of the font installed on a 10.5 system is is 6.0d6e1. It contains both Regular and Condensed versions of the font.

I went hunting for a different version of the Papyrus.dfont file and found one on a 10.4.11 machine. It is version 4.0d1e1 and contains only Regular, not Condensed. Replacing the newer font with the older one in the /Library/Fonts folder allowed me to successfully print documents using the Papyrus font. This has fixed the printer crashing problem for me.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Apple updates Epson printer drivers for Snow Leopard (macworld.com)
• Adding HP printer to a network (macworld.com)
• FontAgent Pro adds font auto-activation for CS5 apps (macworld.com)

5 things to keep in mind when buying a new printer

Posted in: Printers, blog by CW on 29 April 2010 | 1 Comment

There is no fixed season for new printer purchasing. Printer manufacturers don’t have any particular time of year set aside to introduce their new models. Some manufacturers introduce a new printer once a year, others bring out several new models a year. The decision to buy a new printer is going to be based on your needs and the condition of your current printer. From what we’ve seen, the average life expectancy of a new inkjet printer is about 2 years. Since inkjet printers are not made to be repaired, if your inkjet printer breaks you really have no alternative but to replace it (and recycle your broken printer). Laserjet printers are designed with repair in mind and replacement parts are usually available. But these days the cost of parts and labor can exceed the value of the printer. In those cases replacing the printer may be a better decision financially than repairing your broken machine. We would generally advise a customer to reuse their old machine, but with an appreciation of financial reality, we understand that doesn’t always make the best fiscal sense. Still, we encourage anyone replacing their current printer to find a way to recycle it rather than throwing it in the trash.

So you’ve decided it’s time to but a new printer. Here are some questions to ask yourself before you commit to a specific model or brand.

1. What type of printing will the new printer be doing as its primary task?

This is the most important question of any you need to consider before deciding which printer to buy.

Will you be printing photographs or color copies? Then unless you are willing to spend a few hundred dollars for a color laser printer you’ll be looking for an inkjet printer. Inkjets produce the best color prints for a reasonable price per page. If you only intend to print out documents and forms and have no need for color printing, then you should consider the various models of personal laserjet printers being marketed today. These are smaller than the typical office laserjet and while the single cartridge may set you back $40 or more, that cartridge will produce, on average, ten times more pages than an inkjet cartridge, so your cost-per-page is a tenth of that printing with ink.

2. How often will you be printing?

If you print something at least every couple of weeks then either an inkjet or laserjet will be useful to you. However, if you’re only going to use your printer for a few weeks every year you’d be better off considering only a laserjet. Laser printers use powdered toner which isn’t subject to drying or evaporating. You can leave a laser printer alone for 3 months, come back and run a perfect print. That isn’t going to happen with the majority of inkjet printers. Laserjet printers are subject to humidity, though. The toner in a laser cartridge kept in a humid atmosphere will clump up and be unavailable for printing. This can be remedied by gently shaking or rocking the cartridge back and forth to break up the toner clumps. At worst clumped up toner is a waste; toner clumps cannot damage your printer. Ink cartridges left too long without being used will most likely form hard blocks of dried ink on the printhead. This can sometimes be cleared up but most often requires replacing the cartridge.

3. Is printing vitally important to you or something you only do once in a while?

The more important printing is to you, the more attention you should pay to all the capabilities of your next printer. If you do a great deal of printing, you want to minimize costs as much as possible while ensuring the highest quality of output available. You’ll want to purchase your printer from a retailer who offers a solid warranty and good service-after-the-sale. If printing is a casual practice and you don’t need all the bells-and-whistles of a high-end printer, watch for sales at the big box electronics retail stores and even scout out your local thrift stores. Older printers and discontinued models may meet your needs and save you quite a bit of money.

4. Where will your printer be located and how many computers will be using the printer?

One of the capabilities being built-in to newer printers, both ink and laser, is wireless connectivity. Previously, if you wanted to connect your printer to a wireless network, you had to purchase a separate print server, a nasty piece of hardware that usually proved difficult to configure and nearly impossible to use without problems. I used to work for D-Link on the help desk, and I’d say the most difficult calls we had to handle dealt with print servers. No one is happier to see the end of these devices. Printers with built-in wireless capabilities are simple to set up and deploy. It’s not much harder than adding another computer to your network. A wireless-capable networked printer is available to any computer within range of the router. You could have your printer in one office and send print jobs to it from any other office in your business or any room in your house.

