Parallel Port VS USB port on an Inkjet printer?

[CrowDog]

Any difference in performance or quality? Im using parrallel now....any reason to buy a USB cable?

Im on a Epson Stylus C60 in Win XP.

 

[Damascus]

Parallel is slightly faster and more reliable. USB printers seem to get 'disconnected'
a lot (and to get connected again you have to keep hot plugging it until it shows
up again).

 

[Mem]

<< USB printers seem to get 'disconnected' >>




Hmmm never had that problem with my USB printer infact never had USB problem period .

 

[toshiba3020]

My thinking is why waste your printer port. If it is unused, use it.

 

[nicowju]

Is the parallel port really faster? The USB printers I have at home don't have that disconnect issue, and they print photos really fast (faster than parallel, from my experience with the HP 930C)

 

[Damascus]

Parallel port has a higher bandwidth rating than USB. Real world performance,
who knows.

Mem: had that problem with my HP810c on Intel and VIA chipsets. I've also
heard people around here complaining about that from time to time.

 

[EppyThatcher]

personal expierience is that they both work good for me, no problems either way, the only deciding factor for most with a basic system is you only have 2 usb ports, depending how many usb devices you have you should go with parallel, but either way works great.

 

[Luden]

I have always thought you get more speed with usb

 

[EppyThatcher]

usb is faster than parallel when it comes to external cdrom's/webcam's etc as far as i know, and it might be faster for printing as well but if there is a speed differnce to me it is so small it doesn't stand out to me.

 

[LuckyTaxi]

new usb 2.0 should have some nice printers with it coming soon

 

[bozo1]

You are still limited to the speed and the buffer size in the printer. While parallel is technically a little faster, it really doesn't matter as the printer will always be the bottleneck.
Personally, I use USB because the cable is smaller and the back of my desk looks like a rats nest already.

 

[Dewey]

I prefer USB. Parallel is fine but when you want to add 2 or 3 printers you are out buying some strange multi-port card. Why not go USB and get virtually infinite expandability. I can add USB devices to my hearts content. I can't do that with the parallel port. As for speed, I cannot tell the difference between LPT and USB.

 

[dunkster]

I like the parallel port for printers.

You might read up a bit about which parallel port mode to use (SPP, ECP, EPP, ECP/EPP) regarding bandwidth on the parallel port. My parallel port i believe (too lazy to go into bios just now) is set to ECP/EPP using EPP 1.9.

The last time I saw a write-up on this was in Rojak Pot Bios Optimization Guide. Available bandwidth choices are discussed there.

Hope this helps!

 

[CrowDog]

Dosent sound like it makes much of a difference. The main difference is freeing up a usb port. So Ill just leave it the way it is. Thanks for the replies.

 

[Hellblast]

hmmm, my parallel port printer locks up my system intermittently while it prints. Mouse gets really laggy and so on.
Maybe I should change my LPT settings in BIOS?

Hellblast