Postscript still important for laser printers? How much RAM is enough? LexMark?

On 07/26/2010 01:39 AM, Andrew Hamilton wrote:
On Sat, 24 Jul 2010 16:58:38 -0400, Tim wrote:

On 07/24/2010 02:41 PM, Andrew Hamilton wrote:
On 24 Jul 2010 15:11:56 GMT, Warren wrote:

That's a judgement call. I'd say yes. A PCL-only printer is livable,
and some people can use a host-based printer without problems. But a PS
printer gives you more options and is more versatile.

Sounds like I really should have a Postscript printer. I am
self-employed and can't deal with printer limitation hassles.

Maybe Andrew can explain further what he means by "more options and more
versatile" -- I must admit my needs are fairly basic -- but PCL
certainly does the job on my now old Laserjet 1012. (It doesn't feel old
in any way

Tim,

That wasn't me talking about "more options ..." That was someone
replying to me. I was the OP asking about the continued importance of
Postscript.

Sorry, Warren noted this already. I got the Who's who wrong

I hope you read what I wrote about PCL. From what Warren wrote, it seems
that unless you want to send printer files to a print shop, which is far
from necessary, PCL is perfectly all right.

On 07/26/2010 01:33 AM, Andrew Hamilton wrote:
On Sat, 24 Jul 2010 17:06:25 -0400, Tim wrote:

On 07/24/2010 02:44 PM, Andrew Hamilton wrote:

All good reasons to avoid them. In some ways this sounds like the
situation with my Samsung ML-2150.

Oops, I din't know this. I almost bought a Samsung printer instead of my
HP since it was a bit cheaper, but the store manager told me to go for
the HP eyes closed. I thought if he was wrong I'd have better reason to
kick his ass if I went for HP

What's the name of that store? I want to buy my next printer there
also.

Office Depot. Though they sell Acer, I've never had problems with them.

Serious, I will never, ever again buy a Samsung printer.
Their proprietary memory stick upgrade just rankled me, and I didn't
know that until after I bought the printer. The fact that both of the
circuit boards in this printer failed, with expensive/inconvenient
repairs each time. The fact that this printer is failing again, with
"Internal Error" messages, with less than 50,000 prints lifetime!

I had to do the same with my Canon. The difference was that my printer
was in almost perfect working order. Canon just wouldn't provide the
necessary information.

Can you understand that I'm even more ****ed at Canon than you are at
Samsung? I printed less than 5,000 sheets with my BJ-300!

Canon? Never ever again will I buy anything from this bunch of mother
****ers!

On 07/26/2010 02:49 PM, Warren Block wrote:

If you count only the consumables, it's $111 / 60 , so less that $2.

Yes, if in fact you can get 60 8x10 prints. That seems really unlikely
to me. Even half of that still seems unlikely.

What's the problem if you provide a good quality picture with good
exposure, good contrast, good color? If you can't get a good print
quality at once, what kind of printing will commercial labs provide?

I said it and I repeat: I don't want to have do deal with labs that do a
bad job at a cheap price. When I was a photographer, I dealt with such a
lab that promised professional reasults at a cheap price.

The results were plain awful. Since I knew the guy in charge of the lab,
I'd call him and ask what was this **** he was providing. The guy knew I
knew, so he never objected but I often had to ask for some prints to be
redone and do another return trip.

This ate all profits in a cinch. This color stuff was wedding
photography. The competition was fierce and the margins low. I couldn't
afford prints at $10 and some wedding photography places had their own
labs that provided excellent quality. I had to quit.

I won't be doing professional photography anymore, but I know, you know?
Bad quality would send me into a tantrum I can't describe. If labs
provide bad quality, I better set up my process, losing a few sheets
doing so, and then have first quality prints every time.

There is no way I will try to print a picture on which the processing
hasn't been adequately done. Once the picture is OK, why should the
printing go wrong? This is the answer I've been asking all along and I
never got an answer.

