What is the purpose of upgrading memory in Printers?

roncarter

Golden Member
Feb 28, 2002
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The reason I ask is I own a Brother 1440 and the memory is expandalbe to 32. It currently has only 2megs of memory. I have been using it for the past month with 2 megs of memory and it seems fine. What would I benefit from upgrading it to 32megs?
 

JetBlack69

Diamond Member
Sep 16, 2001
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I would think it would be good for businesses where there are 100 people printing stuff.
 

tm37

Lifer
Jan 24, 2001
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You use the memory to store the pages waiting to be printed in stead of your computer memory.

If you only have a few comps it doesn't metter but if you have say 10+ it helps alot.
 

MichaelD

Lifer
Jan 16, 2001
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Originally posted by: roncarter
Originally posted by: MichaelD
The ability to cue more/bigger jobs.

is this the only reason? Will the quality of my prints be better with more memory?

The quality of the print has nothing to do w/how much memory it has. The quality of the print is determined by the maximum DPI (dots per (square) inch) of the printer.

The memory only effects how many jobs it can hold in it's que.
 

roncarter

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Feb 28, 2002
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thanks guys for the responses. I guess I dont need more memory for my printer since there are only 2 computers hooked up to it.
 

Nitemare

Lifer
Feb 8, 2001
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If you print large files like pdf's you will probably see a difference.

We upgraded our HP4 from 4 to 36 and it is night and day. Used to wait a couple of minutes for some print jobs to start printing. Now it is pretty much just a couple of seconds.
 

SCSIfreek

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Mar 3, 2000
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Some printer needs more memory to print at higher resolutions. Such as the brother HL-1440. If you had 2MB of memory you can not print at 1200x1200 but instead 600x600dpi. But after I dropped in the extra 32MB of memory everything is smooth sailing!!!


--Scsi
 

NogginBoink

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2002
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PostScript printers render the page in the printer's memory.

If the printer is a postscript printer, more memory allows it to render and print more complex pages.
 

roncarter

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Feb 28, 2002
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Originally posted by: SCSIfreek
Some printer needs more memory to print at higher resolutions. Such as the brother HL-1440. If you had 2MB of memory you can not print at 1200x1200 but instead 600x600dpi. But after I dropped in the extra 32MB of memory everything is smooth sailing!!!


--Scsi

how big of a difference is 1200X1200 and 600X600

 

ggavinmoss

Diamond Member
Apr 20, 2001
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Originally posted by: roncarter
Originally posted by: SCSIfreek
Some printer needs more memory to print at higher resolutions. Such as the brother HL-1440. If you had 2MB of memory you can not print at 1200x1200 but instead 600x600dpi. But after I dropped in the extra 32MB of memory everything is smooth sailing!!!


--Scsi

how big of a difference is 1200X1200 and 600X600

4? ;)

-geoff

 

Koing

Elite Member <br> Super Moderator<br> Health and F
Oct 11, 2000
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Originally posted by: ggavinmoss
Originally posted by: roncarter
Originally posted by: SCSIfreek
Some printer needs more memory to print at higher resolutions. Such as the brother HL-1440. If you had 2MB of memory you can not print at 1200x1200 but instead 600x600dpi. But after I dropped in the extra 32MB of memory everything is smooth sailing!!!


--Scsi

how big of a difference is 1200X1200 and 600X600

4? ;)

-geoff

Images and photos will look better. Smoother but laser printers are sharp as it is.
 

dullard

Elite Member
May 21, 2001
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SCSIfreak is finally on the right track for the typical user (since very few of us try to cue multiple documents at the same time). Lets do the math:

Suppose you print something at 1200x1200 dpi on a standard 8.5"x11" paper with 1" margins all around. Each dot can be on or off (I will only discuss black and white laser printers here). Thus each dot is one bit or eight dots is a byte. Thus in each square inch you need 1200x1200/8 = 180,000 bytes. On that paper you have 6.5*9 = 58.5 square inches of data to print. Thus to cover the page you need 180,000 * 58.5 ~= 10 MB of memory. If you don't have a good compression scheme or an image that compresses easilly you will NOT be able to print it with just 2 MB of printer memory.

What happens instead? Most laser printers when they run out of memory will print part of the page on one piece of paper and a second part of the page on a second piece of paper (and 3rd, 4th, etc if you have that much data and are that low on memory). I've seen this happen in two methods. (1) Some printers print the top portion of the paper until it runs out of memory and the bottom section on the second piece of paper. (2) Some printers will divide up the data in a way that all data that is similar is printed on each piece of paper - such as text on one and the graphics on another. Either way you don't get your desired 1 page.

What can you do to work around it? Well the easiest thing is to bump up the compression (if your printer gives you that option). But that can significantly decay the quality of the print just like highly compressed MP3s or JPGs aren't as good as the original. The second thing you can do is drop down to 600x600 dpi. In most cases that won't harm image quality too much. But you are still left with 600*600*6.5*9/8 = 2.5 MB of data which might not fit your 2 MB printer memory. So then you must drop it down to 300x300 dpi - and then you will see significantly reduced quality on many prints.

I've seen this on dozens of printers. And my recomendation is 4 MB of memory minimum. If you print just text or simple graphics that are easilly compressed or have lots of white space then you might be fine with 2 MB. But try printing complex Word documents with multiple Excel graphs on the same page or complex graphics and you will quickly see the problems of just 2 MB.

Edit: My first laser was 1 MB and it was a worthless piece of crap that couldn't print a single Excel graph properly until I maxed it out at 4 MB.