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I imagine it has to do with painting your retinas with lasers. ;)

Only kidding. I know Brother has been working on retinal imaging displays, and I got the impression the Google glasses might use the same technique.

http://www.brother.com/en/news/2008/rid/

When I first heard of the Project Glass, I thought they had found a way of doing what some Japanese companies have been doing for a while...rather than displaying the image in *front* of your eye, they actually draw the image line by line directly *in* your eye on your retina with lasers. I still hold out hope that this is the long term goal of Project Glass, but who knows. A bit of reading Here

And Here

And Here

Heck, I think Brother's press release saying they are releasing the first commercial VRD is a lot bigger news than Sony's

I have no experience with that model, but I concur with the recommendation of Brother. Their printers are usually either cheaper for the same features or more features for the same price versus, say, HP's offerings. They have decent OS X and Linux support. The nice things about many of the models: separate toner and imaging drums. You replace the toner relatively cheaply, and keep using the drum.

As others have noted, I'm not sure there is a printer made today that compares with the durability of ones from 10 years ago unless you are willing to pay a high price for a "workgroup" model.

I have no experience with that model, but I concur with the recommendation of Brother. Their printers are usually either cheaper for the same features or more features for the same price versus, say, HP's offerings. They have decent OS X and Linux support. The nice things about many of the models: separate toner and imaging drums. You replace the toner relatively cheaply, and keep using the drum.

As others have noted, I'm not sure there is a printer made today that compares with the durability of ones from 10 years ago unless you are willing to pay a high price for a "workgroup" model.

http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/download_esp.html

Brother offers Linux CUPS and lprd drivers for every single printer I've seen them offer.

Brother has the QL-570 with a USB connection and a Linux driver. They also have the QL-580N if you want a networked label printer.

Brother provide Linux drivers for different distros on their site : http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/

And here's a couple of linkies:

a Brother page

a google search page

Just as a point of reference, the drivers for the printer I have are a 2MB download.

We have a MFC-8500 in the office. The Brothers' supplied driver works for us.

http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/index.htm l

My Debian 3.1 print (CUPS) server runs smooth as silk.

I think he can start with Brother - http://solutions.brother.com/linux/sol/printer/lin ux/lpr_drivers.html Great Work!

I use a Brother HL-5170DN at home. It's a soho B/W laser with USB, parallel, and ethernet interfaces. I use the ethernet interface with a standard postscript driver via LPR. Works great! No non-standard drivers here. I know nothing about other Brother products, however.

Brother for some reason has taken to adding ethernet to a number of their low end multifunction printers. Once you've used it you get hooked fast.

I first set one up at my girlfriend's place, an MFC 420CN. Plugged it into the router, added the software to her ancient PII laptop, and she can scan, print fax - everything.

Same from my Powerbook, via WiFi, and the kid's PC upstairs.

Now admittedly the Brother software kind of sucks rocks, and the printer is dead slow, but otherwise this really is the sensible way to do these things. I can't see buying another printer that doesn't have network support built in.

Brother's press press release shows what they're doing. The slow version still has a moving print head, but they hope to reach the point where there's one big print head covering the entire width of the paper. That eliminates the scanning mechanism and makes large ink tanks possible, since the ink tanks don't have to move.

Nothing yet from Brother on how much the print head will cost.

This was announced by Brother March 9th this year. Check out their documentation for this new technology. Interesting read, neverless !

A "sheet" in this case is an A6 sheet, which is 1/4 the area of a letter-sized piece of paper. It's roughly the size of a 4x6 photo: a little under 4.2" x 5.9" (105mm x 148mm).

Your information is outdated. I was pleasantly surprised when I went looking. Brother do have OS X support for some printers and/or scanners, and likewise for Linux.

Spec Sheet from Brother: http://www.brother.com/brother_En/e-topics/inkjet/ inkjet.pdf

That was my first thought. But, like other posters have mentioned, it looks like the KDE one and the XP one as well. The main reason it seems more like the OS X one to me is that the labels are to the right of the icons and that list can be customized, like it can in OS X. Anyhow, if everybody else is doing it, it must be a good design, so take it and tweak it a wee bit!

