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

[Robert Lewis]

I have tried all of this on a simple pdf file before and include my timing
figures for reference.   The print is a lot lighter choosing gutenprint but may
be acceptable.  Time will tell.  One issues is that the very slow
printing is the
default for Ubuntu but on Microsoft the default printing has good quality
on Microsoft and fast.   I think this is an excellent work around but that we
still have a problem that needs addressing for most.  All of these were
done with 10.10.   However, I tried using the default driver at the top on
11.04 and the number went worse than on 10.10 to 2min 20sec.
Here is my chart:
 SLOW - HP LaserJet 1200 Foomatic/pxlmono [en] (recommended) 1-min 35 sec
TESTING - HP LaserJet 1200 ] Postscript [en] (recommended)  2-min 7 sec
HP LaserJet 1200 hpijs pcl3, 3.10.6 [en]                    58-sec but lite
HP LaserJet 1200 pcl3, hpcups 3.10.6 [en]                   45-sec a little lite
HP LaserJet 1200 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.6 Simplified [en]   21-sec a little lite
HP LaserJet 1200 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.6 [en]              22-sec a little lite
HP LaserJet 1200 Foomatic/Postscript [en]                   2-min 10 sec
HP LaserJet 1200 Foomatic/lj4dith [en]                      1-min 8 sec
HP LaserJet 1200 Foomatic/lj5gray [en]                      Error-ExtraData
           Then went on and took a long time after printing error page
HP LaserJet 1200 Foomatic/ljet4 [en]                        Job died


On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 10:51 PM, Mr. Andrzejak <mrandrzejak at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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)