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Should I use Apple's USB Printer Sharing or Epson's Printer Sharing?
 If you've ever used a PC for printing, one of the really cool things was that so long as you had file and printer sharing installed, any computer running Windows 95 and up could share any printer (be it inkjet, laser or otherwise) over the network. The more advanced server Operating Systems like Windows NT have a few bells and whistles the consumer grade ones don't, such as:
- Print Device Pooling. Have several of the same printers taking turns with jobs, really handy in 500 user offices.
- Multiple Drivers. So that when people go to connect with 95 or Windows 3.1, they don't have to install the driver themselves, it's already there.
- Multiple "Printers." Microsoft calls the actual printer a "Print Device" and the pointer to it on your computer a "printer." You can assign different priorities and availability times to the different "printers" with different permissions. So the CEO gets a high priority "printer," the sales guys get a medium priority one and the Bean Counters get the low priority one that only prints after hours so their 200 page quarterly reports don't mess with the CEO's joke email he wants to print.
This is good and all, and I wish it were available on my Mac (chances are it is, I simply don't know which software does it, maybe it's coming with the next version of OS X Server). But, to tell you the truth, in our small office all I want is to be able to print to the fast Epson 880 from my Beige G3 and print on the Epson 7500 on the other side of the office. As luck would have it, there are 2 options available that will do this: A component of Mac OS 9.X called USB Printer Sharing, and Epson's own driver on the newer printers.
Both of these options were introduced without much fanfare and almost at exactly the same time. The only thing is most people:
- Don't even know they exist
- Wonder if they'll bring down their computer and make it less stable
- Don't know how to use them
- Don't know which is best for them to use
A few people will be screaming: "Hey, what about the Ethernet cards I can slip into my printer? that allows you to share printers over the network!" Well, yes it does. It also allows, from my understanding, Macs and PCs to use the same printer. My only contention is that they cost quite a bit (I'm looking for free, or at least under $80) and a few of the Epson printers won't allow you to do ink level checks and such, from any computer, using an ethernet card (like our 7500).
So lets look into these two options, starting with Epson's own driver.
Epson Printer Sharing
 So far as I can tell, every Epson printer with a USB connector made after the 1200, has a little button called "Setup..." that was added in the chooser right next to background printing (which I believe should always be "on." That way, if your computer has little memory, you can print and the quit Photoshop before the printing starts which will free up some memory, plus it's really nice not to have your computer locked up for 30 minutes when printing a big job!). At any rate, you select the USB port you want, click "Setup..." and you can now name the printer and give it a password. One nice side effect of doing this: on one of our computers, we have two 1160 printer, one has Lyson Small Gamut inks and the other has Lyson Quad Black. I always forget if Small Gamut is on USB Port 1 or USB Port 2. When you give the printers a name for sharing, they show up with that name in your own chooser as well. So we can have "Epson 1160 Small Gamut" and "Epson 1160 Quad Black" in our chooser, which is much easier to figure out.
Connecting to the shared printer is astoundingly simple, install the driver software on the client machine for the printer you want to use, reboot and there it is in the Chooser! So far as I can tell, Epson's Printer Sharing uses standard Appletalk as opposed to TCP-IP or Appletalk over TCP-IP to connect. Now lets see what happens when you print from a remote machine:
 - You select the printer in the client's chooser, make sure the printer is set-up properly, with the paper type etc... that you want.
- You print.
- Your computer creates the spool file with all the data the printer needs (doesn't take very long). This file grows exponentially if you select the highest quality settings. FYI: it's kept in the Epson folder in your Extensions Folder.
- The print monitor starts up, connects to the host computer and starts transferring the data.
- You wait (for quite a while some times)
- Once the data transfer is complete, the print monitor will close on the client computer and the almost simultaneously, it will open on the host computer.
- It goes through the "preparing data" and such and then begins printing.
- You decide it looks "too flat" (even though it is, in fact, a 2 dimensional representation and is completely flat, but you say it's "too flat" anyway) so you print it again.
Advantages: You only need to install the Epson printer driver, which you need anyway, no additional software necessary. Easier to set up the Apple's USB Printer Sharing. Supports multiple people sending print jobs to the printer at the same time. I believe you could use local talk as the network (not a good idea though). Allows you to name your printers, makes them easier to recognize.
Disadvantages: Appletalk is less efficient than TCP-IP, the data takes longer to transfer. Before the printer will start printing, all the data has to be transferred from the client to the host, this can take quite a long time depending on the document. Seems to be less robust (more crash/disconnect prone) compared to USB Printer Sharing. Since the Software Airport Base Station doesn't route AppleTalk, you're out of luck for wireless printing unless you buy a hardware Base Station.