Oh, Brother.

How about jamming the Via mobo into a lime green IBM selectric, and adding the guts of a daisywheel printer to spit out printed text. Oh wait, that's what Brother has been doing for ages.

No major manufacturer except for Sony endorses memory stick.

http://www.konica.co.jp/global/press/020924_8e.htm l
http://www.konica.com/products/digital/cameras/kd4 00z_features.htm
http://www.konica.com/products/digital/cameras/kd3 10z_features.htm
http://www.samsungelectronics.com/news/digital_med ia/com_news_1042258148609_001300.html
http://www.samsungelectronics.com/news/digital_med ia/com_news_1042258779765_001300.html
http://www.samsungelectronics.com/camcorder/digita l_camcorder/b_scd590.html
http://www.samsungelectronics.com/camcorder/digita l_camcorder/g_scd87.html
http://www.brother.com/usa/fax/info/mfc5200c/mfc52 00c_ove.html
http://h30015.www3.hp.com/products/detail.php?prod num=Q3000A
http://h30015.www3.hp.com/products/detail.php?prod num=C8443A
http://h30015.www3.hp.com/products/detail.php?prod num=Q1605A
http://www.lexmark.com/US/products/overview/0,1224 ,MzM1NHwx,00.html
http://www.i-love-epson.co.jp/products/printer/ink jet/pm860pt/pm860pt1.htm
http://www.i-love-epson.co.jp/products/printer/ink jet/pm850pt/pm850pt1.htm
http://www.kenwood.com/j/products/home_audio/digit al_avino/sj_7ms/index.html
http://www.pioneer.co.jp/catalog/sys/x-sv7dv.php
http://www.pioneer.co.jp/av-sys/hd1/index.html
http://www.sun-denshi.co.jp/scc/bb/index.htm
http://www.sharp.co.jp/sc/eihon/wahp1/text/index.h tml
http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/Pioneer/CDA/CarP roducts/CarProductDetails/0,1429,21417,00.html
http://www.mitsubishielectric.co.jp/mobile/mova/d2 51is/index.html
http://www.sharp.co.jp/products/sh712m/
http://global.acer.com/products/pda/s60.htm
http://global.acer.com/products/pda/s50.htm
http://www.global.acer.com/products/pda/n20w.htm
http://www.global.acer.com/products/pda/s15.htm
http://www.clevo.com.tw/products/images/8880.pdf
http://pr.fujitsu.com/jp/news/2002/10/8-2.html
http://www.nec.co.jp/press/ja/0210/1004-30.html
http://121ware.com/product/pc/lavie/200205/pro/spe c01.pdf
http://www.alpine.co.jp/alpine/navi02/n02.html
http://www.datatec.co.jp/sr/index.html
http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/cpg_prod uct_lobbypage.asp?product=847

Shall I go on?

And yes, the memory stick format is much more expensive

I just paid $30 for 128 MB MS. Show me a better price for CF or SD/MMC.

not to mention has various confusing variations (e.g. magic gate)

You mean 2? Magic gate, non-Magic gate? Boy, that is confusing.

and is still proprietary

"Proprietary", eh? Guess what? All of the major formats are proprietary. Want to sell a CF device? You can if you ante up to the CF org. Sony has released quite a few specifications (http://www.memorystick.org/topics/eng/aboutms/for mat.html).

You might find prices on Amazon.com come close to CF or SD/MMC but I can walk into any camera shop and be offered compact flash cards by 3 or 4 manufactures where I'd be lucky if could find 2 for memory stick.

I count 6 manufacturers of Memory Stick: Lexar, SanDisk, Sony, I-O Data, Apacer Tech.

I was looking at laser printers recently, and only the extremely hi-priced ones have NICs.

Get a Brother HL-1270N. They ran about $300 a year ago when I bought one, have on-board ethernet, and specifically mention linux in the setup guide. The print speed's good, the web interface is good, and the price is pretty darned good (IMHO).