- Have a Dell 1320C laser Printer to hook up to my Desktop . Can be connected to By network connection or USB ! If I'm not going to run my computers as a Network is there any advantage to using the network connection for this printer other than saving a USB2 port for something else ? Thanx Y'all !!!!
Theoretically, using network will mean you won't have to mess around installing drivers and unnecessary software. Network is probably the better option.
????? Even if it's a network printer you will still need drivers. There is no advantage to connecting it as a network printer. In fact running it as a network may have a couple of disadvantages. 1. You will need to have a hub, switch, router or Ethernet xover cable to connect the printer to the PC. If you don't already have these it's an added cost.
dailun, drivers are used whether networked or direct connected. BIGTOXY, if printer is going to be used by other pc's & don't want to leave your computer on then network that printer with the other pc's. can get a router that has a usb port in it for printer use as the d-link DI-704UP has it built in as i have it in my hands as i'm typing this. i presume the other router manufacturers have similar products.
Perhaps I'm wrong on that then. I was under the assumption that a purely networked printer needed nothing other than the network drivers and, obviously the network hardware required.
@ddp "dailun, drivers are used whether networked or direct connected." I believe that's what I implied. I know that you're probably more used to correctimg my misstatements but i actually got one right this time.
In many cases, the network drivers are far less efficient than the USB drivers...especialy with OEM brand printers such as HP, DELL, etc...
How so? I don't really see how a driver can be less or more efficient apart from bandwidth (a non issue even for 100 Megabit) or CPU usage (which in this day and age should be inconsequential)
In the office we have an HP printer (It is junk, but it was free). Using USB, it's print/scan utility uses less than 10MB memory, and never excedes 5% cpu usage even when printing and scanning at the same time (and it is shared over the network using windows). However, when using it over a LAN the memory usage goes over 60MB and CPU load sits at around 10% at idle and over 20% when scanning. I have never writen a printer driver, so I don't know why this is...I just know that it is.
Not sure really, as any networked printer I've used has its own dedicated memory and the data is fed slowly to that.
