On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 12:40, Charlie Bullen wrote:
> Hi, any ideas on a combination printer/fax/scanner that will work under
> Mandrake 9.2. Preferably USB. All I need to do from the linux side is
> print. I would also like to be able to scan, but not necessary. Faxing
> is nit an issue uinder linux.
I have a some general comments in this area. This reply represents
months of pent-up frustration with Linux printing and one particular
printer. Apologies in advance for the length. Recommendations for any
of my problems below would be _eagerly_ accepted!
My wife has an HP PSC2110 Printer/Scanner/Copier. It's a great device.
However, just like most modern combo-printer-thingies, it was obviously
designed as a slave to wormdows. This thing even has buttons on the
control panel that will cause M$ Word or M$ Frontpage, or M$ Whatever to
pop open after a scan. It is seriously crippled without the win32
bloatware that comes with it.
I have been able to make most things work under linux, thanks to
http://hpoj.sourceforge.net. The printer driver seems to work, but many
apps have problems aligning the margins. For some reason, it also seems
like _many_ linux apps default to A4 paper size which also causes
alignment problems if you don't notice it and change it.
I also just discovered that Adobe Photoshop running under wine is almost
unusable because of the way it interacts with the win32 print subsystem
(probably not the printer's fault). Any printer-related command barks
about having "no default printer" in Windows/Control Panel. My wine
config is correctly configured with a "default" printer. Ugh.
Changing the printer resolution in the hpoj driver seems to be the only
way to adjust resolution. The driver settings appear to override the
resolution buttons on the top of the printer ("Fast/Normal/Best"). Not
a big deal, but the r00t passwd is required to get to the driver
settings and the CUPS daemon must be bounced for the change to take
effect. It's quite a click-fest to swap between printing documents and
printing high-res digital photos. In fact, my wife just gave up and now
she makes me do it.
Network printing is a pain with this printer. I have it locally
connected to a USB port on my wife's linux box. CUPS is the print
system there. Printing to this printer across the network will _not_
cause the printer to awaken from sleep mode. The print job will sit in
the queue and eventually time-out. To prevent this, we have to walk
over to the printer and manually wake it up by pressing any button on
the top. The printer's control panel does not provide any method for
disabling this power-save mode. The best I could do was set the sleep
timer for 12 hours.
Scanning works with xsane, but the UI for that app is like Chinese for
my wife and daughter. They can't make heads-or-tails of it, so I end up
doing every scan and saving the images to their home dirs. Also, the
hpoj driver seems to be slightly broken here. It ignores a 1/2" band of
the scanner glass along the top edge and the left edge. Meaning, the an
8.5x11 page will be cropped to about 7x10.3 and you will be missing the
rest of the image. I have tried everything I can think of. I _cannot_
solve this maddening problem.
Copying works fine, since it does not interact with the PC.
Whew!
...Kevin
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