Much has been considered. These are retail cashiering station that we are talking about. One central printer would be my next choice. The only thing that can go wrong is that the printer hangs and the whole front counter is dead. When the printer runs out of paper, or toner or the drum, or what have you, they would panic, because the light would be blinking and they wouldnt know what to do (these guys really arent too bright and would always rather have the other guy fix the problem). It will lead to a situation where the printer gets disabled at the unix level and has to be enabled (easy for you and me, but a mountain for these guys). Mind you all this is happening in a retail environment with customers waiting for receipts (ever been in a supermarket when the receipt printer jams - what if that was one printer for the whole market). This isnt good. The spooler is the obstacle that Im trying to avoid. I started to think of the cheapest, easiest, uncomplicated way to go about doing this. This is to continue doing the same thing that has worked flawlessly for about 15 years. The reason for going to laser is to eliminate preprinted forms, which saves substantial cash. I originally believed that the $99 laser I had did postscript. If it did, I would be golden. It doesnt. It does do PCL4. So, my next avenue to explore is to convert the postscript to PLC4 or convert the PDF being created directly to PCL4. Currently, the preprinted forms/Epson arrangement is doing straight ascii printing. We have started using the Cross PDF package and we are converting everything to PDF. We are eliminating pre printed forms wherever they exist. If all of this ends up not working, then I will go with the spooled printer solution. Then I have to create a bunch of menu options to allow users to view the status of the spooler and printer - is lpd running, is the printer disabled, is there a lock file that needs to be cleaned up. I dont look forward to this. The dumb terminal cost about $350 w/kybd new. The laser Im considering is $99. The cheapest laser that does postscript (that I know of yet) is the hp 2100 about $400. Im open to anything that is completely simple and cheap. I have brought up the idea of thermal printers like they use in Best Buy, etc... nobody likes em. We are a furniture store and the appearance of this just doesnt fit considering the average ticket is about $1500 and some substantially more. The owner likes something a little more elegant. So, now you know a little more about the environment what do you think ?
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tony Gravagno Sent: Saturday, June 05, 2004 5:08 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [U2] [OT]Postscript to a Laser on Dumb Term Aux Port Personally I'd recommend that you reconsider the architecture that you're trying to build, rather than reconsidering the specific devices that you're trying to fit into that architecture. I'm reading square pegs and round holes here. Dumb terminals were designed when we didn't have anything better. Do you really want to hang many laserjets around on dumb terminals that cost less than the printers themselves? Do each of your end-users really require exclusive access to a laserjet? And do you really need to manually generate a lot of PCL? I understand the needs of smaller sites and that it's not easy to drag new cables around for a new printer, etc. These days a wireless setup will cost as much as the $100 manual that someone proposed. And it's much easier to generate XML or HTML and export it as PDF, or use some other more text-based methods that result in high quality printed output. I'm just suggesting that you think outside of the box for a moment and consider something different than what the site already has, rather than just replacing old methods with new hardware. Good luck, Tony >From Anthony Dzikiewicz > I think you're right. I assumed that this is postscript > printer. We have > always used this with windows and could print postscript, but > it is being > converted. I guess I should start over with a real > postscript printer and take it from there. ------- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/ --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.691 / Virus Database: 452 - Release Date: 5/26/2004 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.691 / Virus Database: 452 - Release Date: 5/26/2004 ------- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/