If you try printing a picture whose color, exposure, contrast, focus are
wrong, there is no way if will possibly come out OK on paper. Otherwise,
what can go wrong?

Tim Okergit wrote:
On 07/26/2010 02:49 PM, Warren Block wrote:

If you count only the consumables, it's $111 / 60 , so less that $2.

Yes, if in fact you can get 60 8x10 prints. That seems really unlikely
to me. Even half of that still seems unlikely.

What's the problem if you provide a good quality picture with good
exposure, good contrast, good color?

I just don't think you will get anywhere near that many prints from a
standard set of ink.

And that's ignoring common problems like air bubbles or mini-clogs that
waste photo paper and need a nozzle cleaning that sucks lots of
expensive ink. Granted, the immediacy and control of printing your own
can be worth a lot, too.

It would be nice to have some definite numbers. Choose a printer. I
suggest the Epson R1900, which seems like a good price/performance break
and can handle up to tabloid size and panoramas; their web site has the
refurb R1900 with full ink for $379 US. See how many prints you can get
from a set of ink, and report it here, or at least let me know by email.

Come to think of it, the forums at dpreview.com ought to have someone
with serious photo print experience and recommendations.

Tim Okergit wrote:

Sorry, Warren noted this already. I got the Who's who wrong

I hope you read what I wrote about PCL. From what Warren wrote, it seems
that unless you want to send printer files to a print shop, which is far
from necessary, PCL is perfectly all right.

To use a digital camera analogy: PostScript is the big-sensor DSLR, PCL
is the 4x6mm-sensor P&S. You can do good work with either, and they
both have tradeoffs. But one is more capable and costs more.

Canons unofficial rep? Why it used to me Measekite, wasn't it? ;-)

While Bob Headrick actually worked for HP in their inkjet cartridge
division, I have no affiliation with Epson other than that I use their
printers, and found their customer support wanting so I decided to jump
in and help other owners.

To provide the "other side" of the fence, I also live in Canada. My
dealings with Canon have only been with their digital camera support,
and while not perfect, I have to say the information was there when I
needed it, although the guy I spoke with was arrogant and not very
pleasant. Luckily, the product I bought has been very reliable, and I
haven;t needed a lot of product support.

On the other hand, I bought two HP products which were absolute dogs,
one a slide and print scanner, and one a digital camera. The slide
scanner issue never got resolved although the unit was replaced twice
(by HP US, since they had no presence for that division in Canada at the
time). In the end I went back to my retailer who, even a year later took
the unit back, and got a credit from HP Canada, allowing me to use the
money to buy a Minolta branded product to replace it (which they special
ordered).

The digital camera story is even worse... much worse. The camera had a
known defect (well, I didn't know about it until it happened to mine and
I started researching it on line). It ate batteries for breakfast (I
was using NiMH), due to bad Chinese caps in it which drained the
batteries and didn't hold their charge. It turned out a huge portion of
these cameras were defective, and the problems included the whole line
up in this series. HP refused to admit the problem they repaired my
camera several times unsuccessfully. HP Canada was very unhelpful, and
it was only after I sent them about 1/2" thick of documents from the
internet, plus my own testing and evaluation that they finally agreed to
replacing the camera with one from a different series. Then, the last
minute someone "above" the customer rep who had facilitated the exchange
pulled the plug on the whole deal and dug in his heels, again starting
with "there is not problem with this model of camera" all over again.
It was infuriating. I sent a copy of the whole correspondence,
including the on-line print outs to head office in California to show
them the problems occurring here in Canada. What did they do? They
sent the whole parcel back up to Canada to deal with it, and it ended up
going to the same guy I had the problems with.

