TurboPrint 7.50 - Ripoff

[Pyromania]

Thanx for the quick reply Casper, the Canon i865 looks ok but I need a Multi-Function printer Fax/Copy/Scan/Print.

[Framiga]

i totally agree, KennyR.

Obviously not all the latest printers are fully supported but with the right TP setup, the quality is higher than with win.

IMHO and from my direct experience, i think that Epson printers (consumer models lines) are the best companion of TP.

Ciao

[KennyR]

Paul_Gadd wrote:
Irseesoft and Hyperion should make some sort of deal out for OS4 as they should be standard in a OS.

Maybe too late. TurboPrint is now an integral part of MorphOS.

[Castellen]

@Hyperspeed
Yeah, I too bought STfax back when it wasn't free, but it's been good value for money.  I run it 24/7 and use it's voicemail and fax features a lot.

It has it's own print driver, which programs "print" to in order to generate a fax.  From within programs like Final Writer, you can't select a printer.  Normally Turboprint 7.2 is running, so captures all prints.  You have to disable (remove) TurboPrint in order for STfax to capture the print.

TurboPrint remove works fine, but it's when I re-run it after I'm finished spooling to STfax, the TurboPrint prefs box comes up, and clicking save or use usually makes it freeze.

I'm wondering if it's just my setup, or if this is a common problem?  Or is there another way to get around this?

Perhaps an upgrade to TP 7.5 might fix it, but if the only difference is additional printer drivers, then maybe not?

[Erwin-K]

I've used TurboPrint for several years with few complaints.

However, plug and go highest possible quality with a new printer would be pure luck. A bit of experimenting can work wonders.

I've used non-supported HP printers for color printing with a good deal of success. The DJ 1200 is supported, but the paper handling did not last. I've been using a couple of unsupported DJ 1600's with that driver. TP does great 300dpi color on them, but don't try to use the 600dpi B&W.

I asked my employer to get me a Photosmart printer that TP supported. Our IT department bought an unsupported PS 6122. With no hope of an exchange, I went to the HP sponsored DeskJet project at SourceForge. I noted what printers were grouped with the PS 6122 that TurboPrint supported. The DJ 96Xc, DJ 98Xc, & DJ 99Xc drivers all work with the PS 6122. I've chosen the 98Xc as best for my purposes. I get excellent 300dpi & 600dpi printouts, and very fine photo printing even without a huge amount of resolution in the file.

For many years I've printed banners on the old PaintJet printer. First I used Posters from Deluxe Photolab, then with a custom page size using TurboPrint. One of the drivers I use with the PS 6122 allows me to specify custom page sizes with no apparent limits. When this would not allow me to print pages over 22 inches long I emailed TP support. To my surprise, I was told they had never supported banner paper printing.

Based on my research I believe there is a way around this. Documentation for the PC says that if your software does not properly support fanfold/banner printing to use a script to send the fanfold escape code to the printer before printing from your application. Can anybody tell me how to do this on an Amiga?

[Seacoast]

Generally, HP ink is a lot more expensive than Epson and Canon ink.

I don't know about that. I just paid about $160 for an Epson R300. Then I went out and bought a full set of ink cartridges for it for $80.  That's half the price of the printer. Obviously, these companies are giving the printers away in order to sell ink.

Now I haven't used the Epson much except to print on CDs, but according to the ink gauges that appear on your screen as you print from it, it's going through ink pretty fast on all six cartridges. So, even using it just for CDs and the occasional photo, this is going to be one costly printer.

My HP 1220 Deskjet uses a high-capacity black cartridge and a combo cartridge for color. The colors usually run out pretty much simultaneously, although there are exceptions as when you design a piece with lots and lots of one color in it and print many copies of it. A full set of two cartridges goes for $60-$70 and satisfactory off-brands are available. In my experience the B&W ones work fine. But all these companies play the same game in order to sell more ink: They keep coming up with new models that use redesigned ink cartridges in order to make it costly for third parties to horn in on the ink business.

For all those reasons, printing by inkjet is an expensive proposition and the printers themselves are such a small part of the cost of owning one that it rarely makes sense to price shop among the different brands. In the long run, you end up paying about the same from one brand to another and even from one model to another within the same brand.

HB

[JaXanim]

I upgraded to TP7.60 to run my new Epson C84, which it does superbly. 24-bit prints are as good as I get from a pc.

Cheers,

JaX

[SilvrDrgn]

My A4000T with TurboPrint 7.3x for my Epson Stylus Color 660 prints better than my Win-DOHS PC could ever hope to, even when using the same printer.

[stefcep]

My A4000 with Hypercom and TP7 prints very quickly with Epson Stylus 600.  I have used photoglossy paper with 720x720 and this was as good as PC.  720x1440 made printout darker and slower not better.  But i now think printing with inkjet is too expensive in color or in black and white.  i think its cheaper to take photos/digital images to photolab and quality is better.  as for text, laser is cheaper and faster, so i think inkjets are not a good printing option.  btw tP7 is supposed to offer postscript printing on non post script printers.   anyone know  how to achieve this?

[Ilwrath]

@takemehomegrandma-

Hey, thanks for that link!

