[Ubuntu-US-CA] Slow printing to Laser Printer with Ubuntu

[Mr. Andrzejak]

Hi Bob! Ive had the same problem at work. We have blueprints in PDF that are
large files, or manuals that need to be printed and it almost feels like the
print job gets bottlenecked somewhere. Documents either take forever to
print, or never print at all. Ive found a couple of solutions that have
worked perfectly for me. Usually method #1 solves the issue whenever I run
into it.

#1 - You need to switch your drivers from a Postscript/Foomatic driver to a
CUPS/Gutenprint driver. You can also try a PCL driver if its not installed
automatically.

To change your drivers to CUPS or PCL, go to "System > Administration >
Printing" and then right click your printer giving you problems, and click
"Properties". Click the "change" button to the right of Make and Model. It
will then ask to change drivers. Now pick your printer brand (should already
be selected) click forward, and then the model should be selected already
also. To the right of the models list are the drivers. Here is where you
want to select something different than the Postscript driver. That should
do it!

#2 - You can also go into your printer settings and select a lower DPI,
possibly to a draft mode.

To change the quality, again go to "System > Admin > Printing" and right
click the printer you want to change the settings on. Click Properties.
Click Printer Options in the list on the left and then look for Print
Quality. My laser printer is set to normal, but you can also change this to
"draft -economy" mode or "best" mode.

Best Regards,

David Andrews
davidandrews at ubuntu.com


On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 10:26 PM, Robert Lewis <bob.l.lewis at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> I trying to help 3 people with the identical issue. One of them being
myself.
> Printing large pdf files and also some web sites is painfully slow to
various brand and model laser printers.
> When I try printing from (ugh) windows7 it is fast.
>
> The laser printer LED shows data being spooled to it and lpstat -t shows
the percentage of the job
> being spooled (this is slow).  When it gets to 100% then the printer does
come on and print as expected.
>
> If I choose to print to an INK Jet color printer then that is fast.     It
is only Laser printers the slow behavior.
>
> I have tried with  various versions of Ubuntu including 11.04 all with the
same results.
>
> I am not looking for speculation as to how to resolve this but more from
others that have seen this
> issue and have found a solution.
>
> Cheers,
> Bob
>
>
>


--
Sent from Ubuntu OS (ubuntu.com)
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