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Why are print servers hard to "make work"
Can someone explain, with some level of detail, why there is an
apparently large variability in the sucess of deploying a print server? Assuming that the issues of networking, subnets, wireless issues,etc can be put aside, what is the core reason? Is it that people who deploy this are usually in over their heads? Is the variability due to the printer? Server? Some combination? Are there any guidelines that would improve the chance of sucess (i.e. any printer made in the last 2 years will work; any printer from company xyz, etc). Many thanks |
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Why are print servers hard to "make work"
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Why are print servers hard to "make work"
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#5
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Why are print servers hard to "make work"
wrote in message
ups.com... Can someone explain, with some level of detail, why there is an apparently large variability in the sucess of deploying a print server? Because there's no one single way that PCs "talk" to printers. This is especially true when it comes to *reading back* status information from a printer: Many network print servers don't suppose this "reverse channel" at all, and many printer drivers then simply throw up their hands and refuse to operate. Even for those that do, you're essentially building a "virtual connection" between your PC and the printer when you're running it over a network print server, and this causes all kinds of changes in the timing and "patter" of the data transfer -- again, some printer drivers don't like this. Are there any guidelines that would improve the chance of sucess (i.e. any printer made in the last 2 years will work; any printer from company xyz, etc). Nothing so simple, but a good way to start is to see if you can "share" the printer off of another PC and then successfully print to it from other PCs in the network. If that doesn't work, you can pretty much be guaranteed that using a print server with that printer won't work. Although I believe it's changed in the past few years, for quite awhile the official position of HP was that network printing like this was simply unsupported with their lower-end printers, and many of them simply didn't work. Bugs in the printer's device driver tend to be exacerbated by print servers (this is a consequence of the general rule that, even with an abstract "printer API," there are many errors you can make in API calls that will just so happen to work when everything is on the same physical machine and not on, e.g., the other side of town with an Internet connection); many lower-end printers have drivers that aren't particularly well tested. |
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Why are print servers hard to "make work"
Are there any guidelines that would improve the chance of sucess (i.e. any printer made in the last 2 years will work; any printer from company xyz, etc). I would say you have a better chance of networking an older printer. Older printers didn't require an "application" to run in order to print. I would say any printer that installs by pointing to an INF file would work better than today's printers that require allot of hand holding with the host computer. Some of the new hp all in ones say no network support. |
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