Following my somewhat intemperate remarks about HP's implementation of
Network Printing, Rick Gilligen responded:

> They provided exactly what the customer base requested, a simple
network
> print spooler.  For more features, try products like NBSPOOL from
Quest,
> or a couple of other packages.

He is quite right that the customer base (of which I've been a member
for 20 years) requested a simple network print spooler. I suspect that I
am not unusual in that my concept of a simple network print spooler
would:

a. eliminate the extra step the third party products require (this HP
has done fairly well by integrating network printing into the normal
spool process - as long as you abide by HP's restrictions, it works well
and is easy to implement], and;

b. use the serial printer model where you may not have much, if any,
recovery capabilities but you can spool just about anything that will
handle x-on/x-off handshaking.

What HP has done is give us a "solution" that requires all HP products
and is certainly not technically "simple" since it handles even
page-level recovery for printers that talk HP's language. This all-HP
requirement would be bad enough if HP had printer solutions for all user
requirements. But it does not. So for a variety of good reasons most of
us have acquired non-HP printers over the years that are critical to our
operations. And can not be used with HP's network printing enhancement

Rick suggests NBSPOOL. As a matter of fact, we have NBSPOOL and it works
just fine. But it adds an extra level of management and processing
overhead just like any of the other third party packages.

Which brings me back to the original remark that occasioned Rick's
comment and the thoughts that were behind my remark: HP expended
considerable resources to provide a good tool that is hamstrung to work
in only a very narrow environment. MPE network printing is excellent,
but it is too limited for most larger shops to use exclusively. A
similar statement could be made about ODBCLink/SE, although in this case
HP acquired a hamstrung version of an excellent third-party product.
Anyone who has been using the HP3000 for a few years or more can
probably think of a generous handful of similar products. Spending
resources this way does not do the customer base as a whole any good. If
you are serious about using the functionality, you have to go to the
third-party market anyway. I would much rather see resources spent on
functionality that is not available elsewhere and on bringing more
applications to the HP3000.

John Burke
Pacific Coast Building Products
e-mail: [log in to unmask]