If you've just switched from the Windows world to a Macintosh, what
are you going to do with that old parallel port printer?
For years, the answer was PowerPrint from Infowave (now Strydent), which provided both the
software to support well over 1,000 printers and the necessary Mac
serial to Centronics parallel cable so you could print on your old
printer. Over the years, they even added excellent color support.
With the iMac, there was a problem: no Mac serial port. So Infowave
created a USB-to-parallel adapter, packaged it with their time tested
software, and released it to the Mac market some months ago.
We finally got an iMac at work, so I spent a few hours testing
PowerPrint 4.5 with our Epson Stylus XL printer, a tabloid sized inkjet
printer offering up to 720 dots per inch.
The Stylus XL is no speed demon, normally attached to our network
via ethernet and used with Birmy software to RIP Postscript images for
our art department. It prints decently, but takes about 25 minutes for
a tabloid (11x17) page, tying up the user's computer the entire time.
(This isn't strictly necessary, but printing in the background is so
much slower, that it's better to stop everything for 25 minutes and get
your page printed than wait hours for completion of a background
job.)
The regular Epson drivers are equally slow, even though they're not
dealing with Postscript. The problem seems to be that the printer wants
to pause after each pass of the print heads, which may be a printer
problem or a problem with the design of the ethernet card.
This version of PowerPrint doesn't work over a network, although
Infowave does make PowerPrint Pro, which includes a
LocalTalk-to-parallel adapter.
PowerPrint provides a direct connection between your USB bus and the
parallel port on your printer - in this case, a two year old Epson
Stylus XL. Because of the design of the USB-to-parallel cable and the
casing around the parallel port on the Stylus XL, I found it necessary
to crack open the plastic enclosure on the printer end of the cable.
Then it plugged in just fine.
I found it very easy to create a custom 11" by 17" paper size and
name it Tabloid using the PowerPrint software. (Since most printers
can't handle tabloid paper, Infowave doesn't make it a standard
setting. They are to be commended for allowing easy creation of custom
paper sizes.)
There are three quality settings for regular printing plus draft.
The highest quality setting uses the printer's maximum resolution, lays
down a lot of ink, and takes the longest. I found the final results on
the dark side, something that could be adjusted in the Options
menu.
The normal quality setting provided a decent match to what I saw on
the screen, which is all you can ask of an uncalibrated color monitor
and printer. The printout seemed as sharp as at the best setting, but
without the overly heavy ink coverage. There was a bit of banding
(lighter stripes) which may have been due to a nearly depleted ink
cartridge.
The faster setting provides draft quality, high speed, and washed
out color. Unless all you're interested in is how something fits the
page or creating a quick draft for editing, it's not a setting you're
likely to use often.
The draft setting itself gave me a blank page, which may be a
peculiarity of the Epson Stylus driver or due to the fact that I ran
out of black ink. (Murphy never takes a day off.)
In terms of speed, PowerPrint beat the network interface hands down.
Instead of pausing at the end of each run of the print head, the Stylus
kept right on printing - even when PowerPrint was spooling the print
file in the background on the 233 MHz iMac.
Overall, PowerPrint USB is as good a product as you'll find for
connecting an iMac or Blue and White Power Mac G3 to a parallel printer. At a
suggested price of $99, it's worth considering if you already have a
good parallel port printer.
PowerPrint USB will work with the iMac or the new Power Mac G3 Pro,
and should also work with any Mac equipped with a USB card.
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