dot matrix printer

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not necessarily. You can usually network them. The problems arise finding suitable drivers for machines other than windows.

[TheOldFellow]

Line printers turned into flying paper laser printers years ago. I've watched one take a box of fan-fold paper and throw it (lengthwise) through the mechanism, print it, and refold into another box in about

20 seconds. If you need this, you ARE the Inland Revenue.

R.

P.S. I replaced the interminable sequence of cheap ink-jets with a Xerox 6110 colour-laser a while back. I'll never buy another ink-jet. Laser is it.

[Huge]

For example, I paid £25 for my Laserjet 5m. Apart from a good clean and a new toner cartridge, it's been providing sterling service for years.

Unlike the scabby useless inkjets which are long gone.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , Colin Wilson writes

200 miles:-( Nice thought though.

Annoyingly, I have dumped 2 working m/cs myself in the euphoria of colour printing and photo reproduction.

regards

[Dave Liquorice]

Tip, go throught the nozzle check/clean/nozzle check sequence once then leave it 5 mins before doing it again. I find the "soak" means that the next sequence nearly always produces a proper output.

[Tim Lamb]

That would be grand children if we had any. I don't want to transfer colour work away from the office inkjet for jet blockage reasons.

Ah! Worth knowing. Her laptop runs Windows anyway and might as well be a PC as it never moves.

regards

>

[Dave Liquorice]

The cheap ones only have USB and no expansion slot for a network card. If a printer has USB and ethernet they tend to have a proper printer lanaguage as well but not all some have a maker specific language only.

Which effectively makes the printer windows only.

[Bob Eager]

Yup. Last two Laserjet 4M+ machines I bought cost me the combined sum of £7. Plus a 15 minute drive to collect. They each needed about 15 minutes work and a good clean, and that's all.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , Tim Lamb writes

OK chaps.

Enough already:-)

Cheapo mono laser it is.

At one or two pages per week it still makes expensive copy but much less aggravation.

regards

[Adrian]

[e-mail] (Steve Firth) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

You're forgetting the _really_ big drawback of an inkjet. They clog if left unused, which results in the already expensive consumables becoming VERY expensive.

[Adrian]

The Natural Philosopher gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Thirded.

I'm with you on the toners, too - genuine cartridges are cheap enough, again, off fleaBay.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I have a little app for my RISC OS machines called Uniprint which pretty seamlessly uses the PC printer via Windose. Drivers for laser printers under RISC OS are pretty thin on the ground - and those for inkjets don't always give full functionality anyway.

[Stephen Howard]

Assuming the nozzle is in the cartridge, simply remove it from the printer and dip the relevant end into a cup of near boiling water for ten seconds or so.

Regards,

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I'm sure there's the equivalant

[Peter Andrews]

My £55 (PC Wo***) HP Laser Jet 1018 has printed 7237 pages (as of now) in the past two years - albeit I'm now on my third refill - but it's never missed a beat.

Peter

[Huge]

These kinds of discussions amuse me, in a wry kind of way, since I worked at the place where device independent page description languages were invented (Xerox Interpress, which evolved into Postscript). These kinds of problems were solved over 20 years ago ...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I'm sure there's the equivalant of the prog I use on RISC OS for other operating systems. Lets you print from it to any printer that runs on Windows. Also can be used to open non native files or URLs that are on the RISC OS machine on the appropriate Windows one.

Just for info full details here:-

[Steve Firth]

Why buy a printer in order to not use it? I've not really had a problem with clogged nozzles except in the case of the HP 990cxi that I leave in a cupboard in Italy and don't use for six months at a time. Even then, most times the nozzles can be unclogged by removing the cartridge and standing it on a pad of damp paper for a time then running a cleaning cycle.

If one knows that the printer isn't going to be used for a time, it's sensible to remove the cartridges and keep them in a sealed container.

Lasers left to stand can also suffer. HPs seems to try to minimise toner clumping my grinding the toners around from time to time but that only works if the printer is left on 24/7.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes, but it doesn't mean it has to be attached TO a WinPC.

A raw queue on a e.g. Linux print server makes the printer 'look' like a networked version of the printer.

Or some print server boxes handle USB.

[The Natural Philosopher]

...by making the printer have 10 times the CPU and RANM of the desktop computers that drove it..and making a 5 second transfer take 30 minutes...

Postcript? It's an abortion..