Printing speed of EPSON 1280 with parallel cable

I just purchased a used Epson 1280 and am very happy with the quality

I am getting, but the speed is terrible. I must not have something

set right. It takes about 10 minutes to do an 8x10 print that was

downloaded from my Canon S30. I have a HP 800 MGHz with only 128

SDRAM. I am using the high speed parallel cable. If anyone can

give me some suggestions I would appreciate it.

Are you printing at 2880? If so, change to 1440 or even 720. Many say they can see a difference from 1440 to 2880. 2880 is v-e-r-y slow. *Maybe* there are some differences in some places but you need to hold the paper about an inch from your eyes to see it if at all.

 

I just hooked up a friend's 1280 on a Win ME system with a parallel cable and it seems to work as fast, if not faster, than my 870 or 1160 on my Win XP system, all hooked up with USB.

Depending on the number of applications you have open and how much ram is in use, the print spooling process might like more than 128mb to keep it all in RAM. This also depends on the size of your image (in megabytes). I don't find that on many computers, and with many printers, USB gains you much over parallel. The limiting factor is the printer and not the connection in many cases.

 

The Epson 1280 is a SLOW printer to begin with. On any connection, and on any computer. One thing that may help is if you lower the print resolution on the printer. There's no need to run over 720 most of the time. In fact 360 often suffices. Try some prints and view them at the proper viewing distance (= the diagonal of the print). 300-360ish dpi setting on both the file and printer will suffice. If you cut the printer down to this resolution, it will reduce the print time considerably.

BTW: I tend to use 720 on an Epson anyway, since it's not much different than 360 as far as speed is concerned.

WHAT WHAT WHAT you are speaking of? Sounds like somebody does not get the difference between printer dots and file pixels? I must be wrong...

There is no use to use more than 300 dpi file resolution - it only gets slower when the printer must dowscale the file. 250 or 280 will do IMHO. But, printer ink can be distributed at 2880 or 1440 - thats another story. 1440 will be faster, but, like someone said, some people can see the difference (I don't).

 

If you use some other software than Photoshop, there is no use of file resolutions higher than 100 dpi, Windows doesn't print it anyway. And you can't see the difference between resolutions..... (Mac users - okay, this is not for you)

There seems to be a problem with Epson drivers and the parallel port in Windows 2000 and XP. The print head pauses between strokes, and Task Manager shows 100% CPU usage. Everything comes to a crawl.

 

I switched to the Epson USB port, and the problems went away. I just made a bunch of A3 prints, and it takes about 5 minutes each (720 dpi/Photo Luster paper.) I'm using a 1.5G PC with 785M RAM and W2K SP2.

Pretty simple really. 300-360dpi file resolution (depending on what you believe), and printer settings of 360, or 720 should you feel the need.