Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 22:53:01 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Roland Smith" <rsmith@xs4all.nl>, "Gerry Freymann" <lists@interpool.ca> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: RE: Lexmark X1100 printer Message-ID: <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNGEIFFAAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <20050224174222.GB75956@slackbox.xs4all.nl>
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> -----Original Message----- > From: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org > [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Roland Smith > Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2005 9:42 AM > To: Gerry Freymann > Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org > Subject: Re: Lexmark X1100 printer > > > For the most part it depends on the "language" that the printer > speaks. As a rule, any printer that understands postscript will work > without much trouble. Printers that speak PCL (most, but not all HP > printers) or ESC2P (Epson) work well. > > Avoid so-called winprinters like the plague. They offload most > processing to the host processor (your CPU) using a Windows-only binary > driver. Some of those drivers have been reverse-engineered, but I'd > advise you not to go there. Setting them up is always complicated. > The problem is that the cheap color inkjets on the market are all winprinters these days. So you have to go there if you want to print color. HP has written a UNIX driver for their winprinters, it's not a reverse-engineered job by someone with a packet analyzer. Epson has also obviously provided aid and assistance to whomever wrote the driver for their printers as well. A few other printer companies seem to have done this also. But a lot of the imaging companies out there, like lexmark, haven't, and many of the reverse-engineered drivers for those printers only print in some of the lowest resolutions. I have an Epson C84 myself, georgeous color output. But it literally takes 2 minutes for an AMD K6 200Mhz running FreeBSD to convert a page of Postscript to a page of Epson-speak. Fortunately I don't print color that often. My wife uses it more than I do, but she is printing via USB from a 1.4Ghz Windows system and her system only takes about 15 seconds to image a page. Most of my printing is to my HP 4+ Postscript laster printer that duplexes. I picked my Epson because it has individual ink resivours for each color. So unlike the HP your not stuck throwing out a perfectly good cartridge just because ONE color ran out. I think actually HP is also moving that direction as well. Ted
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