Printers & Printing

As part of QMUG/LA’s March 2003 “Printers & Printing” presentation, we’re proud to offer you this handout. It’s about 12 printed pages, and hopefully you’ll find it helpful.

  I. Printers
     A. Three technologies, their price ranges, and their advantages and disadvantages
        1. Dot Matrix
        2. InkJet
        3. Laser
        4. Other Technologies
        5. Tech Note
     B. Three specifications to consider
        1. Paper Path  (Straight-through or not)
        2. Paper Size  (Tabloid, 11x17, or not)
        3. Cumulative Cost of Consumables  (Paper, Ribbon, Ink, Toner, etc.)
        4. Other Specifications  (connectivity, dpi, duplexing, multifunctioning, etc.)
        5. Spec Note  (connectivity adapters like serial, parallel, USB, etc.)

 II. Printing
     A. Three options to consider
        1. Printing w/o a Printer  (Faxing, Kinko’s, and PDFs)
        2. Switching between Printers  (the Chooser, and Desktop Printers)
        3. Paying attention to your Page Setup and Print windows
     B. Three options for OS X
        1. Gimp-Print
        2. Ghostscript
        3. Print Center Repair

     C. Three sub-topics not covered
        1. Sharing Printers
        2. PostScript & its Errors
        3. Color Consistency/Fidelity  (ColorSync, Pantone, etc.)

 

I. Printers      A. Three technologies, their price ranges, and their advantages and disadvantages Technology: 1. Dot Matrix 2. InkJet 3. Laser    a. Mechanics: ink on a ribbon is typed onto paper liquid ink is sprayed through nozzles onto paper toner is attracted to paper that is charged w/ static electricity and then fused to it w/ heat    *. Examples       (Alphabetically): * Epson LQ-570e $259 * Panasonic KX-P2023 $195 * Canon i70 $299 * Epson Stylus Photo 1280 $489 * HP DesignJet 500 $2050 * Lexmark Z55se $99 * Brother HL 1440 $249 * GCC Elite XL $1599 * HP LaserJet 2500l $999 * Xanté CL 600 $3799    b. Price Range:  printer: $139-$11,836 b ribbon: $ 6-$276 c ribbon: $18-$419    paper: $ 6-$49 printer: $69-$7495 blk ink: $ 3-$115 clr ink: $ 3-$129   paper: $ 4-$258 printer: $159-$14,639 b toner: $13-$609 c toner: $26-$609   paper: $ 2-$ 16    c. Advantages: + physically strikes paper so great for multi-layered forms, receipts + can print banners + initial low-cost + light weight, portable + can print banners + fast & quiet + clean & sharp + long-lasting consumables + can print on almost any paper + unaffected by moisture    d. Disadvantages: – noisy – print quality – slow – short-lasting consumables – sensitive to moisture – initial high-cost – heavy weight, not portable – cannot print banners         4. Other Technologies: imagesetting, plotting, thermal & dye sublimation, etc.         5. Tech Note: How tabloid laser and color laser printer prices have come down over time is wonderful.

B. Three specifications to consider         1. Paper Path  (Straight-through or not, for thick/heavy paper)         2. Paper Size  (Tabloid, 11x17, or not, for large envelopes)         3. Cumulative Cost of Consumables  (Ribbon, Black Ink, Color Ink, Toner, Paper, etc.)

Example:	Panasonic KX-P2023	Epson Stylus Photo 1200	HP LaserJet 6MP
a. Advertised Time       to print 10 pgs:	64 LQ char/sec 1600 char/pg 4 mins/10 pgs	1 black/min 0.5 color/min 20 mins/10 pgs	8 pgs/min   1.25 mins/10 pgs
b. Actual Time       to print 10 pgs:	n/a	16 mins/10 pgs	1.67 mins/10 pgs
c. Advertised Cost       to print 10 pgs:	paper: $11/1000 shts ribbon: $15*/3 mil chars,              1875 pgs  paper: $0.01/sheet ribbon: $0.01/pg   $0.20/10 pgs	paper: $10/100 shts blk ink: $30/540 pgs clr ink: $30/330 pgs   paper: $0.10/sheet blk ink: $0.06/pg clr ink: $0.09/pg $2.50/10 pgs	paper: $5/500 shts   toner: $75/4000 pgs     paper: $0.01/sheet   toner: $0.02/pg   $0.30/10 pgs
d. Actual Cost       to print 10 pgs:	n/a	owned: 14 months   paper: 8 @ $10 = 800 shts blk ink: 3 @ $25 = 267/cart clr ink: 4 @ $30 = 200/cart   total: $275.00 = $19.64/mo   paper: $  0.10/sheet blk ink: $  0.09/pg clr ink: $  0.15/pg $3.40/10 pgs	owned: 35 months   paper: 8 @ $ 5 = 4000 shts   toner: 1 @ $75 = 4000/cart     total: $115.00 = $3.29/mo   paper: $  0.01/sheet   toner: $  0.02/pg   $0.30/10 pgs

