Comments on: One Thing I Can't Stand on a Mac: Lag on Print

By: joshkim

joshkim — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:33:31 +0000

Oh really? I didn't know that it was actually a driver specific problem.

I never found a solution to this issue... although, it's gotten faster with the new OS updates. It's still a little annoying, but it's not a showstopper for me.

By: Erick Mikiten

Erick Mikiten — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:18:04 +0000

I've got the same thing, and it's apparently printer driver-related. I've got four printers in our office and only my Epson color laser printer has this problem. It's about 6-7 seconds each time I switch from another printer to this one, and every time I change one of the settings for the printer in the dialog box. That's a lot of lags.

This has come and gone in the past as I've installed updates to the printer drivers, but seems to crop up on its own for no discernible reason. I'm looking around on the web to trace something down, but nothing yet.

My other printers are lag-less. I've tried Bonjour, AppleTalk, and IP options, but they are all the same. Oddly, selecting a Generic Laser Printer driver is no better. I've deleted and recreated the printer many times.

Did you ever solve it?

By: Josh Kim

Josh Kim — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 04:19:31 +0000

@DavidK: Yeah, I tried that before, but to no avail. Thanks, though.

@ChapH: Hehe. I'm just pointing out that this lag is almost disruptive in my workflow. It'd be fine if I was used to 3 seconds, but nowhere else in the OS do I have that weird lag.

By: ChapH

ChapH — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 04:14:17 +0000

3 whole seconds? You need to learn to relax!

By: DavidK

DavidK — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 03:29:34 +0000

Printer Setup Utility includes a Reset Printing System feature. Try it. It seems to work for printing problems such as you have explained. Good Luck

By: Jeffsters

Jeffsters — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 08:11:55 +0000

I just tried it with this page in Safari. Pretty basic updated install of 10.5 and sure enough it took more than 5 seconds from the time I pressed Command-P until the sheet came down to print. Now, having said that every time I did it after that it was instantaneous. It’s printing to a wireless printer using Bonjour. It was still instantaneous switching to a LaserWriter 8500. So in my case first time print, 5 seconds, after that instantaneous. Not sure what’s up.

By: Josh Kim

Josh Kim — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 05:12:19 +0000

It happens in Preview and FireFox and Safari, at least. Nothing shows up in the logs: I feel like this isn’t a bug, but it’s probably something I’m just getting a little mildly annoyed at.

By: KenC

KenC — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 05:05:21 +0000

Well, without lots of detail, who knows what the problem is. Does it happen in Adobe Reader, or also in Preview? What Mac are you using? Is your version of Adobe Reader running in Classic mode? Have you looked at your logs, to see if there’s something the OS is looking for, that’s causing the delay?

By: Partners in Grime

Partners in Grime — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 00:44:44 +0000

Nope, the print dialog box pops up instantaneously here … less than a second.

By: Josh Kim

Josh Kim — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 21:21:04 +0000

I don't even have printer drivers installed on this computer, heh.

It seems like if I access the printer dialog box, then do it again, the lag is pretty much gone from caching. But it's when I haven't tried to print anything to pdf in a while where it gets a little buggy in my book.

Maybe it is all me...