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Printer Makers' Ploys
Ellen Spertus writes "The San Francisco Chronicle has an interesting article on printer makers' ploys, such as lying about print speeds and selling printers with crippled cartridges. I'm sure that slashdot readers could identify more deceptions. Are there any printers that actually live up to the manufacturers' claims, ideally with Linux support?"
Lexmark and HP LJ's have good linux support and come with good toner. I'm refering to the laser jets printers.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
What the fsck does Linux support have to do with whether or not printer manufacturers are screwing their users ?
I finally managed to get my cheap-ass USB Lexmark Z33 to work with Linux. This would have been simpler had CUPS not been running, as the Lexmark provided Linux drivers are for LPD only... it wasn't the simplest thing ever. The Lexmark GUI tool looks good though.
However, the printer is ass. The sheet feeder puts a dent in the paper at the bottom, and the paper goes in at an angle, and it only works one sheet at a time.
Never again will I listen to the wife when it comes to buying a printer. I wanted a black and white laser with a network connector. She was like "but that is expensive when you could get this one"...
HP 2200
Full duplex. Fast. Ethernet ready.
mmm...
... now what can be more "crippled" than that?
It only makes sense that the printer companies would use such ploys. Most people would never take the time to record how fast pages are actually printed, and it is even less likely that someone would try and calculate the DPI.
I once shot a man who posted too many, "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these"
basically they teach you not to lie but they teach you lies and hype about the product. its amazing how three companies cna do 9 independant studies and arrive at 27 different results.
________________________________________________
I guesss you didn't read the earlier article. Peren's was fired by HP.
I have a Samsung ML-1210 that came with some linux drivers, however the standard Redhat 7.x install seem to handle everything nicely as is. The printer was right at $180 when I bought it, and it has worked great. I have had it for almost a year now, and no complaints so far.
HP is known for screwing people on cartidges. They make two types of toner, regular and X. X is more expensive so people by the regular. The only difference is that the X is a full cartridge and the regular is half full so the X works out cheaper... everyone wastes their money.
Toner is a much greater source of revenue than the actual printer.
It was HP injet ink that was being sold locally as a "two pack", when the truth was it was simply one of the large cartridges. It's not quite honest to call a one-pack a two-pack, is it?
Why does my HP printer need to know that I'm using HP paper? Maybe I'm paranoid but is it possible that the printer prints a little worse when you don't choose HP Paper as the paper type?
I think I'll print a comparison and see if choosing "HP Paper" as my paper type makes the picture better even if I'm not using HP paper.
syn ack.
I have experanced first hand that HP sells their cheeper line of inkjets with ink cartrages that are, uhm, Lacking in the ink dept. I had a sales man even inform me of that. I find it kinda upsetting that they are willing to sell that so cheep, yet 5 days/20 pages later, you are out spending another 50.00 on a 100.00 dollar printer just to keep it working. That IMO is rediclous. I don't know how it is for their more expensive Ink Jet printers. I no longer buy HP ink Jet's. However, their Laser printers are great.
www.oobersworld.com - For those that ride.
I have an Epson Stylus 640. When I first bought it, the printer worked fine. Sure it's a few years old but now it never seems to work right. Colors will be missing from pages, or the output will look horrible or corrupted. I've run all of the cleaning and other printer utillities many times. Sometimes it helps but often it doesnt.
I really want to get a new printer but all the ones I've had up to now have gone to crap in a short period of time.
Alot of the HP printers, both inkjet and lazer, have very good support from HP themselves. Since Ghostscript came out with a plugin interface for printer drivers (instead of patch and recompile), installing the drivers is eazy no matter what LPD/LPRng/CUPS/etc you use.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Xerox Phaser 850 color laser printers live up to all the claims, have the best linux support on the planet (Postscript printer... out of the box) and you wont get robbed blind on the ink prices....
