Parrellel port or USB faster for printing...?

riva16 · Post by **riva16** » Sat Aug 02, 2003 4:06 pm

I know this had NOTHING to do with the DC, BUT, I just got a HP K80 aLL-in-one printer, and wanted to know if it would be faster to connect a USB cord to it through the spot on the printer, or if the parrellel port would be faster. Thanks. We have USB 1.1 only, and thats what the printer uses. I think USB is faster, but not sure.

feels · Post by **feels** » Sat Aug 02, 2003 5:13 pm

Not sure either. If the USB is built into the motherboard, I would say the USB... Personally, I think most to all peripheral ports besides USB will become obsolete within the next few years.

Gmc · Post by **Gmc** » Sat Aug 02, 2003 5:53 pm

USB is faster, that old parrellel port is slowww

riva16 · Post by **riva16** » Sat Aug 02, 2003 6:03 pm

Alright. The USB is directly connected to the motherboard. Thanks. I'll be sure to use USB then.

sonick · Post by **sonick** » Sat Aug 02, 2003 9:21 pm

The difference in speed of the ports wont speed up your page-per-minute speed, mind you. it'll make sending the data from your computer to your printer faster, but printing speed is not affected by the speed of the transfer

Unph@zed · Post by **Unph@zed** » Sat Aug 02, 2003 10:23 pm

Also, depending upon what kind of USB you have will affect it too. I believe USB 2.0 will speed up old 1.0 device speeds as well, correct?

bizzle · Post by **bizzle** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 10:22 am

Unph@zed wrote:Also, depending upon what kind of USB you have will affect it too. I believe USB 2.0 will speed up old 1.0 device speeds as well, correct?

Wrong.

riva16 · Post by **riva16** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 11:42 am

I know it won't speed up the printing speed, I just want the printer to start printing faster after I hit print than it did with the parrellel port. Like I said, we have USB 1.1, and the printer runs on 1.1 I think. If not, it'll still be faster I'm sure.

sixteen-bit · Post by **sixteen-bit** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 5:56 pm

Go USB - More responsive.
Prints soon after sendin the request. Stops printing quicker after hitting cancel than with a parallel port.

You can also hot swap easier.

az_bont · Post by **az_bont** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 5:58 pm

sixteen-bit wrote:You can also hot swap easier.

Isn't hot-swapping something that isn't really neccessary with Parallel ports? What else would you want to plug into there, other than a scanner, which have extra ports anyway?

sixteen-bit · Post by **sixteen-bit** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 6:05 pm

az_bont wrote:
sixteen-bit wrote:You can also hot swap easier.
Isn't hot-swapping something that isn't really neccessary with Parallel ports? What else would you want to plug into there, other than a scanner, which have extra ports anyway?

Yeah but when you cancel a 10 page document on my printer it takes foreeeevvverrrr, printing about a whole page before finally stopping. Unplugging the printer stops it faster but it'll print garbage when you plug it back in (it also beeps at me like it's insane). With my USB printer you can just yank the cable if need be and it stops dead, without the oddness when you plug it back in. Not that I really need to do that because it doesn't take forever to cancel a print job

someoneElse · Post by **someoneElse** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 11:20 pm

Unph@zed wrote:Also, depending upon what kind of USB you have will affect it too. I believe USB 2.0 will speed up old 1.0 device speeds as well, correct?

Again, no.

The only situation in which having a USB 2.0 controller 'speeding up' USB 1.1 devices is if you have many high bandwidth USB devices being used simultaniously, maxing out the overall bus speed of the USB. Things like video capture/cameras and mass storage/optical drives are the most common high usage devices.

Having far greater overall bandwidth available would prevent such bus saturation, but this type of thing isn't all that common, as most people only use a few low to mid bandwidth using devices anyhow.

This of course only means that in this type of situation, you're not really 'speeding them up,' but rather giving them the entirety of the bandwidth in which a USB 1.1 device would expect to have.

I also say use the USB port, if you have the cable and a free port, go ahead, for the reasons already mentioned. Some printers also have funtions that only work over USB like ink usage monitors, but that really depends on the printer and the software itself.