I eventually got some inside help from someone I met from HP who helped
me to get a new camera from them which was a new model which replaced
the defective one, but the whole process took nearly a year from the
point where I had begun. After speaking with my retailer about my
experience, they told me they had dozens of bad HP cameras which HP
refused to take back, and that they had a lot of angry customers. That
retailer, a large big box in Western Canada, stopped selling HP cameras
soon after my discussion with them, and have never brought them back to
their stores.

As I understand it from discussions with retailers, HP Canada is still a
mess, be happy you haven't needed them. I would agree they do make some
reasonable priced printers, although their consumables can be very costly.

As to your other question, while I wouldn't go as far Mr. Block to
completely discredit color laser printers for photographic output, I
would agree that inkjet is a better technology for that purpose.

Color laser printers do not have the same gradient values as inkjet, and
it is not just due to toner opacity or the number of ink colors inkjet
printers provide. Laser printers do not have the resolution of most
better inkjet models. The dots are bigger and therefore the blending is
poorer. Also, while inkjet papers can absorb the inks and leave a
smooth surface, laser toners sit on top of the paper surface, and often
look glossier or more matte than the paper surface itself. This gloss
differential doesn't look good. I don;t buy the opaque toner leading to
less mixing. If the dots were the same size and used similar patterns
to distribute the colorant, they would probably look similar. Toner is
not opaque, it is translucent, and so is pigment inkjet ink colorant.

I expect that eventually, if the demand is there, laser output could
come very close to rival inkjet, but for most applications, people
aren't that demanding. I have received some recent color laser samples
that from a foot or so away almost rival photos, and I know of people
who sell laser output as "fine art" prints, and that includes
photographic subjects. Laser isn't quite there, but the right machine
can brink it pretty close. More dots and more sophisticated dithering
patterns can make color laser pretty good. For that photo-like surface
however, you must select a paper with similar reflective qualities to
the toner after fusing, or laminate the surface after printing.

Art



If you are interested in issues surrounding e-waste,
I invite you to enter the discussion at my blog:

http://e-trashtalk.spaces.live.com/

Tim Okergit wrote:
On 07/26/2010 03:24 AM, Arthur Entlich wrote:

I'm not trying to challenge your personal experiences with the Canon
versus HP printers, but to be fair, you really cannot compare a color
laser printer to an inkjet. Even the printer divisions may be different
in terms of support in the same company.

Canon Canada is Canon Canada. They don't make printers, they sell as
many printers as they can. They're into advertising, merchandising and
sales. Nobody there will get a red cent for fixing a problem on a
printer that's out of guarantee.

So they keep you waiting in line for the one word that would solve your
problem hping that you'll get ****ed off and buzz off. THis is the
"division" that, as a user, you have to deal with.

For me, it's "no more".

For many years HP used Canon engines in their laser printers, and it was
with those engines that HP developed the "never die" printer reputation.
The BJ inkjet line was a poorly made product, such that even Canon
recognized it and spent many millions of developing a completely new
inkjet printer from scratch, the "i" series, which has been very popular
and pretty reliable (as inkjet printers go).

The problem with Canon Canada is that if the printer is no longer on
guarantee and there a little 5¢ sponge that needs to be washed, they
just won't tell you where the sponge is. The printer could be fixed in 5
minutes but all they keep answering is: "We"re got this new model at
half the price. Why don't you buy one?"

To me, the problem never was the printer but Canon Canada. I do
understand that Canon makes the cartridge of my laserjet and that
there's not much to the printer except this essential part, but I
suppose the cradridge is made to HP's specifications and it really works
well. I never had to deal with HP but I would think that their support
is much better than Canon's.

Canon has no take apart instructions online whereas HP provides
instructions to take the printer apart to the last bolt. To me, this
really spells a different attitude. At 90$, even shops can hardly buy
every shop manual and they refer you to Canon who always say that you
can get a new peinter for the price of the repair.

So, my advice is, if you're into $550 (1990 price) throw away printers,
Canon is for you. Otherwise, stay away for that bunch of thieves.

