I want to start printing digital images by having my negatives scanned onto CDs by a camera store, and I will invest in a good printer. My question is whether image quality will suffer at all if I use my existing Pentium 100, 32MB RAM. I know much more is recommended, and that I wouldn't be able to use powerful software like Adobe, but if I can put up with things running slowly, will I be able to produce high quality prints, 8x10 or smaller, with such a system? (I'm mainly interested in B&W, and am considering one of the Epson printers). Thanks.

-- jerry epstein (jepstein@jenner.com), February 29, 2000

Answers

You'll certainly be able to use your existing computer, but as you've guessed, it'll run things pretty slowly. The main problem is that modern printers rely heavily on the host computer to prepare the image file for printing, and when the manufacturers claim things like 6 pages per minute, they mean with a 600 Mhz Pentium III and 256 Mb RAM. I've tested the same printer on a 400Mhz machine and a 233Mhz machine, and the print speed almost scales with the processor speed for large image files. So, exactly how patient or impatient are you? 20mins is probably a reasonable estimate for a full colour A4 print with your existing hardware.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), February 29, 2000.