need a new printer, but how to configure?

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

Polly, The first thing to consider is this: If you're running Win9x and
aren't on a network, you'll need to be sure the printer has a parallel
connector, since 9x doesn't let you map a USB port on one PC to a
parallel port on the same PC (2K and XP do; see Robert Holmgen's post of
11/08).

As for Epsons, unlike the older Epson inkjets, which still used Esc/P
(for which, along with PCL and PostScript, there were XyWrite drivers),
the newer ones use something called Esc/P Raster, which doesn't really
work with the older XyWrite printer drivers. I have an 82C, and I can get
a data dump (raw text) but NO formatting--no margins, page length, bold
or ital, or high ASCII characters. So steer clear of them. You'll have to
get either an HP, a PostScript, or an older (second-hand) Epson inkjet
(the Stylus Color 800 worked rather well with the LQ 820 driver). The LJ
2 driver seems to work with any modern HP that supports PCL (watch out:
some of the cheaper ones don't; see Robert Holmgen's post of a few days
ago on which do), laser or inkjet. Some of the later XyWrite HP drivers
might give you more of the features you need, and there is also a
souped-up 600 inkjet driver on the XyWWWeb site. You'll simply need to
experiment to see what each driver does. It is also possible to tweak an
existing driver to better fit your printer, but that requires not merely
knowing something about PCL, but knowing things about the printer that
the usual user manuals don't tell you. Early last Jan, Michael Norman and
Robert Holmgen had an exchange about some of these issues, which you
might want to revisit.
Patricia