Once again, in my experience, though I sometimes had to clean the print
head with a Q-Tip, the BJ-300 was a sturdy work horse. The only problem
was Canon withholding information in order to sell you another printer.

HP has produced both stellar and dog printers in both their inkjet and
laser lineups, so one needs to look at the specific model, the cost of
acquisition as well as cost of consumables and add ons, and reliability.

From what I read here, though HP's score might not be perfect,
customers are generally satisfied. If you stop looking for instructions
all over the net and go to HP's site for a solution to a problem, you'll
generally find one.

For instance, in the thread "Multifunction HP C4380 printer scanner".
Tobias had an unsolvable problem. I looked on HP's site and we never
heard form him again. Otherwise, Bob Headrick would have provided a
solution, just as you do for Epson. Who's Canon's... unofficial
representative on this group?

I would not go on name or brand alone. They quality and costs vary
widely between models. I would agree that, in general, the less you pay
for a printer to buy it, the more the consumables will be, especially
with laser printers these days.

Do you agree with Warren Block that laser color printing is still far
behind inkjet printers?

On 07/26/2010 10:16 PM, Warren Block wrote:
Tim wrote:

And that's ignoring common problems like air bubbles or mini-clogs that
waste photo paper and need a nozzle cleaning that sucks lots of
expensive ink.

And labs won't ship you prints with air bubbles and mini-clogs and
numerous other problems? Why is it that I have serious doubts...

It would be nice to have some definite numbers. Choose a printer. I
suggest the Epson R1900, which seems like a good price/performance break
and can handle up to tabloid size and panoramas; their web site has the
refurb R1900 with full ink for $379 US.

It sells for $399, new. Almost no ink in the cardridges, I suppose? The
comments seem very positive but $400 for an inkjet printer seems a lot
of money to me.

The ink seems resonably priced, though:

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/B...p?oid=63073901

The cost per sheet is listed he

http://www.redrivercatalog.com/cost-...inting-v1.html

An 8x10 would be 65¢ for ink + paper, ~24¢ = 89¢

See how many prints you can get
from a set of ink, and report it here, or at least let me know by email.

That would be in a year from now. I'm following the 4x3 format
evolution. Amongst other things, it would be so nice if someone came out
with a rangefinder camera that could stay on all the time, not drain
batteries and that you could brace against your face for stability.

I can keep dreaming though. These mechanics, that I had on my first
camera, a Yashica Lynx 5000, would undoubtedly be too expensive to
produce nowadays.

Come to think of it, the forums at dpreview.com ought to have someone
with serious photo print experience and recommendations.

Yes, this seems like an interesting option.

On 07/27/2010 05:24 AM, Arthur Entlich wrote:

Canons unofficial rep? Why it used to me Measekite, wasn't it? ;-)

He didn't post for more than a year and has participated in only 14
threads in 2009. I didn't read teh threads and can't say if he was as
helpful as you are. If I was you, I'd ask for a pay from Epson

While Bob Headrick actually worked for HP in their inkjet cartridge
division, I have no affiliation with Epson other than that I use their
printers, and found their customer support wanting so I decided to jump
in and help other owners.

To provide the "other side" of the fence, I also live in Canada. My
dealings with Canon have only been with their digital camera support,
and while not perfect, I have to say the information was there when I
needed it

I don't believe you don't need much information for cameras. Taking them
apart seems risky to me.


although the guy I spoke with was arrogant and not very
pleasant.

The people I spoke to at Canon Canada were really nice in making you
lose your time.

On the other hand, I bought two HP products which were absolute dogs,
one a slide and print scanner, and one a digital camera.

HP certainly didn't make a name for its cameras. Here's their offering
today:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/can.do?storeName=accessories&landing=computer&cate gory=categories&subcat1=digital_cameras&orderflow= 1&sort=Asc

Nothing that looks professional.

Same for scanners. A good scanner is rather expensive. On this list:

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF02a/15179-15179-64195.html

was yours more on the top or the bottom of the list?