Another alternative is a wired network printer. Many newer laser printers have an ethernet card built-in to the chassis and can be added to your network by simply connecting a standard RJ-45 ethernet cable from the router to the printer. This means that the printer will need to be located within cable length of the router, usually 6-15′.

One advantage to a wired printer is security. If for any reason you are sending print jobs to the printer that should be kept secure from possibly being intercepted by an unauthorized 3rd party, you’ll want to have a wired connection to the router for both your computer and printer. Any data sent wirelessly to a router or printer can be compromised by being intercepted en route. For the average user this isn’t much of a concern. But if you deal with sensitive data or any information that shouldn’t be exposed to the risk of interception, it’s something to keep in mind.

5. What is going to be the cost of consumables?

The initial cost of the printer is not the only expense you’ll be incurring over the lifetime of your printer. You need to factor in the cost of consumables, primarily ink/toner and paper, as well. With each new generation of printer the manufacturers are shrinking the volume of ink and toner in their cartridges. This makes sense when you consider they make little or no profit off the sales of the printer but instead have chosen to make most of their profit from the sales of cartridges. To increase profits they need to make you buy cartridges more frequently. This is most easily accomplished by reducing the amount of ink and toner in the cartridges so you’ll have to replace them more often. It’s true they have also reduced the price of many of their newest cartridges, but the price reduction doesn’t always reflect the amount of toner or ink in the cartridge. Your new cartridge may cost $2 less than the ones you used to buy, but you’re often only getting half the ink that was in those older cartridges.

While we can’t help you reduce the cost of the paper you buy for your printer, we can help you control the cost of ink and/or laser cartridges. On average remanufactured cartridges from CW San Diego cost from 30-45% less than the manufacturer’s suggested retail price of original cartridges. Our cartridges are filled with quality ink and toner manufactured for your specific printer, and all of our products are guaranteed for the life of the cartridge. We offer you a no-risk way to reduce the cost of ink and toner cartridges.

We encourage our customers to call us before and even while they shop for a new printer. We can let you know our prices for the cartridges required for your new printer, allowing you to make an informed decision about which printer best meets your needs.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Printer Shopping Tips from MacWorld (cwsandiego.com)
• The right font can save you money (news.cnet.com)
• Review: HP Officejet 6000 Wireless inkjet printer (macworld.com)
• Review: HP Officejet Pro 8000 Wireless inkjet printer (macworld.com)
• Printer Buying Guide: Major printer types explained (macworld.com)

Solving hardware issues with software (drivers)

Posted in: Printers, blog by CW on 16 April 2010 | 1 Comment

One practice we frequently employed on help desks was to insist that the caller first go and download and install the latest driver for their hardware before we attempted to troubleshoot their issue.

This wasn’t done to get them off the phone. It was a valid attempt to solve their issue.

The disk that comes with your printer was most likely created months before your printer was packaged and sent to the retail store where you bought it. By the time you go to install the drivers on the disk into your computer they could be over a year old. During that year other owners reported issues they had to the printer manufacturer, the manufacturer’s engineers re-wrote the drivers to correct those problems, and the manufacturer made these updated drivers available on their website. Windows 7′s recent release will also have caused new drivers to be written in order for your printer to work with this new operating system.

This is why we recommend that when you encounter odd behavior or other issues with your printer, before you do anything else in an attempt to fix those issues, go to the manufacturer’s website, look for the Support section and download and install the latest drivers for your printer and operating system. That alone may very well solve your problems.

Related articles by Zemanta

• HP launches Smart Install plug and play printers (v3.co.uk)
• Google moving closer to Chrome OS printing (news.cnet.com)
• Apple offers updates for Samsung, Brother printers (macworld.com)
• HP invents amazing new driver technology for their new LaserJet printers (crunchgear.com)

Printer Shopping Tips from MacWorld

Posted in: Printers, blog by CW on 29 March 2010 | 2 Comments

Every month it seems printer manufacturers are pushing new models with additional features (and smaller ink supplies) onto the shelves of local office supply and big-box retail stores. Every week we get calls from our customers asking for suggestions as to which printer to buy; which printer has the cheapest cartridges, which one most easily connects to a home or small business wireless network, which printer best meets their printing needs.

