Bruce Toback wrote:
>But since I note that the only three people I know who've recommended PDF
>are Mac users, I decided to try the PC solution myself this morning. I
>downloaded the reader from Adobe at
><ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/Applications/Acrobat/Windows/ACROREAD.EXE>,
>installed it and tried it out. I encountered none of the performance
>problems that David mentions: rendering is noticeably faster on the 32Mb
>100MHz 486 than it is on my usual machine, a 16Mb 25MHz 68030. It
>rendered all the text on a full page in under a second, and the graphics
>took another second or so.
>
>This was on a complex document produced by Apple, undoubtedly using
>careful construction, thorough QA, and the latest and greatest Distiller.
>I decided to try the original document I sent to David, which I had
>produced on an early version of Distiller and sent off in a big hurry --
>probably a more real-world test. This worked just as well, and I was even
>able to print to the 486 machine's locally-connected DeskJet.
>
>The machine I tested on is a 100MHz AMD 486 with 32Mb of memory running
>Windows NT 3.51 with Service Pack 4. I used a Stealth 32 VLB video card.
 
Back before the last TCU (concerning the Internet/firewalls/etc), I
downloaded and printed the HP3000 Web Server Solutions Guide which
was in PDF format.  It literally took minutes per page to print.  I
don't have a PostScript printer, so that obviously made a big difference.
At that time, the system was a Pentium-166 with 16MB RAM printing to
a Laserjet IIIP hooked up via the parallel port (no network involved).
I could have downloaded the bitmapped image of each page (at 28.8K)
and printed it faster than that.  I'm not sure how much (if any) better
the speed would be now with the extra memory, but unless I get a
PostScript card for the Laserjet, I'm not very eager to print PDF again.
 
(BTW: OS was Win95. Displaying to the screen was quick)
 
Regards,
Michael L Gueterman
Easy Does It Technologies
email: [log in to unmask]
http://Editcorp.nwinfo.net
voice: (509) 946-6179
fax:   (509) 946-1170