MPC 6000 and Mac

[stephend]

I have a brand new MPC 6000 and the customer has a Mac connected to their network. They use the Pages application to print a weekly bulletin in BW. When they send te job from Mac in the original format created by Pages it takes over 1 hour to spool the job to the printer and the machine is printing very slow. I'm not a Mac expert...so the only convenient solution I found was to export the file as ".pdf" and print the pdf file. Printing the pdf file it's a good solution but the customer doesn't want to create pdf's all the time.
Latest firmware was uploaded in this morning and did not fixed this problem. Anybody else experienced this kind of problem? Maybe we have a Mac expert on the forum.
Thanks

[stephend]

Oh...I forgot to mention. The problem shows up only when you select multiple copies from the driver. With 1 set everything is OK.

[blackcat4866]

Just a thought:

Does this machine need more DRAM memory or a hard drive?
Do you have a RAM Disk functionality available (the driver sends only one copy of the print job, then the DRAM holds the job to create the multiple copies)? This is available on most Kyocera products. =^..^=

[stephend]

Memory installed on machine: 1.5GRAM
Hard drives: 2 x 80 GB
This machine should handle really big jobs....and it does in a Windows environment. With Mac different story.
I think is the driver for Mac that has some problems with this specific application (Pages for Mac).
I can contact tech support in NJ and they will connect remotely to the machine and the customer network but the customer doesn't want to spent time with this....so I found this solution to convert the file in pdf.
I'm just curious if some of had issues with this model in a Mac environment. Thx.

[tcs04]

I have a brand new MPC 6000 and the customer has a Mac connected to their network. They use the Pages application to print a weekly bulletin in BW. When they send te job from Mac in the original format created by Pages it takes over 1 hour to spool the job to the printer and the machine is printing very slow. I'm not a Mac expert...so the only convenient solution I found was to export the file as ".pdf" and print the pdf file. Printing the pdf file it's a good solution but the customer doesn't want to create pdf's all the time.
Latest firmware was uploaded in this morning and did not fixed this problem. Anybody else experienced this kind of problem? Maybe we have a Mac expert on the forum.
Thanks

Quick fix??

I'm not an I.T "Expert", but try suggesting send the job to the document server and set the quantity and print settings on the machine.

[stephend]

Converting the file in pdf and printing it, to me it's a great thing and you don't loose neither resolution, neither page layout...but when a customer want to give you a hard time....they know how to do it.
I found out why they are so angry...they was invoiced twice by the sales guy...for their old machine and for this new one...This started the fire. I will escalate the problem to NJ and show compassion to the customer for the sales mistake.
Thx guys anyway.

[KopyKat]

Oh...I forgot to mention. The problem shows up only when you select multiple copies from the driver. With 1 set everything is OK.

Not Mac 'expert' either but...In the application turn off collate and let the MFP collate the job...check collate in the print driver options. The problem is that when the application is collating the job it is sending each set individually.
Example:
Send 50 sets with the application doing the collating and it is sending that one set 50 times.
Send 50 sets with the driver set to collate and it sends one set to the hard drive and prints it from the HD 50 times normally at engine speed.
When you say it takes over an hour to SPOOL the job I am assuming you mean it remains in the print queue on the computer....this means that the entire job has not left the computer yet, the application is still working on preparing the job.

Hope this helps.

[stephend]

Not Mac 'expert' either but...In the application turn off collate and let the MFP collate the job...check collate in the print driver options. The problem is that when the application is collating the job it is sending each set individually.
Example:
Send 50 sets with the application doing the collating and it is sending that one set 50 times.
Send 50 sets with the driver set to collate and it sends one set to the hard drive and prints it from the HD 50 times normally at engine speed.
When you say it takes over an hour to SPOOL the job I am assuming you mean it remains in the print queue on the computer....this means that the entire job has not left the computer yet, the application is still working on preparing the job.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for fast reply. I did this test yesterday. I set up the driver to collate and duplex...and I sent 50 sets to the printer. Spooling time was instant but the printing was slow...over 20 min for 50 sets.
On this Pages app when you send a job to print a small pop up window with a progress bar shows app...something similar with the small printer icon from Win task bar.
Before the firmware upgrade this progress bar was increasing percent by percent taking about 1 hour to send the job. The Mac print driver interface is really different....I definitely prefer Windows for this particular thing.
Plus...another thing was that the customer was running Pages from iWork 8 and I was downloading on our branch Mac laptop the iWork 9 demo the only one available on Apple website. Different results...spool time and printing faster when I used our Mac laptop. Anyway for the moment the solution exists...PDF...and the customer will give me some time to decript this problem.

[KopyKat]

Memory installed on machine: 1.5GRAM
Hard drives: 2 x 80 GB
Thx.

Did someone change the HDs? The MPC 6000 comes standard with 2 x 160GB not 80GB. Check the PSG.

[stephend]

Did someone change the HDs? The MPC 6000 comes standard with 2 x 160GB not 80GB. Check the PSG.

You are right...it's my mistake...2 x 160 GB not 80 GB.
Nobody touched this machine...it's brand new....I mean not new anymore they printed already 30K on it.
I did my research on the Mac forums and I found similar problems with other brands of printers. It looks like many users have problems printing from applications including Safari, Pages even Word.
Here is one of the threads if someone is interested:

Slow printing - sometimes hours.??? - Mac Forums

[Captain Scott]

Things to try!

Go to user tools, printer features, host interface, input/output mode and increase to 256, in the system section of printer features change the memory usage from frame to font priority. Just a few ideas if you are onsite only takes a few secs. I also believe there is a setting that you can only access through Web image monitor- login - config section - somewhere around top left hand side may be in system an option to spool printing on the printer or something to that affect. Just ideas that have helped me with other slow printing problems

[fatale80]

PS

Hi,
maybe it's stupid question but are you using latest PostScript chip? what operating system they using? i'm quite experienced with macs and ricoh machines.

[stephend]

The Mac is running a 10.5 operating system.
I found a service bulletin regarding slow printing with Mac computers. It's related to the customer router and Ricoh suggest to install a second router in between the customer router and printer.

[knobby]

Have you tried "sample print" then changing the quantity on the copier before releasing job ?

[stephend]

No... I did not...and not because I forgot or something...because the customer didn't wanted to.
I know it sound funny....they placed a call...2 people went there...one IT guy an myself and the customer refused totally to cooperate. They are not new customers...are with us since 1995 but they are not cooperative. They wanted the machine to perform perfect and to be easy for them...without changing any habits in their "print flow".
After 3 visits they accepted that 2 mouse clicks is not to hard to perform....to create a pdf and print it....
I wouldn't dare to ask them to go to the machine (located in a different room) to change the print quantity
Life is tough sometimes and happy pills are not free anymore.
Thanks guys for all your suggestions