I understand that putting on the market cheap equipment that doesn't
work doesn't keep the customer satisfied but the difference with my
Canon BJ-300 was that it was in no way a cheap printer and that, as I
explained, it was most probably in almost perfect working order when I
had to throw it away.

A company may offer a product that eventually fails, but my story is
something completely different: the product didn't fail, it's Canon that
failed me.

The slide
scanner issue never got resolved although the unit was replaced twice
(by HP US, since they had no presence for that division in Canada at the
time). In the end I went back to my retailer who, even a year later took
the unit back, and got a credit from HP Canada, allowing me to use the
money to buy a Minolta branded product to replace it (which they special
ordered).

So, here, HP reimbursed you. I understand that losing time is really not
fun but HP finally acknowledged it had a problem.

The digital camera story is even worse... much worse. The camera had a
known defect (well, I didn't know about it until it happened to mine and
I started researching it on line). It ate batteries for breakfast (I was
using NiMH), due to bad Chinese caps in it which drained the batteries
and didn't hold their charge. It turned out a huge portion of these
cameras were defective, and the problems included the whole line up in
this series. HP refused to admit the problem they repaired my camera
several times unsuccessfully. HP Canada was very unhelpful, and it was
only after I sent them about 1/2" thick of documents from the internet,
plus my own testing and evaluation that they finally agreed to replacing
the camera with one from a different series. Then, the last minute
someone "above" the customer rep who had facilitated the exchange pulled
the plug on the whole deal and dug in his heels, again starting with
"there is not problem with this model of camera" all over again. It was
infuriating. I sent a copy of the whole correspondence, including the
on-line print outs to head office in California to show them the
problems occurring here in Canada. What did they do? They sent the whole
parcel back up to Canada to deal with it, and it ended up going to the
same guy I had the problems with.

I eventually got some inside help from someone I met from HP who helped
me to get a new camera from them which was a new model which replaced
the defective one, but the whole process took nearly a year from the
point where I had begun. After speaking with my retailer about my
experience, they told me they had dozens of bad HP cameras which HP
refused to take back, and that they had a lot of angry customers. That
retailer, a large big box in Western Canada, stopped selling HP cameras
soon after my discussion with them, and have never brought them back to
their stores.

Was this, by any chance durint the La Fiorina's days? Those jetset
parties had to be paid for, you know.

As I understand it from discussions with retailers, HP Canada is still a
mess, be happy you haven't needed them.

Really? It certainly wasn't the manager's opinion at Office Depot. I
bought my 1012 on boxing day and it was $100 off. Most probably the
store would have made more money seeling me another printer. Still that
manager was adamant: HP was the way to go.

You're sure you don't work for Epson?

I would agree they do make some
reasonable priced printers, although their consumables can be very costly.

If the drum is in the cartridge, it's likely to cost more but you
certainly save on maintenance. You can also have the cartridge refilled,
which is much cheaper.

As to your other question, while I wouldn't go as far Mr. Block to
completely discredit color laser printers for photographic output, I
would agree that inkjet is a better technology for that purpose.

Hum... I don't like the injet idea. Office Depot provides print samples
for some printers, but I suppose they're provided by the company and
don't mean much for the quality of the print I'll finally get.

Color laser printers do not have the same gradient values as inkjet, and
it is not just due to toner opacity or the number of ink colors inkjet
printers provide. Laser printers do not have the resolution of most
better inkjet models. The dots are bigger and therefore the blending is
poorer. Also, while inkjet papers can absorb the inks and leave a smooth
surface, laser toners sit on top of the paper surface, and often look
glossier or more matte than the paper surface itself. This gloss
differential doesn't look good. I don;t buy the opaque toner leading to
less mixing. If the dots were the same size and used similar patterns to
distribute the colorant, they would probably look similar. Toner is not
opaque, it is translucent, and so is pigment inkjet ink colorant.

