HP-8100 performance

[Jim_Fish]

We're using a HP8100 on a P3-900 to print high volumes of invoices for a certain Freight agent.

The ppm is well below the 33 possible by the printer and I was wondering if anyone could suggest the best option to improve performance. I realise the p3 is pretty substandard and we are considering investing in a much needed upgrade.

My question is would increasing the memory within the printer, or switching to a jetdirect print server, ( i believe the 8100 has expansion slots for such modules) Increase performance alone without the need for the connected PC (parallel port) to be upgraded. Just trying to weigh up whether we can save some of the budget in one of these smaller changes or if the new Xeon server will be required.

Thanks in advance for any advice on this..

[Frogs31]

You can add additional Ram to these printers, it normally helps. But keep in mind the format of the document you are printing has more of an effect on how fast it will print. Example if these are MS word docs that you are printing they should print reasonably fast, if they are Adobe Acrobat files (*.pdf) they will print slower because the file size is much larger.

[ptjeff1]

It's hard to say what will speed up your printing without a little more info. Memory could help, especially with a large number of documents or complex documents. How big are the files? How many files? Do the files contain graphics? Does your software take a long time to spool the document to the printer? Can you print a 33 page document in notepad and does it print in one minute or close to it? Remember that the rated ppm is best-case and usually falls short of it.