Printing and Scanning on the OS/2 Platform by Tony Butka

First, thanks to a user for asking me to explain if those inexpensive inkjet cartridges I keep talking about are just for the Xerox DocuPrint 20. No! They work with a broad variety of Lexmark, Xerox, and Samsung printers. The black cartridges are interchangable between Lexmark Jetprinter 500/5700/700/7200's, as well as the Optra 40/45 and Xerox DocuPrint 20, and a bunch of Samsung models.

Speaking of Xerox, I went to the Pamona Show a few days ago and guess what? A vendor is selling those cool Xerox DocuPrint 20's brand new in the box for $139.00. So for those of you who missed out on the Ebay opportunity, contact uBid4it.com at 818-996-7900, or on the web at http://www.uBid4it.com. They're in Reseda, and the printers come with a 1 year warranty. In related news, buy.com has Xerox Docuprint N17B laser printers on sale right now for $450. They are Postscript level 3, networkable, and 17ppm. OS/2 drivers, of course.

Peter Nielson is at it again, with an upgrade to PMView 2000 (both OS/2 and Windows versions). The new upgrade (Version 2.20) has a better on line help system, and somewhere along the line the drop down menus (for example, dealing with image manipulation and filtering) have been made both more intuitive and more extensive. He also has made some nice performance improvements when dealing with large file directories. The readme talks about over 10,000 files in a directory, but it also runs quite a bit faster with only a thousand or so files in a directory with thumbnails turned on. I know that sounds like a lot of files, but you would be suprised how quickly files add up when working with your new digital camera, or internet downloads from photography groups with a DSL or Cable modem. Well, actually my favorite group is the science fiction one, which doesn't seem to suprise my friends. And on my older box (a P200), you can load a directory and start working with the thumbnails immmediately while the drive is still creating the rest of the thumbnails. Ingeneral, Peter has put some very nice performance tunings into the latest release.

For you FAX freaks and TIFF junkies who work with multi-page TIFF files, the new version lets you handle multi-page single image files (the ones some older FAX machines require), and you can also print all or part of a multi-page TIFF by selecting the page(s) to print in a print dialog box. Speaking of printing, Peter has made the print dialog box easier to use, and set the defaults to 'fit to page', also giving the options of showing print size using the pixel size of the original image, or the resolution of the original image. The dialog box also gives you the printable area of your selected printer -- a nice touch for those of us with Epson & the like printers with hard wired margins, and includes a setting for the number of copies that you want to print.

Also, for those of you working with old video cards, like my S3 card that I have in a server, the new version handles the visual image quality at lower resolutions much better -- I can actually work with images at an apparent resolution of 256 colors.

Lets see, what else. Oh yes, working with the File -> Open dialog box has some goodies. For example, by right clicking of the folder tree, you can add/delete new folders from within PMView, set a slideshow, rename or refresh the file list. Finally, right clicking on a thumbnail puts you one click away from converting the file to a new format (like .bmp to .jpg or any of a number of file formats). I could go on, but you get the picture by now. A very nice revision, and one of the reasons that PMMail is my favorite graphics editor. The new versions are free for download.

Just so HP users don't feel left out, there is a new antitrust suit against them. Seems as though they (HP) are using their patents to keep ink cartridge prices at around $30 each for stuff that would cost $10 if the refillers could compete. While we Epson users gripe about the print heads not being a part of the ink cartridges, it turns out that having them integrated has been the basis for a lot of the HP patent suits agianst refillers. According to the report I read, their profit margins on inkjet supplies are about 64%. Thats right folks, 64%! I'm shocked. :-)

Reach me at Tony@scoug.com.

By day, Tony Butka is a bureaucrat for Los Angeles County. In his other life he lives in a loft surrounded by computers, printers, and a host of vinyl records.

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