Printers for Windows XP

[Sandra Michalscheck]

Currently using win 98, Ver 9 and an Epson LQ-570 dot matrix tractor printer. Checks are 8.5x7. This works very fine. Planning on upgrading to Win XP and after a trial run. The printer doesen't work. Page 26 of the manual has a note that tractor printers don't work on XP, NT 4, Win 2000.
Anybody else been able to make a tractor printer work with Ver 9 and XP?
If not what do you reccomend? Laser or Inkjet. Some model numbers would be nice as well. Had a post under accounting about this but no reply's as of yet. Thank You sm

[NeilZ]

Currently using win 98, Ver 9 and an Epson LQ-570 dot matrix tractor printer. Checks are 8.5x7. This works very fine. Planning on upgrading to Win XP and after a trial run. The printer doesen't work. Page 26 of the manual has a note that tractor printers don't work on XP, NT 4, Win 2000.
Anybody else been able to make a tractor printer work with Ver 9 and XP?
If not what do you reccomend? Laser or Inkjet. Some model numbers would be nice as well. Had a post under accounting about this but no reply's as of yet. Thank You sm

As mentioned in another topic, its time to retire the printer, and use something that can work under WinXP. Epson did not update the driver for that printer for Windows XP, so I seriously doubt you're going to get it to work.

As far as what to replace it with, I have another set of questions for you. These are the same that I would ask any one in my business, which is computer onsite repair/support.

1. What else are you planning to do with the printer?
2. WIll you be using it to print mail-merge documents?
3. What's your budget for a new printer?

Off the top of my head, for light duty as in just printing checks, and an occasional report, an inkjet will suffice. For heavy duty use, I'd go with a laser. Again, the budget would be a factor here.

[Sandra Michalscheck]

Thank You Neil for your reply. Although I have been able to get several different dot printers to work in XP using the XP drivers for custom page lengths in other applications, Haven't been able to get it to Work with Power Church V 9. Looks like we will be getting an inkjet printer for this application. Again, thank you for your replies. sm

[NeilZ]

Thank You Neil for your reply. Although I have been able to get several different dot printers to work in XP using the XP drivers for custom page lengths in other applications, Haven't been able to get it to Work with Power Church V 9. Looks like we will be getting an inkjet printer for this application. Again, thank you for your replies. sm

This is interesting .. may I ask what applications, and what versions of those applications. I have a hunch why PC+ won't work well, but I need some additional info to be able to prove my hypothesis.

Thanks,

[Sandra Michalscheck]

This is Sandra's other half this time. Have used the dot printer with custom length paper settings in Word Pad, Outlook Express, MS Word 2003, MS Excel 2003 and Britannica 2004. Don't use them very much, sometimes I come across weird sizes of dot paper at garage sales etc.

I am sure you have done this but here is how I set up custom paper size for dot printers in XP. Using the add printer feature in printers. Select the aproriate dot printer and install the driver. Once installed, L click the dot printer and get it hi-lighted. Under file; select server properties, then check, select new form and put in the sizes you want. That seems to work on most weird paper sizes except for Power Church Ver 9 . Page 26 seems to confirm it. But, since a person can set custom paper sizes ???
Although I haven't tried it, no need to, It looks like you can define a custom paper size for any printer this way. Sorry for the long post. Dean M.

[Jeff]

Dean,

This is a little technical and we have not had to change the label printing routines in PC+ for several years so I may be a little fuzzy on all the problems we ran into. But here is what I remember about the problem with odd sized paper in Windows NT, 2000 & XP.

In Windows 9x there is really only one custom paper size. Internally this is assigned the number 255 by windows. When the printer driver is set the paper size to 255, the report writer can change the height and width of the paper to the size we specify in the report. This works great in that you didn't have to change the printer driver if you were printing mailing labels and then switched and printed tractor rolodex cards.

Windows NT, 2000, & XP they changed how this worked. You now have to define each custom paper sizes you want to use on a printer. The first one you define in windows is internally assigned the number 254, the second 253, etc. Our problem is we can't get a list of paper sizes you defined in windows for your printer. Keep in mind you are doing this defining in the windows printer dialog not in PC+. I know there are C API calls that can be used to retrieve this information, but they return C memory structures. Fox doesn't do that well trying to parse a C structure, it is designed to handle data not not double words and pointers to areas of memory.

So in a nut shell here is the problem. We have to specify the paper size by the internal number assigned by windows. This number is descending based on the order the paper size was added. So for computer A it could be 254 and computer B it could be 201. We can't figure out the correct number with out lower level C calls that return memory structures that we can't really read.

Taken all of this and most users have long since gone to laser or inkjet printers anyway it has just not been a devlopment priority to try to figure out another work around. (We first new this was a problem in 98 when verison 7 shipped.) Most users have not seen this as Windows NT or 2000 were not widely used in the church market and it did work with WIN9x. Now with XP this has become more of an issue because it works like NT & 2000, but tractor printers are used even less now.

Why do you need to use a tractor printer? They print slower in windows than inkjets. The best reason to use one is to keep duplicate copies of checks being printed, but most churches have been fine with using double stubbed sheet feed checks and keeping the second stub as their duplicate copy.

[NeilZ]

Looking at the programs that work with the tractor feed, I noticed they were all MS complled programs. Then Jeff's reply cinched it ... had to be a Foxpro internal issue.

MS hardly gives Foxpro a second thought nowadays, although the latest version is quite nice. You'd think they would add a function to do this, but as you said Jeff, people are moving away from tractor feeds.

FWIW ... I got a great Diablo printer in the basement with sheet feeder that I can let you have cheap !!

[nmcfw]

Sandra's question raises an issue about the type of printer to buy for check printing. Our treasurer was told by the local bank the inkjet printers can't be used to print checks because the ink is moisture sensitive and "bleeds" too much making the characters unreadable by bank automatic processing equipment.
What experience have other users had with inkjet printed checks?

[NeilZ]

Sandra's question raises an issue about the type of printer to buy for check printing. Our treasurer was told by the local bank the inkjet printers can't be used to print checks because the ink is moisture sensitive and "bleeds" too much making the characters unreadable by bank automatic processing equipment.
What experience have other users had with inkjet printed checks?

We've had good luck with both inkjet and laser printers. FWIW ... we've moved entirely to a laser printer to print most checks.

I have no idea why the bank would talk about 'bleeding' its not as if you're going to be printing any of the 'magnetic strip coding' at the bottom of the check !! FWIW ... what's to stop most home users from using a fibre tip pen that uses the same type of ink !!

[foxygramps]

In buying an inkjet, be sure it prints black using a black ink cartridge. Some brands use a combination of colors to print a non-black black.
Be sure to check the capacity of the ink cartridge. Some of the printers use very small cartridges, and will keep you broke replacing ink cartridges.
It seems to be the practice today to give you the printer, selling you the ink in it, and derive their income from ink sales.
Some manufactures have software in the cartridges that report being out of ink, with up to 35% Ink remaining. There are devices available to defeat this function.

[NeilZ]

How does one update the driver for an HP inkjet printer when using Windows Vista?
My Windows Vista does not not have a driver for an HP Inkjet Printer. After I have downloaded the driver from Internet how do I install the driver in Windows Vista

If you go to the HP website, find your printer, then select Vista downloads. The HP site should then give you instructions on how to install the printer software.

FWIW ... most HP drivers download as an executable, all you should need to do is run that .EXE file to install the printer drivers.