[funkboy]

I was wondering if the printing off my new HP OfficeJet 5510 is abnormally slow: it takes at least a minute to print out a single page: that is from clicking the "print" button on the computer to actually getting the paper from the printer.

One main delay seems to occur when starting to actually print the page. It takes about 30 seconds before the printer even responds and starts moving its cartridges and grabbing the paper. This is with Mac OS X 10.2.6 (or whatever the last 10.2 update was).

It also intermittently prints once it's begun: it'll print out some, then it will pause for a long time and wait on blank space!

I would say there's something wrong with either the USB card or cable (1.1, a PCI card inside my beige G3), but the Epson 740i I had hooked up tho this computer with the exact same setup worked very fast and speedy before. The Epson printed much faster than this one.

Does anyone have any ideas? Should I call up HP and see if I can get a new one, if this one is a dud?

[tooki]

Wait, this is on a beige G3? There's your problem.

Newer printers are higher-resolution, and that requires more involved rendering (not to mention that newer drivers are written with faster computers in mind, so they write sloppy, slow drivers).

Before calling HP, I suggest you test it on a modern Mac. If it works fine, then you have your answer as to where the problem lies.

tooki

[funkboy]

Originally posted by tooki:
Wait, this is on a beige G3? There's your problem.

Newer printers are higher-resolution, and that requires more involved rendering (not to mention that newer drivers are written with faster computers in mind, so they write sloppy, slow drivers).

Before calling HP, I suggest you test it on a modern Mac. If it works fine, then you have your answer as to where the problem lies.

Hmm, you may be right. Testing it on my iMac 800, the page prints in 30 second (still somewhat disappointing, but much better), and it takes 60 seconds to print on the beige.

More importantly, the beige still pauses on empty space, while the iMac did not.

It seems like, yes, the beige just cannot supply data fast enough.

Either that, or something is wrong with the USB connection on the beige.

Are there any ways to either test out my USB throughput, or to get a better print driver? I'd rather not shell out $200 to get a faster G3 or G4 processor...

Also, I have a second hard drive in the beige, and I let it spin down... it had already spun up after I loaded AppleWorks, but I wonder if that's slowing things down some, just by the fact that it's in there. The computer will come to a halt while the second hard drive spins up. I'm going to pull the drive and test my results again, though I doubt they'll be different.

Would a G3 or G4 upgrade to my beige's proc (currently a 333 MHz G3) improve things a lot?

edit: One more question: would a 900 MHz G3 show me more overall, day-to-day improvements than a 500MHz G4? We don't do any video editing or anything on the beige, just use it to check mail, run MS Word, and browse the web.
I'm thinking the $250 PowerLogix 900MHz/512K G3 upgrade would be more useful for me than the $300 700MHz/1MB G4 upgrade... am I correct?

[tooki]

I'd spend the $50 to get the G4, because a lot of OS X is optimized for G4.

That said, I actually wouldn't spend the $300 on the G4, nor would I spend the $250 on the G3 upgrade: I'd put the money towards saving up for a new Mac. Beige G3's are getting old, and really aren't worth dropping more money into, IMHO.

tooki