usb printing

[Fairlight]

The honourable and venerable Kenneth Brody spoke thus:
> Many Lexmark printers are too dumb to print anything but pictures,
> using a proprietary printer language which is kept as a trade secret
> by Lexmark, so that no one but them can write a driver.  They can't
> even print the letter "A".  You need to generate a picture which has
> an image of the letter "A" in it, and then print that picture.  The
> same is true for many so-called "printers" nowadays.  (Hint -- if
> you can buy it free ater rebate, just remember that you get what you
> pay for.)

I think they call that "revenue security".  The ironic thing being that
they don't even make money on the hardware--the profit's all in the
expendables like paper and ink.

To be fair, though, we have an $89 (after rebate) Lexmark combo flatbed
scanner/inkjet printer that's been running over a year with no problems
in either half of the unit.  It's a 'doze-only, but it's Kelly's, and she
likes it.  I think it's the 1100X.  Actually, it's not such a bad little
thing, although I hate the software required to use it; they supply their
own print spooler that's like a front-end to the real spooler in the OS.  I
can print to it from remote through SMB though, so it's not too bad.

m->
-- 
There is no "I" in TEAM.
This would be the primary reason I've chosen not to join one.