I never printed on glossy paper except for press photography, but I
still get your point.

I expect that eventually, if the demand is there, laser output could
come very close to rival inkjet, but for most applications, people
aren't that demanding. I have received some recent color laser samples
that from a foot or so away almost rival photos, and I know of people
who sell laser output as "fine art" prints, and that includes
photographic subjects. Laser isn't quite there, but the right machine
can brink it pretty close.

Which make is the right machine?

On 07/26/2010 10:22 PM, Warren Block wrote:
Tim wrote:

Sorry, Warren noted this already. I got the Who's who wrong

I hope you read what I wrote about PCL. From what Warren wrote, it seems
that unless you want to send printer files to a print shop, which is far
from necessary, PCL is perfectly all right.

To use a digital camera analogy: PostScript is the big-sensor DSLR, PCL
is the 4x6mm-sensor P&S. You can do good work with either, and they
both have tradeoffs. But one is more capable and costs more.

I don't see why PostScript should cost that much more. Linux offers
Ghostscript that does pretty mcuh the same for free. Of course, you must
have a Postscript printer.

I see the royalties that HP had to pay to Adobe for this rip-off as the
reason for which they decided to develop PCL for laser. For most people
PCL does exactly the same. As for me, there's absolutely no difference.

If you are interested in issues surrounding e-waste,
I invite you to enter the discussion at my blog:

http://e-trashtalk.spaces.live.com/

Tim Okergit wrote:
On 07/26/2010 02:49 PM, Warren Block wrote:

If you count only the consumables, it's $111 / 60 , so less that $2.

Yes, if in fact you can get 60 8x10 prints. That seems really unlikely
to me. Even half of that still seems unlikely.

What's the problem if you provide a good quality picture with good
exposure, good contrast, good color? If you can't get a good print
quality at once, what kind of printing will commercial labs provide?


I don;t know if you have a Costco nearby or not. I became a member just
for heir color lab. They are one of the few "big box" stores who
provide color profiles and have their equipment calibrated by Dry Creek
on a fairly regular basis. In November I did a large exhibit of
photographic fine art prints, and used them for most of it. The costs
were ridiculously lower than it would have cost me in time and
materials. The prints were bang on, and they use Fuji Crystal Archive
paper. Your system/monitor/ needs to be properly color calibrated, and
you need to use the profiles correctly in Photoshop (or whatever color
managed software you use. Of course, they charge about $50 a year to
join, so it would depend upon how much work you need per year to make it
worthwhile (the membership obviously also gives you access to their full
store and services). They have a internet service to upload your images
to, and at least in my area, were able to provide results within 4-6
hours for pick up at the local store if I uploaded before store opening.

Each store has a different component of printers (some have inkjet as
well, although I haven't used their inkjet services yet).

edited out


If you try printing a picture whose color, exposure, contrast, focus are
wrong, there is no way if will possibly come out OK on paper. Otherwise,
what can go wrong?

If you are speaking digitally, obviously, both you and the lab need to
be color managed and profiled to the same standard. If your monitor is
not color managed, you can't blame the lab for providing different
results, because it could easily be your monitor/graphics card or
software at fault.

If you have agreed upon color management between you, the results should
be nearly perfect. If you are speaking about older optical methods,
there are many reasons a print could be "off", although admittedly many
are lab deficiencies. With wedding photos, pure neutral whites are
often a big issue, and that's why gray cards were invented on your side.
On their side that's why test strips, densitometers, and calibration
were invented ;-). I've run both a one-hour style and a custom lab, and
because I demanded professional results from both, we got them. While
the one-hour had more redos simply because the equipment back then was
less sophisticated, what we turned out was as good or better than some
pro-labs in our community. The only time a print got out of our lab
with less than bang on results was if the client was in a rush and told
us it was "good enough" and they had to run. Working in a one hour
setting did place some time constraints on accomplishing redos in that
time period.

Art