OT: Printing from Windows 7 via SMC Barricade router?

Actually, yes. HP has the absolute *worst* printer software in the industry. I've bought my last HP printer. Like the printers, hate the software that makes 'em run.

Can't confirm that. HP printers have outperformed just about anything here in terms of life expectancy and robustness. I only strayed when they didn't have suitable combo machines for my taste (the office hub kind). This little LaserJet 5L runs and runs and runs. Cheap on toner, almost zero warm-up time, has never minded power glitches or brown-outs. Many reasons why I'd like to keep it.

I seriously doubt they'd ship an untested driver to Microsoft.

It was probably only tested as a local printer. The problems you are seeing relate to using it across the network through the SMC router. Does the printer appear in your network listing?

I suggest you plug the printer into the PC and try it that way (or buy a sacrificial really cheap $10 basic modern router).

Wireshark might be the only way to see what is going on. My problem with the printer was that Win7 and the printer didn't quite agree on certain aspects of the status protocol. But I clearly had working communications with it just nothing would physically print. I agree that the "X is not working" diagnostics are about as useful as a chocolate fireguard (less use - you can always eat the chocolate).

Regards, Martin Brown

Done right a small amount of anti-aliassing improves legibility.

Thinking about it I think your complaint should actually be to Dell who have supplied you with a machine that isn't up to snuff for use editing business documents.

I just checked and my portable has a gaming NVidia card in it and the font rendering is fine on there too.

Looking in detail at the font rendering on my own Win7 boxes there is what I would describe as chromatic aberration at the pixel peeping level with a red shadow to the left and blue shadow to the right. This is consistent on both platforms (with and without an NVidia card). In fact the NVidia rendering here is closer to neutral greys.

You can pixel peep by using Accessories - Ease of Access - Magnifier that will allow you to distinguish between scalable fonts and pixellated ones. Something is wrong with your scalable fonts.

So is mine provided that you do not alter it in any way!

The weird pattern is intended to break certain ancient shell scripts and they cannot resist removing "spam" from it. Prior to the great Swenfest of 2002 I used to post my email address in the clear. After a week with

Might be even faster if it uses SIMD instructions or CUDA.

What font and size(s) are you using? I honestly think Dell have tweaked the GPU settings to match the expected gaming use of the platform and that you are suffering from inappropriate config settings here (or maybe you are unusually sensitive to the chroma biassed shadows).

But I'll bet they only tested it as a local printer and as a network printer on a modern router that is fully supported by Win7 drivers.

Please send me a screenshot saved as PNG with some random text in Word.

If you can manage it black text on white, and the pure colours red on white, green on white and blue on white. I am curious now!

(and leave some of the desktop visible so I can judge that)

Regards, Martin Brown

That is the "sub-pixel" font rendering isn't it ("clear type")? I wonder if that is something to do with it. It needs to be matched to the actual pixel layout of the monitor for a start.

If Joerg is not used to that, or plain anti-aliasing for that matter, that could be the reason (and it would not happen for text captured in images or video).

Then why can XP and all other OS'es we've had here do it? I don't see what difference it makes whether the printer is at a remote port or not.

No, it doesn't. Windows 7 can't see it but the IP address pings ok.

A router won't help, they usually have no LPT ports. Neither does this PC. I can buy a $50 LAN-LPT pod, that's the only thing that could work. And then hope Windows 7 won't screw that up as well.

Windows 7 doesn't even issue an "is not working" unless you ask for it. You hit print and the stuff disappears into lalaland, sits in the queue forever.

Sure, but it seems MS can't get it done right. Then it's better to not do it at all or at least give the user a button to really turn it off.

Won't help. I just saw a detailed screen shot of a friend's Win-7 machine in Europe. Looks just about as lousy as mine. When he runs Linux on the same machine then text rendering is fine (I also saw a screen shot of that).

So the answer will likely be "This is as good as it's going to get with Windows 7".

Probably a matter of what you and I consider "fine" :-)

They came with Windows 7. Are there any better ones?

Ok. Has some unsual characters in it but I tried anyhow. You should have a screen shot now.

Wow! I never had massive spam. Just in NGs when Google flooded Usenet with junk and I had to blanket-filter all gmail. Now with the new service they take care of this.

