Questions about Setup and Options for Xerox Docuprint N17

[Tabla Junkie]

I'm in the process of buying a Xerox Docuprint N17 printer and I have some
questions about setup and options. The thing is still in transit, so some
of my questions might be answered when I finally get my hands on the
printer.

1) Which is a better setup: parallel or networked? I can hook it up either
through my LPT1, or I can network it via my router. Is one faster/better
than the other? I'd assume that the network connection would be faster than
the LPT, but perhaps it doesn't really matter in practical terms. I'm using
the printer as a standalone, and I'll be printing postscript files and
proofs, as well a general printing.

2) A question about driver installation: the drivers I found for the N17 on
the Xerox web site all seem to be for postscript. Am I right in assuming
that the drivers for the N17 included with WinXP are for PCL? I'd like to
be able to print both PS and PCL since PCL is faster than PS for everyday
printing (or am I wrong about that). I'm assuming I'll need to install two
instances of the printer, one for PS (using the PS driver), and one for PCL
(using the WinXP driver)-- is this correct?

3) I know the N17 has the option for installing a hard drive: can any IDE
hard drive be used for this, or are there special drives with special
connectors? I have several small hard drives in my collection (a 1.6 gig, a
3.? gig, etc) and I'm wondering if I can use or adapt any of them for use
with the N17. If so, how do they need to be formatted, etc?

4) Xerox has some kind of control center software for the printer, abut it
seems to be geared mostly towards managing the printer in a workgroup
setting. Since I'll be using the printer with only one computer, should I
bother with the control center software, or will the N17 driver interface
be enough?

Thanks very much for any help....

 

[Alan]

I'm in the process of buying a Xerox Docuprint N17 printer and I have some
questions about setup and options. The thing is still in transit, so some
of my questions might be answered when I finally get my hands on the
printer.

2) A question about driver installation: the drivers I found for the N17 on
the Xerox web site all seem to be for postscript. Am I right in assuming
that the drivers for the N17 included with WinXP are for PCL? I'd like to
be able to print both PS and PCL since PCL is faster than PS for everyday
printing (or am I wrong about that). I'm assuming I'll need to install two
instances of the printer, one for PS (using the PS driver), and one for PCL
(using the WinXP driver)-- is this correct?

With printers with dual personalities, you install two drivers -- I
have "HP4 Postscript" and HP4 PCL".

I don't know that PS is slower than PCL. I use PS almost exclusively.
You can speed up PS printing markedly (or at least reduce the size of
the print files) if you make fonts and such resident in the printer. I
download fonts I use using an old utility, WinPSx. I notice on Xerox's
site they have "fmuen.exe: CentreWare Font Management Utility. This
utility allows you to download PostScript, PCL or TrueType fonts to a
printer". I haven't used this, but it looks interesting.

Also in a PS printer's icon under "Properties|Postscript" you have an
option to download the PS header to the printer where it remains in
memory, and not with each job. If you look at a PS print file often
over 90% of it is this header.

Further, if you do get the hard disk, you won't have to do these
downloads every time you power on the printer as I do, but just once.
(The software should have options to download to RAM or HD.)