My problem was that when printing a page with text and three images, each about 1.5 meg, the printer ( a Lexmark Color Jetprinter 7000 ) would go offline and I'd have to start again. This usually happened near the start of an image. After using quite a lot of expensive ink, more than 50 sheets of paper and going to bed at 3am for 3 nights in a row I was getting quite upset... but eventually I concluded that the problem was with the software rather than the printer.

I was using Star Office (version 5). It's generally quite excellent, and can be downloaded for free (free for non-commercial use) from www.stardivision.com if you can bear the 70 meg download! It's available for a number of platforms including Linux, OS/2 and Windows.

Anyway, I had been blaming the printer, thinking that it had some problem with images - so I was quite surprised when I ran into this problem on a page of text. On closer inspection I realised that although I was using Arial font, Star Office had a number of 'invincible' Times New Roman carriage return markers, and the printer going off-line always occurred near one of them. By invincible I mean that they couldn't be changed away from Times New Roman. I tried selecting the whole document and changing the font. I also tried changing just that spot. But when I moved the cursor into the spot to check - the first press of the arrow key moved the cursor into the spot... a second press of the arrow key didn't move the cursor at all, but instead it changed the font at that spot back to Times New Roman. Subsequent movement of the cursor around this spot using the arrow keys didn't have this 'missing' movement, but that spot was Times New Roman font.

I'm not sure how these invincible Times New Roman carriage returns are generated, and I'm not sure why the printer sometimes copes and sometimes doesn't, but I'm sure it's these odd points that cause the trouble. The only reliable work-around I've found to this problem is to make the whole page Times New Roman.