Page PrintersPage printers, such as laser printers, process and print information one page at a time. The informationsent from the computer to the printer is sometimes in simple ASCII code, or more often, in a pagedescription language. This information is a set of instructions that the printer must interpret to determinewhen the printer should position each dot. Some common page description languages include PostScript,CaPSL, and HP PCL.Line Printer and ProcessingWith line printers almost all of the processing burden falls on the computer. The printer needs to do verylittle additional processing of the information it receives from the computer--it simply executes theinstructions it receives. This means a line printer needs very little processing power and memory.Because most of the processing takes place on the computer, the speed of the computer's processor (386,486, Pentium) and the amount of random access memory (RAM) on your computer have a significantinfluence on printing speed.The faster the processor, and the more RAM you have, the faster you can print on your BJC-610 ColorBubble Jet Printer.Page printers and ProcessingWith page printers, the computer and the printer share the processing load. The computer translatesinformation form the application into the appropriate page description language and sends this to theprinter. The printer processes this code into specific printing instructions on where to put each dot on thepage. This means that the printer itself must have a certain amount of processing power and memory tohandle the instructions it receives from the computer.Because processing takes place on both the computer and the printer, the speed of laser printing dependson the processor's speed and RAM available on both the computer and the printer.Introduction 81 of 1 4/15/98 11:17 AM
