Re: Printer help (again)

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

Michael Norman wrote:

> At 3/7/2002 09:06 AM -0500, Tim Baehr wrote:
> >My printers have included my venerable HP IIIP, a Brother LED, and the HP
> >6-whatever (the cheapie). My Xy-original drivers are fine; the IIIP driver
> >and the driver for the HP 4 series. The key is PCL. XyWrite drivers for
> >the HP printers are OK with PCL 3 and above, in my experience.
> >
> >Windows-only printers probably don't support PCL, which is HP's
> >proprietary page description language. The Brother just happened to have
> >HP emulation.
>
> Thanks, Tim. This is what a few folks were looking for the other day, a
> spec to check before buying a new printer.

PCL support may be a useful co-indicator, but I think there is more to it than
that. For many years now, various computer devices -- especially printers --
have been built to have their own onboard ROM or processor and onboard memory,
so that much of the workload associated with said device's function can happen
there, rather than bogging down your CPU and system memory. (For example, the
classic LaserJets had their own 68000-series processor, plus x meg.s of
standard printer RAM.) The Winprinters reverse this trend, dumping this
support back onto Win and system resources, in order to spare the cost of
building these chips into the printer. I'd say you get what you pay for,
except for the fact that the Winprinter (and Win-modem) manufacturers seem to
have expended zero effort in being clear about this with consumers.

Here's another possible indicator: I bet a WinPrinter can't support Linux
either.

Jordan