I had messed with NetParLpr before, but couldn't seem to get it to print properly.  The printer would respond, and would print ASCII text...  But would ONLY print ASCII text.  If I sent an HPGL file (it's an HP printer), it would print it as ASCII text....  :-P

That was a year or two ago, though.  Who knows how many newer versions of things have come out since then.  (Or maybe the original fault was user error....)  I'll give it another go by those instructions, and see what happens.

[thorrin]

Ilwrath wrote:
It would be kind of helpful if Amiga could print to network printers, as that's how I've got everything hooked up, now...  The parallel port is really pretty obsolete...

You mean print to a printer on the network?  The amiga can do that...  I had a setup where my wife's printer was on her PC upstairs and I could print to it from the amiga in the basement over a wireless ethernet connection.  You have to get involved with printer servers and all that good stuff, but it is possible.  There was a script called printspool or something that would wake up every 30 seconds or so and check to see if there were any amiga print requests.  If so, it would automatically copy it to a spool directory on the PC and print it.

Downside is that I would have to run up 2 flights of stairs to get the printout.  :lol:

-Thorrin

[leirbag28]

@JaXanim

JaXanim wrote:
I upgraded to TP7.60 to run my new Epson C84, which it does superbly. 24-bit prints are as good as I get from a pc
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Hmmm, I have an Epson C84..........now you and some people have inspired me to take TP into consideration.................I will be happy with just regualr printouts that are printed quick and nice.

@thorrin

Thorrin wrote:
You mean print to a printer on the network? The amiga can do that... I had a setup where my wife's printer was on her PC upstairs and I could print to it from the amiga in the basement over a wireless ethernet connection. You have to get involved with printer servers and all that good stuff, but it is possible. There was a script called printspool or something that would wake up every 30 seconds or so and check to see if there were any amiga print requests. If so, it would automatically copy it to a spool directory on the PC and print it.
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How on earth did you connect your Amiga wirelessly?  pleasse explain as i am dying to do this!

[thorrin]

How on earth did you connect your Amiga wirelessly?  pleasse explain as i am dying to do this!

OK, sorry... bit of a misunderstanding...  The amiga (and dreamcast) was wired to the hub, but HER computer / printer was on a wireless connection along with our laptop.  

It still may be possible to do wireless with the amiga though, but the amiga may have to be 'tethered' to a PC.

-Thorrin

[Holley]

BTW a couple of people on the Pagestream mailing list mentioned that printing to Xerox colour lasers using TP to make the PostScript gave the same results as on PC.  We're talking 2400 dpi though ;-)

Personally I'm going to be looking for a good solid 1200 dpi laser with 32+ Mb, I use a HP4000 at work and my publisher can equal it's B&W photo reproduction.

With HP all-in-one printers I've seen 4 at work, out of which 2 had a broken scanner after 2 years of light work - if you're getting one be sure to buy a 3 year support pack!

[Hyperspeed]

Darn I just wrote a good response and Voyager 2.95.7 crashed.

:-)

Never mind here goes again:

With regards to using STFax4.x and TurboPrint - I'm not really sure as
I haven't used STFax at all in practise. I heard the Pace Solo 56k was
the best modem for it because of the caller ID and answerphone
features etc.

The last menu-tab on TurboPrint offers the option to "Ignore WB Prefs"
so maybe playing with this would allow for STFax's own way of doing
things, and also there is "Menu Resident" and "Turboprint Resident"
next to this - try experimenting with the last tab of TurboPrefs to
see.

In response to people saying their Amiga/TurboPrint combos are getting
better results than a PC/Epson drivers... I think that's highly
unlikely unless your PC settings are horribly wrong. Think about it -
Epson wrote the drivers, Microsoft wrote tonnes of colour-matching
routines.

I used an old P1 166MMX and Amiga '060 and I have to say the PC
thrashed TurboPrint 7.50 in terms of quality. I used Super-Diffusion,
1440dpi, Turbo-Quality and it couldn't compete with Microweave® on the
Epson printer CD.

In response to the comments about banner printing, I know both
TurboPrefs AND GraphicsPublisher allow you to use Poster Print where
your picture can be stretched over a grid representing like an A0
poster comprised of little A4 sub-sections. It's marvellous.

My hat off to the TurboPrint author(/s) it's a good program. If only
it tickled my Stylus 740 into true Microweave mode!

[Hyperspeed]

Oh great, now I'm noticing on the Irseesoft website.

It did go to version 7.60 within a month of me buying 7.50 and now
they want 45 euros to upgrade!

Grrr!

I'm angry that what they promised in the adverts wasn't delivered, in
fact I think I read about it from the news section on Amiga.org!

The amount of printers they are supporting is ridiculous. You can't
dedicate your effort to get the most out of one printer when there is
about 50x on that list.

Better if they worked on 1x HP, 1x Epson and 1x Canon and said "Look:
buy this printer and we'll do you a really good driver". Better than
make crap for ALL the printers.

:-/

Anyway, I've written to them to ask them what's going on and why
TP7.50 doesn't activate microweave and stuff. Hopefully I'm just
ranting over nothing.