Printer limits and capabilities

[Mark44]

This thread contains posts that were off-topic in another thread

I printed the whole book out and stapled into small section to study.

No wonder you have trouble with printers...

 

[yungman]

No wonder you have trouble with printers...

Why? I wasn't complain about the printer. It printed.

Yes, if I paid over $200 for a commercial printer, they better print 2 sided happily.

 

[Mark44]

Why? I wasn't complain about the printer. It printed.

You have complained multiple times about printers breaking down. If you're printing whole books with one, it's not a surprise that one goes bad on you.

And my guess is that a commercial printer is going to cost way more than $200.

 

[jedishrfu]

One could always hire a scribe.

 

[yungman]

You have complained multiple times about printers breaking down. If you're printing whole books with one, it's not a surprise that one goes bad on you.

And my guess is that a commercial printer is going to cost way more than $200.

Not if it's less than 6 months old. What do you think printers are made of? carboard? The old ones lasted a lot longer than that. That Canon was advertised for small office use. I always buy small office quality as we do have a business.

I complained about ALL electronics appliances we bought in the last 4 or 5 years. They are all $hit! Anything older than that are all good.

Our new Epson is slow, BUT so far so good. Those economy ink series are expansive, but it's been almost 3 months, the ink level barely moved, looks to really can last a year.

I need another faster all in one, big boss is happy with the Epson, so I get to pick one now. But I don't know which one to buy.

 

[fluidistic]

I'm also surprised that some (most?) people would think that a household printer cannot handle printing textbooks. What is the use of a printer if not to print thousands of papers/textbooks?

Regarding your setup, are you really on a laptop, at home? If I were you, I would consider to get a big high resolution screen (1920x1080 or possibly 4K?) monitor. Then of course, a dedicated keyboard (mechanical one?).

I think you rock for all the efforts you've been through and are going through with C++.

 

[sysprog]

Not if it's less than 6 months old. What do you think printers are made of? carboard? The old ones lasted a lot longer than that. That Canon was advertised for small office use. I always buy small office quality as we do have a business.

I complained about ALL electronics appliances we bought in the last 4 or 5 years. They are all $hit! Anything older than that are all good.

Our new Epson is slow, BUT so far so good. Those economy ink series are expansive, but it's been almost 3 months, the ink level barely moved, looks to really can last a year.

I need another faster all in one, big boss is happy with the Epson, so I get to pick one now. But I don't know which one to buy.

The HP Laser Jet P2035 that I use isn't an 'all-in-one' printer, but it's a very good 'black & gray' printer available for around $500 on Amazon. I see an offer for a refurbished one for less than $200 here $\dots$

Caution: the toner cartridges are expensive (around $60); however, they're good for many, many sheets.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I'm also surprised that some (most?) people would think that a household printer cannot handle printing textbooks.

It's called printer duty cycle. A personal printer is designed to print 50-75 pages per day, and typically a few pages at a time. A small office printer might be designed to do 500 per day, a large office printer a few thousand, and a commercial printer many thousands.

A $200 printer is designed to print your taxes, nasty letters to your homeowners association and pictures of your cousin's cat. It's not designed to print a textbook in one go.

 

[fluidistic]

It's called printer duty cycle. A personal printer is designed to print 50-75 pages per day, and typically a few pages at a time. A small office printer might be designed to do 500 per day, a large office printer a few thousand, and a commercial printer many thousands.

A $200 printer is designed to print your taxes, nasty letters to your homeowners association andf pictures of your cousin's cat. It's not designed to print a textbook in one go.

Thanks for the information. I will definitely come back to your post in future and possibly in the next days for my mother (she needs a new printer, she has problems with Ubuntu with it and she believes she has to clean the heads almost everytime she uses it, which means a few times per week. I told her that I almost never clean the heads).

 

[sysprog]

It's called printer duty cycle. A personal printer is designed to print 50-75 pages per day, and typically a few pages at a time. A small office printer might be designed to do 500 per day, a large office printer a few thousand, and a commercial printer many thousands.

A $200 printer is designed to print your taxes, nasty letters to your homeowners association andf pictures of your cousin's cat. It's not designed to print a textbook in one go.

The HP 2035 printer that I mentioned in post #21 is listed here at $179.00 and as having a duty cycle of 50,000 pages per month $-$

Features

• 1 Year Warranty
• Print Speed: 30 ppm
• HP Pro Res: 1200 x 1200 dpi
• Standard Memory: 128 MB
• Maximum Memory: 384 MB
• Post Script 2 Emulation
• Processor: 600 MHz RISC
• Duty Cycle: 50,000 pages per month
• Standard printer languages: PCL 5C, PostScript 3, PCL 6
• Standard Input Media Capacity: 300 sheets
• Media sizes supported: Multipurpose tray 1: letter, legal, statement, executive, index cards, envelopes [No. 10 (Com), No. 7 � (Monarch)]; custom: 3 by 5 into 8.5 by 14 in
• Trays 2: letter, legal, executive; custom: 4.1 by 5.8 into 8.5 by 14 in
• Automatic two-sided printing unit: letter, legal
• Media types supported: Paper (bond, light, heavy, plain, recycled, rough), envelopes, labels, cardstock, transparencies, heavy media
• Finished output handling: Sheetfed
• Dimensions: 14.4" Height x 14.5" Width x 10.6" Depth
• Weight: 23.6 lbs
• System Requirements: PC - All Windows OS, Mac Mac OS 8.6 or greater, 10.1, 10.2 and greater. Other UNIX, Linux, IBM OS/2.
• Included: HP Laserjet P2035 Printer CE461A, 16MB Memory, Power cord (Toner cartridge not included)
• Usually ships within 24 hours

