From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu May 28 17:41:01 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A4A8A1065674 for ; Thu, 28 May 2009 17:41:01 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Received: from mx02.qsc.de (mx02.qsc.de [213.148.130.14]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3235A8FC08 for ; Thu, 28 May 2009 17:41:00 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Received: from r55.edvax.de (port-92-195-65-8.dynamic.qsc.de [92.195.65.8]) by mx02.qsc.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3537716C0DAA; Thu, 28 May 2009 19:37:26 +0200 (CEST) Received: from r55.edvax.de (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by r55.edvax.de (8.14.2/8.14.2) with SMTP id n4SHbJUT008425; Thu, 28 May 2009 19:37:20 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 19:37:19 +0200 From: Polytropon To: cpghost Message-Id: <20090528193719.97764c30.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <20090528170909.GA1841@phenom.cordula.ws> References: <23711563.post@talk.nabble.com> <20090525154816.3cee4b9a@scorpio> <20090526144939.d21275c2.freebsd@edvax.de> <20090527133706.1a6e4612@scorpio> <20090528083057.554dca76@scorpio> <20090528090941.1b39b676@scorpio> <20090528183141.107ff3e4.freebsd@edvax.de> <20090528170909.GA1841@phenom.cordula.ws> Organization: EDVAX X-Mailer: Sylpheed 2.4.7 (GTK+ 2.12.1; i386-portbld-freebsd7.0) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Canon printer and TurboPrint X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: Polytropon List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 17:41:01 -0000 On Thu, 28 May 2009 19:09:09 +0200, cpghost wrote: > Basically put: you get what you pay for. That was true in the past, but today, it's much more complicated than just regularing an article's quality over the price. You can - without any problems - get crap for (too) much money. You pay for a brand name, or a standard's name, but you get crap. I've seen a good example recently: A DVD recorder built (or at least sold) by a company name most users are familiar with, which quitted working after 1 year of regular use, and a similar recorder by a manufacturer that's not so widely known, which still works today. The known one was nearly 100 Euro more expensive than the unknown one. > Classic (non-win) printers do > have circuitry on board to process PCL or PostScript, whereas > el-cheapo win-printers come without this circuitry, and delegate > pagesetting to a software driver. Exactly. Even el-anachronismo dotmatrix printers could turn simple text, transmitted to the parallel port, into printed form. Today's el-stupido printers can't. Can't print easily, but pretend to be more than they are (in terms of overall quality, to which I add support for standards or at least existance of a proper BSD driver): The include a printer, a scanner, a fax machine and who knows what else... > Same for modems vs. win-modems. Exacltly. Those leave more to do for the computer that controls it, and generates much more work for the processor, while the easier variant would just be to transfer the data to the device and let it print, even if it's "just" PCL. > Of course, all this is well-known for a long time now. But what's > worrying, is that economics of scale make it increasingly difficult to > locate classic printers (and modems). Yes. In most cases, you stick to 2nd hand office-class equipment. It's bigger, may make more noise, but the history teaches that it makes you more happy. :-) > Fortunatly, they are still being > made here and there, but for how long? Customers do control this. A nice example are the IBM model M keyboards. There are manufacturers that provide the quality and the layout (without advertising keys) of these keyboards. (I'm glad to own some of the original IBM ones, they will live longer than I will.) > What will we do a few years > down the road in an environment where win-${device}s are ubiquitous? Scenario A is to keep using used older equipment and to keep it running by adequate means. Scenario B is to use means of emulation and virtualization. But more likely, this won't happen. History has told, future will tell. > Ultimately, we'll need a full-featured windowsolator a la NDISwrapper > et al., so that we can use the Windows-only drivers natively on > FreeBSD/{i386,amd64}. That would conform to scenario B, but I'm sure we won't have to think about it very much, because "Windows" is not the world. :-) > At least x86-based systems will then work, > although ARM and other platforms would still be left out in the cold. Does "Windows" run on ARM? I'm sure UNIX does. With the upcoming interest in ARM-based Netbooks 'n stuff I think it will be less and less important. Today, Linux is more interesting to industry and to enterprises than "Windows" is. I do see this in Germany: "Windows" is considered more and more to be old-fashioned (not very much in fact, but slightly increasing). I hope this trend continues, so printer manufacturers (and those that built other stuff used together with computers) will change their attitude towards interoperability and standards. -- Polytropon >From Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...