ProSeries users.......printer compatibility

[AZ-Tax]

I purchased a Lexmark E260dn earlier this year. 35ppm, 32mb etc.....yet it took 5 mins for this printer to print 30 pgs of a form 1040 tax return including all related schedules and forms. The printer would print a few pgs then stop though the green light was flashing therefore more pgs were going to print and then it would start up again print a few more and stop still green light flashing and printed some more. The printer does print all the pgs just takes forever. Called PS support and they tell me other preparers have the same problems and PS recommends HP Laserjetc PCL 6.

My back up printer Brother MFC 7220 never hesitated when printing 30 pgs the only problem with the Brother is the paper would curl up.

[veritas]

Check the DPI

Mine defaulted to 1200 dpi. I changed it to 600 dpi (draft quality).

[jimmcg]

I purchased a Lexmark E260dn earlier this year. 35ppm, 32mb etc.....yet it took 5 mins for this printer to print 30 pgs of a form 1040 tax return including all related schedules and forms. The printer would print a few pgs then stop though the green light was flashing therefore more pgs were going to print and then it would start up again print a few more and stop still green light flashing and printed some more. The printer does print all the pgs just takes forever. Called PS support and they tell me other preparers have the same problems and PS recommends HP Laserjetc PCL 6.

My back up printer Brother MFC 7220 never hesitated when printing 30 pgs the only problem with the Brother is the paper would curl up.

Sounds like you may need more printer memory (or have bad memory chips.) Memory chips are cheap and easy to add.. From experience I can assure you that PS is not very knowledable re computer problems. Talk to a computer person. Twenty bucks says you need more printer memory

[AZ-Tax]

Tried some of these thing already

Been using 600 dpi since I called PS a couple months ago and rarely noticed a change. What about "picture grade", yes or no? How about "toner darkness"....default looks to be an 8. What is "printer timeout", "wait timeout" & "auto continue"?


The specs say this E260dn print can take up 160mb but I also saw on the specs PCL 2. PS told me PCL 6 minimum. Prefer not to invest any more money like upgraded memory if its not going to work.

[MariaR08]

I just read the specs on your printer, and if it's right, you're actually ok. It said it has 32MB of printer memory and has PCL 5 and 6 emulation for the printer language.

So I would probably bet my money on your actual setup; the printer settings. Check the DPI as mentioned, you don't need a high (extreme) quality printout. Also, check if you are printing directly to the printer or not, the spooling selections.

Maria

[FEDUKE404]

Try these

Other options:

Be sure you changed your printer settings (both operating system AND tax software) from old to new printer. There could be some conflicts there.

Depending on the age of your printer, you may wish to download/reinstall newest printer drivers from a reliable internet source.

You may even wish to "delete" the old printer, although that should not be necessary.

And, unless you are a computer geek, don't get fancy - use the default settings for installation and operation - then change only if you know what you are doing. Some "draft" settings present perfectly good copies - with higher choices just taking more time/ink for marginal improvements. OTOH, on some printers a page printed using draft looks like.....well, a draft!! You should not need "picture quality" or similar for any tax returns.

As others have noted, it sounds as if you are dealing either with printer memory problems (not likely with most new printers), or spooling issues, or some conflicting software/hardware instructions.

FE

[AZ-Tax]

Lexmark E260dn has PCL 6

I just read the specs on your printer, and if it's right, you're actually ok. It said it has 32MB of printer memory and has PCL 5 and 6 emulation for the printer language.

So I would probably bet my money on your actual setup; the printer settings. Check the DPI as mentioned, you don't need a high (extreme) quality printout. Also, check if you are printing directly to the printer or not, the spooling selections.

Maria

Maria, looks like you are correct, Lexmark E260dn has PCL 6 emulation

http://www1.lexmark.com/US/en/catalog/product.jsp?tab=rating&prodId=4617

click on "specs", page down to right and click on "view more specs".

I looked and looked at the setting and cannot locate anything about "spooling".

[MariaR08]

Not sure what OS you're running, but try this:

Click on your Start (bottom left)
-Control Panel
-Printers and Faxes
-click to select and highlight your Printer, and do a right click, select Properties
-under the Advanced Tab, the middle section has options for spooling
-You might try changing that to the option Print directly to the printer (or vice versa if it's already set on that option)

Maria

[AZ-Tax]

Tried printing direct and

Not sure what OS you're running, but try this:

Click on your Start (bottom left)
-Control Panel
-Printers and Faxes
-click to select and highlight your Printer, and do a right click, select Properties
-under the Advanced Tab, the middle section has options for spooling
-You might try changing that to the option Print directly to the printer (or vice versa if it's already set on that option)

Maria

Though my printer never went into dormat mode, it took 2.5 mins to print form 1040, Sch A, Sch D, Sch B, Form 2441, Sch E pg 2, Capital Loss Carryforward Wksht & form 8879. Seems to me all these should have printed within 1 min.

[spanel]

I'd lean towards more memory... the reason it pauses generally is that the memory is full and it needs to communicate with the computer to get more stuff to print.

Chris

[dtlee]

I am not familiar with ProSeries printing nor with Lexmark printers, so I probably should not be poking my nose in here. ProSeries recommends 2MB of RAM and PCL. This printer supports PCL 5e and PCL 6 and has 32MB of RAM. It's default setting is to use PCL whenever the print job requires it and the setup from the factory is to use PCL as the default with 600dpi. There are few graphics activities which would need more than 32MB of RAM and few tax returns that benefit from more than 600dpi. As I understand it, we are not seeing any "memory errors" from the printer nor are we trying to print anything more than tax returns.

Are you printing through the LAN to this printer? Do other long, complex documents exhibit the same problem or is it just with ProSeries? Have you tried hooking it up in an alternate manner? Does the problem still remain if hooked up via the other modes the printer supports?

When the printer was installed, how closely were the installation instructions followed? Printers are notorious for having messed up drivers if connected before the software is installed. If it was not installed per instructions, have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling it properly? Have you looked for an updated driver from the vendor for your operating system?

I am not sure any of the above will help, but from everything I have read, printing to this printer in 600dpi mode should be much quicker than you are describing.