Does upgrading RAM on a Printer offer noticable improvements?

[l33t]

My boss prints out a lot of Adobe Illustrator black/white line drawings. He uses the simple b/w printout to create a stencil used to make designs on Marble stones. Most images are printed so they come out actual size. Typical size of a headstone is about 2feet tall, 4 feet wide. Every now and then he gets orders for large 5 foot+ designs.

Anyways, he says that the printer "is slow."

It's an HP Deskjet 4050

He says he wants me to buy more ram for it but I told him I don't think it would make it print faster but that I would check up on it.

Here's the printer specs. It says it prints at 17ppm.

Do you guys think it's worth the cost (no idea how much or where to get printer ram) to upgrade printer memory for large 5 foot+ b/w line art?

Also,

He has a p4 1.6ghz (most likely celery since it has)
256mb pc133 sdram
16mb onboard ati rage something or other video card.
XP pro

I checked task manager, he's always using around ~230mb of ram so I'm going to double his ram to 512. What else would help with graphic designs? Should he shell out money for a g4 mx maybe? or would it not make a difference for 2 design?

 

[clicknext]

I don't know, but I don't think the 2D quality on GF4MX's are as good as Radeon8500/9xxx.

 

[wetcat007]

Don't know on the printer, best 2D is believe is still Matrox, ATI is good too, Nvidia is good on ti series cards, but those are pricier, perhaps a ti200 would work.

 

[afzan]

I think there will be probably be a noticable difference in print speed if you add some more ram to it..

I've got a 4000n, and I noticed a difference when I added some more to it.. If you're just printing 1-2 pages, it doesnt really make a difference, but when you have a bunch of pages with graphics to print, it speeds it up

edit: just realized the 4050 comes with 8meg standard, the parallel port might be the bottleneck in that case?

 

[l33t]

What type of ram is it. Where did you get it, and how much did you pay? Just trying to get an idea.

If it's too much, I think he'd be better of investing in a cheap 32mb video card. Need best 2d quality.

 

[afzan]

it's takes 100pin edo or sdram dimms, get the sdram modules though, they are cheaper/faster...
crucial has 64meg for $36, and 32meg for $29

 

[isaacmacdonald]

hmm.. just got a designjet 5500... wonder if it will take generic ram as well. It came stock with 128, but I assume a gig would pretty much remove the hd bottleneck altogether