Hello:

I'm cheating a bit as I've also posted under the printer forum but, as there is a matter of some urgency (coupon deadline) I'm hoping you're overlook my little indiscretion.....

My daughter has a G4, 450 MHz (AGP Graphics), 750 Mb RAM running OS 10.4. She needs a new printer and would like to print photos.

I have found a Canon Pixma IP3300 at a good price but the printer wants a USB 2 interface while the G4 has USB 1.1.

If I go ahead with the printer what is the downside? I’m assuming some level of compatability but wonder what happens to performance and whether the difference is so dramatic that the printer is a bad idea. Or whether it’s a matter of being patient.

Any thoughts or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Happy New Year to All.

Ryck

USB 2 is backwards compatible with USB 1, so the printer should work fine, albeit at the USB 1 speed. Why not install a USB 2 PCI card in the computer? I did that with mine and it works perfectly. Mississauga recommended an Adaptec card, so I followed his recommendation and all has been well.

Thanks, Jon, very much....

That's a great idea about the PCI Card and I think I'll get one for her.

I checked my USB usage to see what my printer was doing. I have an iMac G5 with USB 2 ports and my printer is a Canon IP5000 - and, before now, I had never given any thought to the USB speed. The "About this Mac" tells me that the printer is working at "Up to 12 Mb/sec" so I guess it's a USB 1 device.

The speed is fine for me...but maybe that just 'cause I'm an old fart with plenty of time...however I'm sure my daughter will want hers to be zippier.

Thanks again......all the best in 2007.

Ryck

In my experience, USB 1 speed becomes an issue only when printing large files from Photoshop. My photos are generally around 12 MB and it takes a noticeable amount of time to upload them to my printer. The actual time is probably less than 10 seconds, but it seems longer. I'm sure that USB 2 will be much faster but I don't use it for a simple reason; my ancient printer (which I really like) is USB 1 only. (I may splurge on an Epson SP 3800, and that one is USB 2.)

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Your Cross-post in the Printers forum should be deleted or closed/removed. If you can get there before anyone posts a reply, you can delete it for us......
(From the Board Rules: "Do not post the same topic in more than one forum or thread.")

Done.

Thanks Ryck,

Hope your new year is going well to-date.....

Will toss in my 2 cents worth here. I have a personal problem with the usb standards committee because of a nasty stunt they pulled on the consumer, that's you and me.

There used to be USB 1, which was later updated to USB 1.1. It transfers at a maximum of 12mbps which is fine for keyboard and mouse and most printers, but not good for scanners or external hard drives.

Then came USB 2.0, which the main improvement was speed, 480mbps. Of course this is theoretical max and there's a lot of overhead, but it's a lot faster than 1.1.

Then the problem. There was a large stock of PC motherboards in warehouses, and well, customers come in and ask about the boards in the store and the salesman says only difference really is that one is USB 1.1 and this one is USB 2.0. Guess which one they bought?

And I mean almost ALL of them.

So, manufacturers have thousands of motherboards in stock that they can't unload. Thankfully for them, they make up the USB standards board members.

So they pull a fast one. They CHANGE the STANDARD's names around, claiming "to clear up customer confusion". Seriously. They really said that. They changed USB 1.1 to "USB 2.0 Full Speed", and changed USB 2.0 to "USB 2.0 High Speed".

To be fair, they did modify the logo so that the 480mps devices have a red swoosh to the side of the blue logo, that says "high speed". You have to look for this now, because EVERYTHING is "USB 2.0" now, 1.1 no longer exists.

And so now at the store you ask about motherboards and of course they ALL have "the new USB 2.0" ports. This is not a big deal now because they have managed to unload all the 12mbps boards already so we've already been suckered, but it's good to know there is a difference. I still run into "slow" USB devices from time to time. A friend of mine just bought a Panasonic digital camera, it's 12 megapixels (yikes!) and takes movies. And the cable it comes with is USB, and the camera is USB 2.0 FULL SPEED. It takes him 45 minutes to download a movie. We got him a firewire card reader, and it does the movies in 2 minutes now. I still cannot believe they sell a new 10+ mpixel camera with slow USB in it, what were they thinking? It's a $2 chip in the camera for god's sake, interchangeable with the $1.50 slow chip. The store confirmed it had USB 2.0 when he bought it, and it simply said "USB 2.0" on the box, so he got snookered.

That camera port issue was one of the reasons I went with the Canon S3 IS instead of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7. Although they are both 6-7 megapixel, the Panasonic is only USB 1.1 so getting 1GB-2GB of pictures off of it is going to take a lifetime. Sure you can throw the card in a reader instead but it's a matter of convenience.

Any clue what kind of USB port the Airport Express has? I have my printer hooked up to mine and it works great. Just wish you could scan wirelessly.

In reply to:

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The speed is fine for me...but maybe that just 'cause I'm an old fart with plenty of time...however I'm sure my daughter will want hers to be zippier.

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The printer does not render and print the image as fast as even USB 1.1 can transfer the data so the difference between USB 1.1 and USB 2 in that case is largely immaterial. Where most USB 1.1 users feel some pain is communicating to hard drives, optical drives, and iPods. A download to an iPod that takes hours with USB 1.1 takes several minutes with USB 2.