I just bought a new Canon i550 printer. Will performance or print quality improve if I change from parallel to USB cable?
USB is fast, and the new ECP parallel ports are twice as fast (though the old printer ports are about 1/12 the speed of USB). However both the USB and ECP ports are probably faster than the printing engine of your printer so I wouldn’t worry about it. Of course USB gives you the option of networking multiple printers and stuff.
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Thanks Mirage. Guess I’ll just stick with the parallel cable then.
Using a USB cable will result in much lower system overhead during printing, which means your computer “feels” faster. It also means a much more manageable, and hot swappable, cable. Overall, I’d go with USB if you have the choice. There will be no effect on print quality.
I second going with USB. Hot-swapping is nice at times, if nothing else is on your parallel port then you can turn it off in the BIOS and save a IRQ (not as big a deal with modern OSs but still), and if something else is on your parallel port (like a scanner) you don’t need to deal with honky compatability issues.
USB won’t effect print quality or speed but it beats out the parallel port in all other respects (IMO)
I will have to disagree with the above posters. I have found that connecting the printer to the parallel port is far less problematic. It has been a standard for decades and usually works w/o a hitch, usb OTOH, well lets just say I had my problems with dual mode printers connecting to usb. Also I did notice a faster print time using the parallel connection using a particular printer (some hp laser IIRC).
As far as greater overhead of a parallel port printer, maybe but I have not noticed any difference, but then again I was not looking for any.
If you do go with USB and connect the printer to a hub, all connections will fall to the lowest speed. I have a usb mouse and scanner that when I plugged both into the same port (via a hub) the scanner would go very slowly but when I plugged the scanner into it’s own usb port it went much faster, YMMV. And before any of you jump in I don’t have any USB-2 devices, hubs or ports.
I like parl mode too, it was made for printing & keeps out USB conflicts. But be sure your parl port mode in the bios is set right Peanuthead, some modes are faster than others.
Right – sometimes a dual USB/parallel printer will give you grief when trying to run it in one or another mode if the settings are not right.
if you connect the printer to the USB port you have a free parallel port which is not very useful for anything else. If you connect it to the parallel port you free a USB port which is more useful. In any case the communication is faster than the printer can print so. . .