Hi Bat,
You wrote to Mark Lewis:
BL> JdBP> If the term "Windows printer" means nothing more than that
BL> JdBP> printer technology has regressed to the level of early 1980s
BL> JdBP> dot-matrix printers once again, then there's no cause for all
BL> JdBP> of the worrying that people are doing about this.
BL> ml> the term "windows printer" is analogous with the term "winmodem"...
BL> ml> that should make the point =very= clear...
BL> ml> to get a bit more detailed, think of it this way... they removed the
BL> ml> processor et al and are using software emulation for the printer
BL> ml> processor and related components...
BL>Not necessarily.  Take the case of the Okidata 4W (I believe?).  It's a
BL>laser page printer, which will only work under Win. BUT this printer
BL>uses a more capable (1284??) cable to establish two-way communication
BL>with the OS.  In so doing, it only needs 256k internal memory, since it
BL>makes use of the HDD within the Win machine, where it will use as much
BL>as 40mb of disk space = memory.  I got one for my son, who needs WFWG
BL>where he teaches, and he loves it.  I had long wondered why printers
BL>could not make use of System memory for their needs, rather than to have
BL>to buy more memory for a printer.  So in this instance, I would not at
BL>all find this analogous (but similar) to a win-modem.  But you are free
BL>to see it that way if you want.  I find a printer that can use system
BL>memory to be an idea whose time has come.  Good Modeming!  /\oo/\
That machine has different specs to those I have here for the OKIPage
4W. According to the information in a catalogue I have it is a Windows
only printer with _no_ internal memory: to get the PCL 4.5 emulation you
have to use the Windows DOS box. I suspect it needs the fully wired
parallel cable (and the bi-directional parallel port) because of the
limitations of the internal hardware.
In the catalogue I checked all the other Laser printers with Windows GDI
printing also support non Windows use and have varying amounts of RAM to
enable them to function without Windows.
Windows GDI printers are in fact totally analogous to Win-modems, in
that the main system processor is doing all the rasterisation of the
image. For a system with infrequent printing which is not heavily loaded
with processor intensive tasks this is a reasonable option. Of course it
is totally tied to the Windows system as it uses the Windows internal
rasterisation code
George
 * SLMR 2.1a * Computers eliminate spare time.
--- Maximus/2 3.01
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