:-) but is the best thing cince sliced bread IF.... your users have 1/3rd of a brain... all of them have had ZERO trouble except for one receptionist who has done $1500.00 worth of damage to one printer in 2 seperate instances... and has caused another $400.00 in damage to it recently...
granted... the printer is $3500.00USD Appx (I have 4 of them... 2 DX's and 2 N's so I got a good deal
First she violently rips a jammed paper out of it... leaving a nice 3"X3" chunk stuck deep inside instead of using the obvious levers for releasing a jammed piece of paper.. then she loads the paper tray with inkjet lables that decided to adhere to the printing drum...after she ran the same label sheet through 5 times trying to get them looking just right and removing a few of the labels..
oh and finally she broke the high capacity paper drawer by "using her foot" to remove the paper guide.... because it wouldnt come off easily (you have to lift a tab first that is labelled in several languages..
so if you are stupid.... dont get a Phaser 850 printer... or if you have stupid workers in your office...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You often have to read the fine print (if you can find it). The industry loves to do things like qoute printing costs based on 15% color coverage, which is less than one embeded pie chart. They will also almost never quote time to first page, because heat up times or nozzel cleaning cycles would put most people off. Another common trick is to quote print speed for 150dpi economy printing then quote the great high end resolution that takes 9 minutes per page.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Both Epson and HP are really pretty Linux friendly. They release info to the community, and I think Epson has actually written some Linux printer drivers, and released them open source. I chose an Epson printer after learning they are also very good about supporting their scanners with Linux.
I've purchased several printers and scanners from both HP and Epson over the years, and never felt like I was cheated or what have you. They've all worked under Linux without a hitch.
However, if you want absolute Linux compatibility, spring for a postscript printer. They will always work without a hitch, but are a tad spendy.
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
I have two printers... A dinosaur of a HP DeskJet 672 for color, one that I can easily get cheap 3rd party carts and refills for, and an Okidata OL4W LED/laser printer. I got the Oki used, and I now use it for virtually ALL my printing (which isn't all that much, actually). It also gives me the advantage of being able to print anything that I have that needs it (ie, resume) in sharp, professional type.
Toner for the Oki is cheap, and I've not replaced it even once. Both print fine from Linux.
The HP Deskjet is slowly dying, which is to be expected given it's age (6 years). Given what I've read about HP's tricks with their low end deskjets (and their firing of Bruce Perens) I would have another one only if GIVEN to me...
I am in the market for a new color printer... Which manufacturer sticks it to you LESS than the others? I'm considering Epson, Lexmark, and Canon (I owned Canon prior to the HP, and was less than impressed with the durability of their printers).
Corporatism != Free Market
Most modern printers are terrible - they don't
support PostScript, they have no internal memory,
they hold a miniscule amount of paper, and they
get jammed often. My family's Lexmark inkjet is
case in point - it holds about 30 sheets, has no
memory, and only uses Lexmark's "jnl" format.
Laser printers are somewhat better, but I've no
expreience with them.
Me? I use an Apple Imagewriter II. Sure, it
doesn't support PS, but that's what ghostscript
is for (does a nice job, too). Never jams, has
unlimited paper supply (the paper is stored
externally), almost never gets jammed, and even
has 2KB memory in it, upgradable to 32KB! Most
printers die after a few years, but this one's
twelve years old and running strong!
Manufacturers who provide Linux support are enabling their users. In my modest life experience, those people and organizations that are more generous in enabling others are also more likely (not a perfect correlation, but a significant one) to be honest and straightforward in other ways. Openness tends to generalize across dimensions.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Built like a tank!
Stylish good looks!
Tried and true RS232 interface!
Gets the job done!
When teamed up with a 99/4A, it just rocks!
The old Epsons was cool too.
Ah, the good old days.
They layed me off you know, 14 years and they just shoved me out the door. I'd have 23 years by now! I would be subworthless by now! Damn them!
The Adam came with a printer standard out of the box.
It's probably improved a bit, but a few years ago Lexmark had *NO* Linux support.
I don't know about speed, but quality-wise when printing photos, Epson is one of the best AND has *excellent* Linux support. (Not from the vendor, but Epsons always seem to get the coolest new driver improvements under Linux.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Are there any printers that actually live up to the manufacturers' claims, ideally with Linux support?"