Apple USB Printer Sharing
This magically appeared one day in the software update control panel for Mac OS 9.0 and is a standard addition to Mac OS 9.1. So unless you remove it on purpose (which I used to do) you have the software running on your Mac right now! Although it does take a little setup compared to the Epson Printer Sharing, it's still pretty easy to do. One thing: if your office uses one internet connection for all the computers, you'll have no problems, if you use individual modems for internet and Appletalk to transfer files, you're going to have problems. Apple's USB Printer Sharing uses TCP-IP as the transport protocol, it's faster, but can be tricky to configure. From what I've seen of the control panel, you can even have the host and client on different subnets (a router between them) and you might even be able to print over the Internet to a remote printer, but I have no way to verify this (any tips?).
| Go into the Control Panels and open "USB Printer Sharing" on the host computer. You can obviously start and stop the printer sharing in this first tab. The "Options..." button lets you turn on logging so you can tell who was printing and when. Bonus points for anyone who can discover what's wrong with this picture. |  | | At any rate... select the "My Printers" tab. All the USB printers you have connected to your machine will be in this window, you can check the boxes to turn on sharing. One cool thing is that if you select the printer's name and drag it to your desktop, it will create an internet bookmark for your printer which "you can send to people." I would do this, simply because you can use it to skip a step (you'll need to throw it onto a network volume or a zip disk or something so you can access it from the client computer). |  | | Now you run over to the client machine, go to the USB Printer Sharing control panel and startup sharing. Go to the "Network Printers" tab. If you created that shortcut, simply drag it into the window, wait about 2 seconds and you're ready to go. If you didn't, you'll need to click "add" and go to the next step. |  | | This is the hardest part, finding your printer. My printer was in the location shown on the right, chances are 99% of the time, this is where yours will be as well. Just select the printer and hit "Choose" |  |
Now all you need to do is select the printer from the client's chooser (you did install the driver software, right?), just like you do on the host (look for "USB Port X") check out the earlier chooser picture to see what I mean. One cool thing: you can even share the shared printer using Epson's software, although I don't know why you would, except to give it a name. Let's see what happens when you print to the shared printer:
- You Print
- It makes the spool file
- the client connect to the host and says: "hey, um, can I take over that USB port of yours?" "Sure!, you send data to port 54443 at my IP address and I'll send it to the USB port" "Cool, by the way, can I check the ink level?" "Um, sorry, can't do that, but you can do nozzle checks and cleaning cycles if you want" "OK, catch you later!". Except it's faster (and with an english accent, so I'm told)
- You computer sends the data and the printer prints, immediately. As far as the client is concerned, the printer is hooked directly to it.
 One interesting sidenote: there is always a debate over which method is better for connecting printers: USB, Firewire, Serial, Parallel, Ethernet, etc..., and if using Firewire will yield faster printing than USB and so on. My stance has always been "doesn't matter as long as the printer can get data faster than it can print." I found that our ESC 3000 was waiting for the head to lay down ink, rather than waiting for data and that was over a paltry 256 kilobit serial connection. USB is the next slowest of the connection types, offering a 12 megabit connection. The only issue is that I've never seen a utility that measures data speed on a USB port, so it's rather difficult to gauge how much the printer is taxing the USB connection. Well, as luck has it, since USB Printer Sharing goes over TCP-IP, we can see just how much data is going from one computer to another. On the right is a graph showing that the host computer is only receiving about 29 KiloBytes a second (I was printing an 8.5x11 page of business cards at 1440x720, in color). that 29KB equates to 232 Kilobits, which easily goes over that serial connection, you could run 51.7 times that over USB if everything was going perfectly. Do you really need 100 Megabits for Fast Ethernet or 400-800 Megabits for Firewire? My guess is no.
Advantages: Prints immediately, no waiting for data transfers. Goes over TCP-IP and possibly even allows printing over the Internet (there should be a password option if this is the case, I can just imagine some punk printing 50 pages of crud on a 2000P!). More robust than the Epson sharing (I haven't hand a printing related crash using this Apple's, but I've had several with Epson's). That cool conversation thing. You can use it with an Airport Software Base Station for wireless printing; get an iBook and print photographs from your sofa!
Disadvantages: Requires a control panel and extension in addition to the Epson driver (although they are installed by default with 9.1). Both/all computers need to be networked using TCP-IP (a really good way to make them all use the same modem/DSL/Cable connection is IPNetRouter from Sustainable software, the graph earlier is IPNetMonitor from the same folks) which may be an obstacle for some shops. That whole USB Port X thing is annoying, but you can name the ports using the Epson Sharing setup.
In my opinion, Apple's USB Printer Sharing wins. But take this quiz to see what's best for you:
- Will multiple people be printing to the printer simultaneously? Use the Epson one, otherwise it gives you a "port busy" error.
- If multiple users blah blah..., is it that big a deal to just wait until the other person's job is done and then click the "retry" or "continue" button? No biggie: Use Apple's.
- Do you use a software Airport Base Station (your iMac/G4 instead of one of those flying saucers)? Use Apple's.
- Are you paranoid about extensions in your system? Chill out. Are you still like that? Use Epson's.
- Are all your computers connected via TCP-IP? Use Apple's.
- Each computer has it's own modem and we like having all 6 lines to our office busy while the employees go on Ebay. Get DSL or Cable and use IPNetRouter or one of those DSL routers. Not an option? Use IPNetRouter to share one modem (really good use for that IIci sitting in the corner). Still no go? Use Epson's
- Still can't decide? Use Apple's
- But what about Epson's? Unless you need that multiple people printing thing, trust me; Apple's implementation works better and you don't have to worry about the long file transfer, or the crashes.
- Hey thanks, can I give you money? Buy some stuff from my employer thereby ensuring my job security and letting me sleep at night not worrying about my mortgage and unemployment.
- You missed a few typos, don't you proof-read these things? Use Apple's USB Printer Sharing.
- You've read all 5 books in the "increasingly improperly named Hitchhiker's Trilogy" haven't you? Them along with several other of Douglas Adam's books.
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