I don’t know why. Maybe it is the USPTO’s PDF generator. Maybe it is my printer (Xerox). I don’t really care who is at fault…but I found a work around to my problems.
If I download a file wrapper PDF from the USPTO and print it to my Xerox printer, after the first page the printer locks up and kicks the print job. If it doesn’t lock up, it prints really slow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah…probably my printer’s fault.
However, my work around makes me wonder. After having a PDF die during printing, I did a little experiment. I reprinted it to PDF using the Print to PDF driver (pdf995) I have on my computer. I then sent the new PDF to the printer. Guess what happened? The printer didn’t lock up AND the printer printed the pages fast.
Next time I am printing a PDF document that is printing really slow, guess what I am going to try…..
[Updated to fix formatting]
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Keep in mind that the PDF print driver has a given resolution. Many print to PDF solutions involve converting to postscript and then conversion to PDF. This is likely eliminating some detail from your original PDF.
The problem you experienced is likely the source of the original PDF and not your printer. By including enhanced postscript images and text formatted in something like word, the PDF can be compact and look nice. If the source is a scanned image or something that Adobe does not elegantly pack into a PDF, then you run into the problems you experienced.