HP Color Laserjet 5M ...

In order for me to write a book as your answer, I am going to need your question to be just as descriptive.

This means all aspects of this printer that is causing you to loose your hair.

Let me know,

8·)

JR Helgeson

Ok JR,

I lost all my hair when I saw the print quality in HPGL: a circle seems to be drawn by my little baby, it does some little irregularityies on the circumference where another printer doesn't (at the same resolution !), hence a little text becomes illegible.

I lost the hair of my collegue when he saw the time spent to print an image imported in a MS Word document.

If I print a large (many pages) document it loose something on the pages without notification.

I talk with HP personnel and told me that it doesn't depend on how much memory is installed.

The printer receive the file to be printed very slowly.

I've already verified that all of above doesn't depend on external factors such as print server or applications: I sent the same file to 2 different printers (HP and QMS) with excellent results.

Have other questions ?

Thank you in advance.

When you say it is slow printing Postscript, do you mean it takes a long time to send a print job to the printer, or takes a long time for it to be printed?

I would personally stick with Postscript, as I generally found the quality better with PS.

If you want the quality of PS with the speed of HPGL, try using a RIP like Zenographics Superprint 5. Their website is at http://www.zeno.com.

This software replaces the Windows printing subsystem with one tailored to each individual printer.

What you can do is set up an optimised Postscript driver for the HP (called a ZScript driver), and the driver optimises the Postscript before converting it to HPGL (hopefully giving you as good a result).

Alternatively, it can leave the spooled data as Postscript.

I had a play with a colour Laserjet 4 and I had the same problems with speed under Postscript. I attributed this to the page having to pass back and forth through the printer 4 times and the print job having to be disassembled to get the 4 colour information seperated.

I didn't have access to the technical data or manuals, and I never got to play inside the printer, so I can't be sure if that's how it works.

I can only guess that HPGL handles the colour seperation easier for the Laserjet than the Postscript does. My guess is therefore, if you use a RIP package to convert Postscript to HPGL optimised for the Colour Laserjet, you will get faster printing and better quality than the standard HPGL offers.

My policy is not to lock the question unless you want me to.

Yes, it takes a long time to send a print job to the printer. Then the printer sleeps if the job language is PS.

More precisely its trasfer rate is 1 MByte / 30 secs on a 10 Mbit/s Ethernet coaxial cabling.

In the compatibility list of Superprint the HP Color Laserjet 5M is not mentioned and I would try it before purchase.

There is a trial version. It says on the form you have to be a journalist, but I found the full version of Superprint 4 on a magazine disk.

It could be worth your while seeing what the magazines have on them, as a lot are starting to put full but outdated versions of software on their disks.

It might not speed up the printer much, because you're running it across a network, but you may find the performance is better and printer processing is faster if the RIP converts the Postscript output to HPGL before sending it to the printer.

My own printer, a Panasonic KX-P4200, isn't in the spec sheet either, but it does work with Zscript. According to the spec sheet, the SuperDrivers are for non-Postscript printers only.