I know but I guess due to a lack of a widely accepted standard it's not happening. I've got to live with whatever the simulator designers decided so the answer was an Intel i7. And it really rips.

AFAICT they left it at the Windows default because the (non-Dell) PC of a friend looks just about the same.

What difference shuold it make? This is a bone simple LPT server in a router. IP address -> LPT1 -> print.

I'll have to figure out how to do the color thing but i sent you the desktop and the video conference. The difference in the legend lettering inside the scope pics versus the Windows fonts is huge.

I've turned off clear type for a test and that makes it even fuzzier.

There's your problem.

Printer on Local LPT works w/Win7, yes or no?

If yes, troubleshoot your networking, again. Did you install the Win7 support stuff for TCP/IP printing?

You'll figure it out.

It matters that the SMC kit can represent itself as a network printer that speaks a dialect that Win7 can understand. It would have been nice if the thing did a printer status page so you could browse it with any web browser - that gives a clear indication of connectivity.

That's not a good sign. The router may well be responding to the ping on the printers behalf without sending anything to the printer.

I presume you mean a legacy Centronics port rather than USB then. There

That most likely means that the printer appears to be permanently offline (although it would then appear in network printers).

Can't right now because the PC has no LPT port and I don't have a USB-LPT converter.

Why does anything need to be installed? Windows XP was able to handle that straight out of the box without any fanfare or fuss.

Yeah, some day. Or maybe not and I'll just buy a LAN-LPT pod.

Then why would Microsoft screw up a dialect? XP, Win2k, NT, it all works with this printer. So did a Unix-type machine of a visitor. The beauty is that in contrast to the big office station is only neads an ordinary HP 5L driver which everyone has. Except Windows 7 where you have to download almost every driver in the world to get it.

It does. Says the printer is connected. I can configure the SMC via the web browser on any machine that is on the downstream side including this Windows 7 computer. Not from the outside as that is blocked.

It does from any of the XP boxes, prints just fine.

Yes, with LPT I meant Centronics.

Only to Windows 7.

Many people prefer the antialiased text, but you can get blocky text back by turning off some option.

I've had to install a patch for some HP printers on people's computers to disable some 'features'. Otherwise it won't print anything. The patch has to be run so often that I left it on their desktop. When they would call and complain, I would tell them to click on the HP logo then power cycle the printer and try again. I think he needs to just take a sledgehammer to everything in his shop and quit trying.

Until recently, I used a D-Link DP-G321 Wireless Print Server (1 parallel, 2 USB) print server with Windows 7 and Windows 8. I just created new TCP/IP ports and assigned the proper IP address and to my amazement it all worked. I've used that print server with Linux, XP, 7,

Microsoft even retained support for very old printers in Windows 7 and

1. I would not blame Microsoft for the problems caused by an ancient SMC design that doesn't work due to SMC doing stuff that was not OS independent. Windows 7 is far more stable than XP.

There is nothing special going on in there. It's an IP address and then a printer under LPT1. It is not rocket science. Wasn't for the XP designers, wasn't for the Ubuntu designers, but obviously was too difficult for the Windows 7 guys.

Windows 7 is far more stable than XP.

I totally disagree. Windows 7 does not even find my Linux-based office LAN drive unless I turn that drive on before the PC. With XP this works no matter what. XP is far more stable than Windows 7, XP is IMHO the better OS.

Sure. were it not for the absolutely completely vulnerable to attack aspect of that SHIT OS, I would agree.

But I think you know very little about security.

Never had a virus in here in over 10 years. A friend (realtor) with professional IT support on the other hand ...

XP was very vulnerable and Microsoft didn't want to continue patches for it.

I suspect that your printing problems in Win 7 are related to security issues. I used a print server on Win 7 that uses a standard TCP/IP port and it worked just fine. Since my printers all now have Wi-Fi I gave it away. I was using a 20th century parallel port laser printer until about six months ago.

While Microsoft did a very good job on Win 7 with regards to printers, my complaint was that a much more recent vintage HP USB scanner was no longer supported in Windows 7. Works fine in the latest Linux versions. Even the XP VM on Win 7 did not work with the scanner.