Can Windows XP really multi-task?

[sky9]

I have a rather old Intel (866) which does me very well. I have added more than enough memory but when I go to print, especially a picture, or download while printing, Windows and the HP Deskjet 720C become a crawl.
Is there any way to provide a print buffer to dump the print queue or am I expecting too much?
I would hate to think that there is a piece of shareware floating about that would speed up my day.
:rolleyes:

[RadarContact]

Can Windows XP really multi-task?

Are you kidding??? Could any Windoze ever multitask???

Depending on your printer you might find that a memory upgrade (printer memory) can speed up things...

[Mac the Knife]

"Can Windows XP really multi-task?" - not that much better than the old DOS "Print" command actually. There's still only one CPU in most systems.

Presume you mean a Pentium III at 866MHz. Windows already buffers the print queue and I don't know if it is possible to physically increase the built-in buffer on the 720 as you were sometimes able to do on older printers. My HP710C is d*nd slow which is why I use the old HP520 much of the time. But it's marginally faster from the XP/256/P4/1.6 than from the Win98/256/P3/800. I know that you can still buy in-line printer buffers, but they are expensive and I doubt whether they will solve your problem. I don't know how happy XP is on a 866MHz machine - have you tried turning off some of the XP bells-and-whistles? Is it only with complex images or does a simple text file print faster? Have you got a lot of unnecessary background processes running? Are you using the latest printer driver for the 720? I suspect that the problem is slow rendering of the print image and too many things happening at once which only a faster processor/bus will correct.

[Evo]

"Can Windows XP really multi-task?" - not that much better than the old DOS "Print" command actually. There's still only one CPU in most systems.


<technical bit>

The number of CPUs doesn't really matter (and several CPU designs allow real 'two things at once' multitasking on a single CPU). What matters is how the operating system uses the CPU.

There's much more power than you really need in almost all situations in any modern CPU (and 866Mhz isn't slow IMHO!), so the operating system divides up ('schedules') the available CPU power amongst the processes using it. The problematic processes are the ones that access devices that operate much more slowly than the CPU itself (accessing a disk is the main one), as these processes 'block', doing nothing until the IO is complete. Blocking IO happens when you print - the process doing the printing is having to either write data to a buffer on disk or push it down a wire to the printer.

On some operating systems - e.g. Linux - the scheduler swaps these processes out for ones that can do useful work and you never notice blocking IO unless the system is heavily loaded. On my desktop machine - P4 1.6, 1Gig memory, XP Pro - writing to a floppy disk still causes the machine to stutter, so my guess is that the windows scheduler still has problems with blocking IO - so the answer to the original question is NO, not perfectly.

However...

</technical bit>

I'd try two things (along with Mac's suggestions). First, how much memory do you have? If printing is using up all of your memory, then the slowdown isn't the operating system's fault. As 'real' memory runs out it will use the hard disk as extra - but very slow - 'virtual' memory, so your machine will grind to a halt as it swaps pages in and out of physical memory. Secondly, update the printer driver. The OS scheduler requires some cooperation from processes running on it, and it's possible that the printer driver is grabbing the CPU despite the scheduler's best efforts to get rid of it.

HTH :eek: :)

[amanoffewwords]

...I used to have more or less the same problem on a Win2K/768/P4/1.7 until someone gave me a print server they didn't need (came with an all-in-one HP device) - now my print jobs fly out irrespective of size/type etc...and are held in the servers' memory while my old HP840C chisels out the final product. A tad OTT on a home network but very effective.

[sky9]

Thanks all; I have more than enough memory as I had 256 then found 512 going for a song and brought that as well!! And yes I have far too much in the startup which I suppose I could move out. Symantec is showing about 450mb of memory free at the present time.
As far as the CPU speed is concerned I do find that it is quite fast enough for what I do, but I wish I could buffer the print work and get it out of the way. It might be that the print buffer is actually printing to the HD first - how do I check and stop that?