I don't use mine anywhere near that heavily; however, I can confirm the reliability, accuracy, ppm rate, two-sided capability $-$ and if it gets a paper jam, I blame it on me $\dots$ it's very much not the 'Office Space' ('classic' movie) printer $\dots$

 

[Vanadium 50]

as having a duty cycle of 50,000 pages per month

"pages per month" is a very odd unit. Maybe that's why it was adopted.

50,000 pages per month and 30 ppm per minute means they expect the unit can operate 1700 minutes per month, or about 4% of the time. That's quite a bit better than personal printers are expected to do, but then again, this is not really a personal printer: it's in that price range because its refurbished.

"Per month" is kind of goofy. It's not like it's OK to run a printer non-stop for a day so long as you let it "rest" for the next 29. The 4% number is a bit more representative, and I would apply it over 10 or 15 minute time scales: sufficient to let the printer cool down. So for that HP, I'd be comfortable printing a chapter, letting it cool, printing a chapter, letting it cool, and so on in a way I wouldn't be comfortable sending the whole book at once. That would be modified by how long it took to print each page.

Paying $200 for a printer and expecting it to have the duty cycle of a $4000 printer is not, in my mind, reasonable.

 

[sysprog]

"pages per month" is a very odd unit. Maybe that's why it was adopted.

I think that it's intended to ideate the spreading of the usage over a time.

50,000 pages per month and 30 ppm per minute means they expect the unit can operate 1700 minutes per month, or about 4% of the time.

Well, at 30 ppm and (a non-negotiable) 1440 mpd, we get 43,200 pages on day 1, and we've almost used up our monthly allowance $-$ so maybe the 'pages per month' unit is meant to clue us in about moderating the aggressiveness of our usage.

That's quite a bit better than personal printers are expected to do, but then again, this is not really a personal printer: it's in that price range because its refurbished.

I don't disagree with you there $-$ I think that it's more like small business than personal $-$ mine's been around for enough years to spread the original cost down to the 'home' level.

"Per month" is kind of goofy. It's not like it's OK to run a printer non-stop for a day so long as you let it "rest" for the next 29. The 4% number is a bit more representative, and I would apply it over 10 or 15 minute time scales: sufficient to let the printer cool down. So for that HP, I'd be comfortable printing a chapter, letting it cool, printing a chapter, letting it cool, and so on in a way I wouldn't be comfortable sending the whole book at once. That would be modified by how long it took to print each page.

I think that HP should put almost all of that in the manual.

Paying $200 for a printer and expecting it to have the duty cycle of a $4000 printer is not, in my mind, reasonable.

Well, in my view, nowadays printers are devices designed to sell ink cartridges, and are price-adjusted accordingly $-$ 'back in the day' ('85), when I was at a software house, the (expensive) Xerox 9700 churned out pages as fast as we could keep loading reams (120 ppm) $\dots$ but <joke> it still called us on the phone at home and asked us to please take it easy the next day </joke> $\dots$

 

[Vanadium 50]

You know, there's no reason that a modern printer couldn't throttle itself when it gets warm. The Epson MX-80 had a buffer of 132 bytes. The FX-80 was an improvement with a whopping 2K. We don't live in these days any more! A whole book might be 20 MB in PostScript, and 1 GB of flash memory is essentially free - and would hold 50 entire books! A giant buffer and the printer could throttle itself when it gets too hot.

 

[256bits]

I'm also surprised that some (most?) people would think that a household printer cannot handle printing textbooks. What is the use of a printer if not to print thousands of papers/textbooks?

i would think so too.
i don't see anything in printer specs about a warning for continuous usage.
High end printer have more robust mechanisms so that components last longer, even the paper tray.
if one is using a home printer very robustly to its max, after maybe a month or 2 or so, you have to get a new one as everything is worn out and the thing has lived its life ( whereas with normal home use of a page an hour the thing would last several years ) And then count the number of paper tray filling, ink changes, ... that you deal with ... a higher end printer lends a lot to less frustration in that area.

 

[Tom.G]

You know, there's no reason that a modern printer couldn't throttle itself when it gets warm.

The Canon ink jets have been doing that for years. I suspect many ink jets do. After all, the "jet" is produced by resistive heating of each orifice in the head to force the ink out, and they don't want a Hot-Head in there!

Cheers,
Tom