Our basic advice has always been to get the printer that does what you need a printer to do and avoid buying one that offers additional functions that you have no use for. For example, if you don’t plan on adding this printer to a SOHO wireless network, save money and don’t buy one with wireless capabilities.

MacWorld recently published an article with their suggestions for printer buyers.

If you’re about to go shopping for a printer, whether in person or online, keep the following tips in mind.

• Set your budget
• Decide on must-have features
• Know your ink and toner costs

They break down printer price-points:

What to expect for your money

• $40 to $80: Curb your expectations.
• $80 to $100: Basic functionality.
• $150: Adequate or better.
• $250: Midrange inkjets and monochrome lasers.
• $400: The best inkjets and bare-bones color lasers.
• $500: Basic color lasers and better monochrome lasers.
• $700 to $800: The sweet spot for lasers.
• $1000 or more: First class all the way.

They end up with advice with which we absolutely agree.

Ink and toner costs

The money you pay for any printer doesn’t stop with the hardware purchase; you also have to consider the ongoing costs for replacing the ink or toner supplies. For many inkjet printers, in particular, the cost of replacement cartridges can quickly outstrip the initial cost of the printer. Don’t be tempted by a printer’s features without also checking on its cost of consumables.

(Source-MacWorld)

Related articles by Zemanta

• Printer Buying Guide: Shopping tips (macworld.com)
• Printer Buying Guide: Major printer types explained (macworld.com)
• Buying a printer: Tips and advice (macworld.com)
• Buying a printer: fact vs. fiction (macworld.com)
• Printer Buying Guide: Features you need to know (macworld.com)

When you click on “Print”…

Posted in: Printers, blog by CW on 2 March 2010 | No Comments

When you click on a button to print, there is a sequence of events that take place:

1. The software application you are using sends the data to be printed to the printer driver.
2. The driver translates the data into a format that the printer can understand and checks to see that the printer is online and available to print.
3. The data is sent by the driver from the computer to the printer via the connection interface (parallel, USB, etc.).
4. The printer receives the data from the computer. It stores a certain amount of data in a buffer. The buffer can range from 512 KB random access memory (RAM) to 16 MB RAM, depending on the model. Buffers are useful because they allow the computer to finish with the printing process quickly, instead of having to wait for the actual page to print. A large buffer can hold a complex document or several basic documents.
5. If the printer has been idle for a period of time, it will normally go through a short clean cycle to make sure that the print head(s) are clean. Once the clean cycle is complete, the printer is ready to begin printing.
6. The control circuitry activates the paper feed stepper motor. This engages the rollers, which feed a sheet of paper from the paper tray/feeder into the printer. A small trigger mechanism in the tray/feeder is depressed when there is paper in the tray or feeder. If the trigger is not depressed, the printer lights up the “Out of Paper” LED and sends an alert to the computer.
7. Once the paper is fed into the printer and positioned at the start of the page, the print head stepper motor uses the belt to move the print head assembly across the page. The motor pauses for the merest fraction of a second each time that the print head sprays dots of ink on the page and then moves a tiny bit before stopping again. This stepping happens so fast that it seems like a continuous motion.
8. Multiple dots are made at each stop. It sprays the CMYK colors in precise amounts to make any other color imaginable.
9. At the end of each complete pass, the paper feed stepper motor advances the paper a fraction of an inch. Depending on the inkjet model, the print head is reset to the beginning side of the page, or, in most cases, simply reverses direction and begins to move back across the page as it prints.
10. This process continues until the page is printed. The time it takes to print a page can vary widely from printer to printer. It will also vary based on the complexity of the page and size of any images on the page. For example, a printer may be able to print 16 pages per minute (PPM) of black text but take a couple of minutes to print one, full-color, page-sized image.
11. Once the printing is complete, the print head is parked. The paper feed stepper motor spins the rollers to finish pushing the completed page into the output tray. Most printers today use inks that are very fast-drying, so that you can immediately pick up the sheet without smudging it.

(Courtesy of How Stuff Works)

Related articles by Zemanta

• Solve inkjet printer problems (macworld.com)
• Share a Printer from XP to Windows 7 (helpdeskgeek.com)
• San Diego’s Printer Industry Veterans Offer Some Insights Into Memjet’s Technology (xconomy.com)