Tim, since this is evolving for kiosks developers you should mention a few companies that have the language based processors as this is major consideration when trying to deploy smaller kiosks where space for a PC may not be available at the least it gives thorough evlauation of host vs language base printers that have abolity to print logos.
C. Greenwood
Pres, Legacy Kiosks
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Controlling your own printing destiny
When it comes to reproducing graphics or images on a kiosk print out, you basically have two options -- built-in printer language printers or host-based printers. Neither one is better than the other per se, but knowing the pros and cons will help you select the best option for your kiosk application.
Language-based printers use built-in processors and memory as well as printer languages. They perform the rasterization inside the printer with their own processors and control their own print heads and mechanisms. Host-based technology defers to the computer do all the processing before sending the image or document to the printer. A host-based printer will print exactly what the computer sends it whereas printers with built-in languages will get commands from the computer and will process the images themselves.
The primary advantage of host-based printers is lower cost because they don’t need their own processor or memory. The key take away is that host-based printers are dependent on the computer for their images and therefore the print speed.
Because of this, if the computer has a slower processor and the document to be printed contains complex graphics, host-based print time could potentially take longer than language-based. However, since most computers on the market today process at much faster speeds than most printer processors, host-based technology should allow faster print speeds than built-in language based printers especially when using a USB port. Typically USB ports enable faster printing compared to parallel ports. They also enable richer, more complex graphics versus language-based technology.
Since smaller kiosks take the least amount of sellable space away from retailers, they have a greater likelihood of deeper aisle penetration. And since a smaller kiosks requires a smaller printer, that should indicate more host-based printing in the future.
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