What is the speed difference between a printer with an RS232 interface and a printer with a Centronics interface?
by 
Nelson Mussagy
ANSWERS: 1
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That depends on the interface on the printer itself. Printers used to use RS232 (serial), but the serial port is capable of a wide range of speeds from 2400bps to more than 115,000bps. Having said that, when printers still used serial ports, they were quite slow - but then they didn't need to be fast, the data being sent to the printer was just ASCII text. Centronics isn't really the name of the interface, it's the name of the connector. The interface is parallel. Parallel ports were adopted by printers because they could transfer 8 bits at a time instead of just one, making them faster. Then parallel became bi-directional, making it possible for the printer to talk back to the PC. So in context, the parallel interface was faster, but does not have multiple speed settings. Funny how history comes around in a circle - USB is just a super-fast serial port, in essence.
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