Really, folks, you'd think from reading Slashdot that Linux is the only OS geeks run...
It just ain't so - I've gone to BSD for over half my servers (the rest are Linux, but the shift is underway), and will stay with Windows on the desktop, just because it makes my life one heck of a lot easier.
Windows with cygwin or U/Win gives me the best of both worlds. Since this configuration is one of the most popular in the geek world (far more popular than Linux desktops, I'm sure), why should we care or be bothered about trying to get printing to work on Linux anyway. (Seriously, printing has always been significantly problematic in Unix, and I speak as a strong Unix bigot with over 17 years of experience. (When I worked at Chevron ten years ago, well over half our Unix helpdesk calls involved printing!) I stopped having time to fuss with printing in Linux/Unix years ago, and I don't regret it one bit, either...)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Hate to be a whiner here, but you get what you pay for. If you pay $200 for a printer, you're not getting a 24ppm anything, period. My personal experience has been the higher end printers are more loyal to their specs. I've worked for a company that owns several laserjet 5siMxs (HP's workhorse from a few years ago), and those things nailed 24ppm on the dot after the first page was out on most jobs. The newer 8000 had a faster processor which got the first page out quicker. Point being, if you want a fast printer, pony up the money and pay for it. Otherwise, be content with your slower inkjet and/or laser. The best deal by far are the old Laserjet 5L and 6Ls on ebay for around 50-100 bucks that reliably churn out 3-5 pages a minute. With recycled cartridges, they are by far the most economical printing solution (under 3 cents a page), and their prints look just as good as the new printers. Save your money, buy used printers.
I tell you what, my Cannon 750 prints damn fast, but the amount of time it takes to get the very first page out is outrageous!!! (I'm talking about a simple plain old page of ascii text, no graphics, no special fonts.)
A full minute!!
I'd bloody well like to see some statistics on that. I rarely print big long documents, but I often print the odd page or two. The *effective* print speed ends up being 1-3 ppm, even though once it gets going it can do 11ppm.
WTF is the printer doing? I don't remember the old BJC 200's taking that long to get started.
They support a whole host of open-source technologies: lpr, IPP, SNMP as well as proprietary (AppleTalk, Netware, NetBIOS, HP PJL)!
Plus you can scan to TIFF!
"Bagged", in the instance used in the parent post to which you replied, means "got rid of". The troll meant "since they got rid of Bruce Perens". You didn't catch the altered meaning, so now you know.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
I picked up a 2200dse (duplexing, USB/parallel but no network) for just over $700. It has built-in PostScript which makes setup under UNIX-like OSes easy and eliminates the need for ghostscript which I've used over the last eight years. HP had a deal where you buy an additional toner cartridge at the same time and get 16 MB of RAM free. I sprang for it. I also picked up a 610n JetDirect 10/100 card off of eBay reasonably cheap. It's quite nice to have it on my network at home with minimal setup hassles.
Great quality printing at a not-too-unreasonable price. My previous printer (HP LJ 4L, which I paid $700 for back in, oh, late 1993/early 1994) ran without a single problem around 15K-20K sheets---hopefully this will last as long or longer.
Contrary to popular comment here on /., the HPDJ 960c does NOT do what I expect it to do on the Linux platform w/CUPS.
Sure it works, and for B&W it works fine. But when I try to print color photos (on photo paper) it just blows. I have to print over the network to it from a Windows machine.
According to HP this printer will print 15ppm draft B&W and 12ppm draft color. Unfortunatly I have absolutely *no* use for draft mode so what good do these numbers do me? Marketing ploys and mind games. I am thinking for the work I do (B&W mostly) that it is around 5 - 7ppm all text.
I like the printer in that it is about $200 retail, it has both USB and LPTx, and it is relatively quiet compared to my previous printer.
