Printer takes a while to cue up print jobs...

[JulesMaximus]

Okay, I bought an HP Laserjet 3800DN for my wife for her business but when we send a Publisher file to the printer it takes a long time for the job to cue up and start printing. I haven't had a chance to play around with it much yet though. Once it starts printing it is very fast (22 ppm color), it just takes a long time for the job to start printing. I click on the print status after I send a job and I see the size of the job increasing until it reaches the total (which was like 18MB BTW).

The printer has 256MB RAM and my computer has 512MB RAM. The printer is connected via USB cable (it's under 6' in length). She is printing photo rich Microsoft Publisher files.

We're talking like 20-30 seconds here, not terribly long but I'd like to know if there's room for improvement.

Thanks!

 

[Peter]

18 megs through USB is going to take 30 seconds - nothing wrong with that.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Originally posted by: Peter
18 megs through USB is going to take 30 seconds - nothing wrong with that.

Would it be better if I set it up as a network printer and went through a print server?

 

[Zepper]

Are your program and data files all on the same physical drive? You could move the default print spooler directory off onto another drive on a separate controller channel. Moving your TEMP, TMP, and Temporary_Internet_Files diectories to that location can also unclutter your C: drive and speed up all sorts of operations, particularly if all your programs and data are now on one drive. (I have three physical drives with logical volumes from C: thru O:.) You can do that by editing the registry values with regedit. Normally the print spooler directory is at C:\Winnt\System32\Spool\PRINTERS . Always backup your registry files before editing and reboot when done to make sure the new settings take effect and be sure to create the new directories before rebooting. If you don't move your print spooler directory to another drive, make sure you keep plenty of free space on C and keep it defragged as you need room for virtual memory and all sorts of scratch files on C as well as the spooler files. I try to move the spooler directory and some other scratch directories onto a separate drive.

Normally printing doesn't start until the data has been dumped to the (usually temporary) spool file. You can always chage your printer setting to "Print Directly to Printer" but then you won't be able to do much else until the last of the print job is over in the printer's buffer.



..bh.

 

[Peter]

LAN is only faster than USB if it's gigabit ethernet all the way through - and even then, the job will eventually have to funnel through the USB connection to the printer.
Quite obviously, the data transfer won't become faster by making the path longer - and the originating machine won't render the job any faster either.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Originally posted by: Zepper
Are your program and data files all on the same physical drive? You could move the default print spooler directory off onto another drive on a separate controller channel. Moving your TEMP, TMP, and Temporary_Internet_Files diectories to that location can also unclutter your C: drive and speed up all sorts of operations, particularly if all your programs and data are now on one drive. (I have three physical drives with logical volumes from C: thru O:.) You can do that by editing the registry values with regedit. Normally the print spooler directory is at C:\Winnt\System32\Spool\PRINTERS . Always backup your registry files before editing and reboot when done to make sure the new settings take effect and be sure to create the new directories before rebooting. If you don't move your print spooler directory to another drive, make sure you keep plenty of free space on C and keep it defragged as you need room for virtual memory and all sorts of scratch files on C as well as the spooler files. I try to move the spooler directory and some other scratch directories onto a separate drive.

Normally printing doesn't start until the data has been dumped to the (usually temporary) spool file. You can always chage your printer setting to "Print Directly to Printer" but then you won't be able to do much else until the last of the print job is over in the printer's buffer.



..bh.

I have 3 hard drives in this system and 2 of them are WD Raptors. The main drive is quite full though. I do need to move some files off that drive and onto another drive. I probably have only a few GBs free space on there currently.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Originally posted by: Peter
LAN is only faster than USB if it's gigabit ethernet all the way through - and even then, the job will eventually have to funnel through the USB connection to the printer.
Quite obviously, the data transfer won't become faster by making the path longer - and the originating machine won't render the job any faster either.

My router is in the same room as the printer and computer so we're talking about a few feet more distance. I would like to set this printer up as a network printer eventually though so we could print to it from any of the 3 computers in the house.

 

[Peter]

I'm not talking physical distance, but datapath. Source->LAN->Printserver->USB is obviously not going to be faster than Source->USB - it's going to be slower (no matter whether your LAN cable is 3 feet or 300).

 

[Taqwus]

You probably will not be able to speed it up much, most of the time is taken converting it to a usable format to print
If you want to see how fast you can roughly print try printing something from notepad that should be quick

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Taqwus
You probably will not be able to speed it up much, most of the time is taken converting it to a usable format to print
If you want to see how fast you can roughly print try printing something from notepad that should be quick

Agreed. Most of the time is spent creating the print job, rendering the print data, and then sending that data to the printer for the printer to then analyze. I doubt you'll get significantly faster - more than a second or two - with the changes.

In other words, don't worry about it; printing graphically complex pages takes more time.