Re: Most Advanced Operating System in the World???

On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 19:32:40 -0400, Davoud wrote
(in article <310320071932293593%star@xxxxxxx>):

How bad is an OS that can't even spool jobs to printers
in a reasonable amount of time? Ever printed non-rasterized
documents (PDFs or vector-based work) to an HP LaserJet recently?
Even Windows can print the same documents in a minute or two
but OSX??? More like 30 minutes.

I'm sorry to hear that you don't know how to set up your HP LaserJet.
Please post specifics so that we can help you. My wife /loves/ our
network LaserJet that is located in her office because she clicks the
"Print" button and jobs -- multi-page jobs -- are waiting to be picked
up by the time she can walk across the room. If Windows users are
waiting "a minute or two" for results like this, I pity them.

Under OS 9 or previous, printing PDFs to laser printers was painfully slow.
(I recall taking over 5 minutes, sometimes over 10, to print PDFs from Mac
IIcis back in the day... but I don't recall any 30-minute PDF print jobs.)
Under OS X, it's almost always quick and easy... and when it's not, it's
usually demonstrably the printer's fault, as printing PDFs to it from Windows
is _also_ slow.

I have on my home network (among other machines) an elderly iMac G3 (which
can boot into OS 9 or OS X), an eMac, an iMac G5, a Dell, a HP, and a
hand-built Windows/Linux machine. The Dell has a 900 MHz Celeron. (Yes, I
know, it's a piece of crap. It's a Dell. This is a given.) The HP has a 2.5
GHz Pentium 4. The hand-built machine has a 2.8 GHz P4. The iMac G3 is 350
MHz, the eMac is 1.25 GHz, and the iMac G5 is 2.1 GHz.

I also have a Brother HL-2070N network printer, which prints using PCL6 like
an HP laser. I fed the Brother the first ten pages of the Gutenprint 5.0 User
Manual from each machine.

The iMac G3, as expected, brought up the rear... if printing when booted in
OS 9. It was, however, faster than the Dell when the G3 was booted in OS X.

The Dell, as expected, was the next slowest, generating nearly identical
print times when booted in Win98 or WinXP. It was noticeably faster than the
iMac G3 when booted under OS 9, and just as noticeably slower than the G3
when booted under OS X.

The eMac, with its 1.25 GHz G4, could only boot in OS X. It was just about as
fast as the HP under WinXP, and faster by a small amount than the HP when the
HP was booted under W2k. (Yes, WinXP was actually faster than W2K. Shocking,
eh?) I rather expected that, as 1.25 and 1.42 GHz eMacs at the office are
noticeably quicker than 2 GHz HPs and Dells... and those machines _are_
printing to genuine HP laser printers.

The HP booted in WinXP gave good times, better than the eMac, but not by
much. The same machine under W2k wasn't quite as fast, but again not by much.
The hand-built machine, with a 2.83 GHz P4, was the fastest Windows machine
by a fair margin, under either WinXP or W2k. (The times were effectively
identical.)

The iMac G5 was by a fair margin the fastest machine, period, despite having
only a 2.1 GHz G5.

My iMac G5 turned out the ten pages in under a minute. (4 seconds to spool,
42 seconds to from when the first page hit the output tray to when the last
page hit. Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Reader.) The worst results, the iMac G3, took 73
seconds to spool under OS 9 and 51 seconds under OS X. There, too, it was 42
seconds from first page hitting the output tray to last page. _All_ the
output, from any machine, took between 41 and 43 seconds to actually print.
In no case did the total print time, spooling plus printing, exceed the two
minutes the OP referenced as being optimum. In no case did the spooling
exceed even one minute. It certainly was not anywhere near to 30 minutes.
What's he using, a Performa booted under System 7.1?

--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.

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