Printing large PDF files

[oliluc]

I have a PDF document of 150 Mb (300 pages) that I need to print in 200 copies for my students, in high resolution. I work with Windows 7, and have plenty of RAM. I cannot print more than 2 copies at a time - otherwise, the 3 or more copies are mixed-up with one-another.

I have a Xerox 8880 printer, and Xerox tech support assures me that the printer has enough memory and is not the cause of this problem.

Does anyone have any advice / solution?

Thank you

Luc

[Dov Isaacs]

We assume that you are referring to the Xerox ColorQube 8880 Solid Ink Printer, a printer that in fact provides support for Adobe PostScript 3. We also assume that you are trying to print collated copies of the document, i.e.,  pages 1 through 300 of the first copy followed by page 1 through 300 of the second copy, etc.

First of all, make sure you have installed and are printing to the PostScript driver, not the PCL5C driver.

Secondly, the amount of RAM on you computer is irrelevant to whether the job will print collated on that printer. What is critically important is that (a) you have a full 2GB of memory installed on the printer (its maximum) and (b) you've enable the “RAM collation” feature of the printer. This allows for collated copy printing by storing compressed bitmaps of each page rendered by the printer in memory for subsequent printed copies within the job.

I have a similar printer, a Xerox Phaser 7500 with 2GB of memory and am quite familiar with the issues of collated copy printing on such devices. 300 pages is quite a lengthy document, especially if your pages are graphically-rich and you are printing with the device's highest resolution mode. The “Xerox tech support” folks are really not in a position to judge whether you have enough memory in the printer to handle collation for such a job.

After confirming both items above, try again and let us know whether this helps.

          - Dov