[Eug-lug] Printer Question

[Allen Brown]

On Sat, 8 Jan 2005, Jeff Newton wrote:

> Hey guys -
> 
> I have a friend of mine that would like to give me a Lemark 
> printer/copier to use with my computer, but he has software on a CD that 
> say's its for windows, I'm kinda wondering if this printer would be 
> compatible to use with Debian and Mozilla or not??
> 
> Jeff

Many of the low end printers (including ones from HP) are "sleek".
That means they have no (or little) on-board intelligence.  They
depend on the host computer to do most of the work of the printer.

There are two problems with this.  First of all, it slows down your
computer.  But more serious for us in the Open Source world is that
these printers are generally not released with drivers for open
source.  That means that they are just large paper weights.
--
Allen Brown
  work: Agilent Technologies      non-work: http://www.peak.org/~abrown/
        allen_brown at agilent.com             abrown at peak.org
  You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me.