I just bought an HP Laserjet 5000N to make printing plates. I don't know how to connect it.

Question

I just bought an HP Laserjet 5000N to make printing plates.  A friend bought the HP 5000 and used a parallel to UBS cable to connect directly to her printer but she thinks her cable is interferring with running her jobs (too slow a memory).  I don't actually know what the Jetdirect 610 card does.  Can I connect through this ethernet port directly to my laptop, or do I use the serial side, or do I need to go through a router?  Any advice?  

Answer 1

If your computer is connected to the internet, and you  connect the printer to the computer the printer is connected, if that is what you are asking.  
The parellel cable is slow to transmit data.  It is an older technology.  Still works and is okay for type and  large documents where the information load is low.  Photoshop files are large and it cannot handle higher information loads well, so keep the files small.
The serial cable may have been upgraded to handle more information, as opposed to the parellel, so I would check at a computer supply store that carries cables.
To connect wirelessly we use the Jet Direct card.  It has an ethernet connection that can plug into your modem which is plugged into your computer to access the internet.  You still have to pay an internet provider. If your room has wireless internet you can get a wireless modem which will pick up the signal.  You plug an ethernet cable from the Jet Direct card to the wireless modem, then use the IP number from the printer to set up the driver in your computer which then allows you to print.  The Jet Direct card is just a chip board thing which just plugs into the computer at the back.  See installation instructions for that but it is really easy.  It is about $35 from feed roller.com for a used one, and worth it.  It runs faster then the parellel cable without stalling out ie can handle more data.
You can get the IP number by plugging in the computer and hit menu then configuration.  You don't need it to print directly from the computer using the serial or parallel cables.  The other thing to check from the configuration page is the amount of memory.  I upgraded to about 44 MBytes and the school one is 72 Mbytes.  More memory helps.  New technology uses more information.  Again, an easy upgrade if you are using Photoshop. The memory chips were $10-15 dollars from feedroller.
Laura
We upgraded the driver to the current OS 10.8.  It was not the original driver, but once we upgraded to that operating system, the print out was screwing up, so upgrade solved that.  Follow the directions on the link.  It is  easy to do.