Hardware Tips & Troubleshooting

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When Your Printer's Buffer Overflows........

Yes, the printer isn't perfect. When you give the printer more load than it can "remember" from it's memory buffer, it will either hang, stop, pause or abort the print and give you an error message. Here are a few ways to fight the problems.

Compress 'em

From experience, I found out that a printer seldom or never encounter any buffer overflow from printing text. Rather, it is graphic files (up to 5 MB at a time) that crashes the printer. If you are printing multipage when you get errors, print one at a time. It may be painstaking but it sure beats having an error message. Now if a huge graphic file still makes your printer's buffer overflow, try to compress the current format you are using. If you are using Photoshop, save it as a normal or "flatten" (without layers) to lower the file size. You might want to try using GIF or JPEG. JPEG is a high-colour compression method that can reduce up to 90% less. But saving in this format can be "lossy" (image looks a bit different than the original). I prefer GIF. Although the file size may be bigger in high-colour, but it looks better.

Go For The Upgrade

Most printers allow you to upgrade the memory. The more memory, the less buffer overflow. This is the best solution. Go to your nearest computer dealer to ask for a memory upgrade. Make sure they can get the exact company and model. It might cost a bit but hey, that's what upgrades are for!

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