        4. Other Specifications: connectivity (Mac Serial, SCSI, USB, ethernet, infrared),
           dpi, duplexing, multifunctioning, network ready, ppm, paper trays, PostScript capable, etc.
        5. Spec Note: You may need a connectivity adapter, like Mac Serial or USB to Parallel (Keyspan’s Adapter, $28*), USB to Mac Serial (Belkin’s Adapter, $71*), or Ethernet to LocalTalk (Farallon’s iPrint, $99*).

II. Printing      A. Three options to consider         1. Printing w/o a Printer  (Faxing, and Kinko’s)            a. If you have faxing software, fax to work, a friend, or to a local grocery store.            b. You can also consider Kinko’s:                 i. faxing (rec'g) ............ $1.00/pg      v. printing (b&w laser) ...... $0.49/pg                ii. faxing (send'g) ........... $1.00/pg     vi. printing (color laser) .... $0.99/pg               iii. copying (b&w) ............. $0.08/pg    vii. printing (color inkjet) ... $12/sq'                iv. copying (color) ........... $0.99/pg   viii. renting ................... $12/hr              c. Print or Save to PDF, and e-mail that to a friend.

2. Switching between Printers  (the Chooser, and Desktop Printers) As you know, you can go to your Chooser to switch between printers. If this is your Chooser window,

use your Extensions Manager to disable printers you don’t have.

(In Mac OS X, the Library for Printers can be over 200MB. Clearly you can go in and Trash printers you don’t have or need.)

There, much cleaner, much simpler, much better!

But when you switch printers, you get:

So do that, but for laser printers, to avoid getting that dialog box, create Desktop Printers, via your Chooser or Apple’s Desktop Printer Utility:

And you get: (Note that the ESP 1200 icon is an alias to my Chooser and not a Desktop Printer icon.) When you click on a Desktop Printer icon, in your menubar you get a Printing menu: You can easily switch your default laser printers by pressing Command-L. You should still check your Page Setup, but you’ve at least avoided that annoying warning.

If you double-click on a Desktop Printer icon, you get: Here you can view your print queue, and stop, schedule or shuffle specific jobs, etc.

3. Paying attention to your Page Setup and Print windows Printing involves two windows — your Page Setup window, and your Print window — and they’re different in different applications and for different printers. Here’s a basic Page Setup window for a laser printer.

When you click on some of the pop-up menus, you can see some of your options. Notice for Netscape Comunicator, it offers a Netscape Communicator option. To save your changes as your Page Setup window’s default settings, hold your command key down when you press your return key or click the OK button.

Netscape offers you incredible customization as to what information you want to appear in up to six different places. Here you can also choose to print backgrounds (which is different from background printing) and/or to fit to page or not.

Internet Explorer puts its equivalent to this more conveniently in your Print window, but gives you the option to print Headers and Footers or not, and not the option to customize this information. Internet Explorer 5.0 also offers the option to Print Preview.

Moving on to your Print window, here’s a basic one for a laser printer.

Again, when you click on some of the pop-up menus, you can see some of your options: which laser printer profile to use, whether to send the print job to the printer or to save it as a file on your hard drive, which tray to use, and other Print options, including Layout.

The Print window Layout option is cool. For laser printers, you can print up to 16 pages on one physical sheet of paper, control their direction, and whether they should have borders or not.

Inkjet printers offer similar but different options. Here’s a basic Page Setup window for an inkjet printer. Note that (a) custom paper sizes are specific to each printer and have to be manually transfered to other printer Page Setup window settings to be used by them; (b) Fit to Page can be helpful, but I personally find printing web pages in particular at 85% just fine; and (c) if e-mail prints out in microscopic print, uncheck Fit to Page.

And here’s a basic Print window for an inkjet printer.

Again, when you click on some of the pop-up menus, you can see some of your options: which kind of paper you’re using, whether to print in Economy mode or some other mode, and other Print options, including Layout.

The Print window Layout option is cool for inkjet printers as well. A neat option is Watermarks, their Color and Intensity.

B. Three options for OS X         1. Gimp-Print and         2. Ghostscript            <http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/MacOSX.php3>         3. Print Center Repair.            <http://www.fixamac.net/software/pcr>