Problems are that it is slow, it runs out of ink WAY too fucking fast (I mean w/my DJ 400c I used 2 B&W cartridges, and 1 color cartridge in 5 years), w/this printer, 2 B&W's and 1 color since December 25th. Note: I printed TONS more shit in 5 years than I have since Dec. 25th.
CUPS makes printing on the Linux machine ok. It's nothing special but it works. I still have to print from Windows if I want color photos to look right. It's slow and it sucks ink.
If you are using it for B&W text mostly, it's affordable, good quality printing (600x600 dpi black, 2400x1200 dpi photo color), and it has an LPTx port for Linux.
YMMV.
About two years ago, I bought a Brother HL-1270N. Around $450, but probably cheaper today (and still competitive as a reasonably high-end home and small-office printer).
It does 12ppm, connects directly to 100bt ethernet (so I don't need a slave PC as a print server), and of course it works just fine with Linux (supports PCL6 and PS2).
Black-and-white laser, but *very* good quality (1200x600... At 25-up, I can still read a 10pt font, though I need a magnifying glass to do so) and a high throughput make it thge single best printer I have ever used (not just owned, used... at my previous job, we had a variety of serious high-end HP lasers, y'know, the $15k type) and they all SUCKED in comparison).
Not as cheap as a chinsy little $80 color inkjet, but, 99.9% of the time I care more about printing speed and quality than having color on my printouts. And when I do, I visit Kinkos (If I actually need a color document, you can bet I won't accept the crappy quality of those $80 inkjets).
Incidentally, for quite a lot less (around $150) you can get the HL-1240. It has very similar stats (my parents have one of these, and it impressed me enough to get the 1270N for myself), except no ethernet and half the memory. If you don't mind needing a PC to act as a print server for it, this makes a GREAT deal on an amazing printer.
They'd roll off the production line with half a tank of petrol, but if you ever wanted to fill them up again you'd need to buy a new HP-approved carburettor.
Inkjet printers are one of the worst IT scams in the business. Ink should be a commodity, like fuel. We shouldn't have to be locked in to the tyranny of overpriced printer cartridges with built in heads and the like.
Along with almost every printer's ppm benchmark I've seen, manufacturers also include the time to first page. Printers consume a lot of power (my HP 4P laserjet sends my lights flickering every time it prints), so it rests in a power saving mode. When it gets a print job, it takes it a little while for it to heat up enought to burn the toner on the paper. This warm up time can often take 30 seconds or more. If the author wanted to give meaningful statistics on a printer's ppm, he would've started timing after the first page was printed, or include the initial warm up time.
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Print engines on laser printers are rated by how fast they can print a page of text NOT by how fast they can convert whatever document you have (RIPing) in order to be able to print it.
Take a 1 page document--even with graphics--and try printing 17 copies of it. The first one will take a while while it RIPs then the copies will come out at your PPM rating.
Prints over a million pages on one ink cartridge.
(fine print - provided user prints no more than one character per page at 10 point courier)
come on fhqwhgads
You may, indeed, "get what you pay for", but that isn't why everyone is so ticked off. The point of this whole thread is about how printer companies practically lie to potential customers about their machines' specs.
A low price may warrant selling junk, but it doesn't (shouldn't?) permit deceptive marketing practices.
Alot of the specs published on boxes are more misleading than just straight up lies. Sure the DPI is higher, but the lower res printer might actually render better dots, or do something with the dots to make the output look better. Sure it can print 7 pages per minute full color, but only if its in draft mode.
A couple of things that arent advertised that really gets to me are reliability and durability, and cost of cartridges. That epson worked good for about 3 months (just long enough that I could no longer return it), then started doing weird stuff. I had to replace the color cart after only 2 months. Epson wanted something around half the cost of the original printer for one, and the carts were only tanks, the heads were part of the printer.
I will NEVER buy a lexmark, after helping 3 too many friends attempt to get theirs working and having them die shortly after. In the end you get what you pay for, there's a reason those lexmarks cost only $20. I replaced the Epson with an HP 932c, and have had no problems since. Sure, it cost a little more, but I can count on it to print when I need to, and the carts dont cost more than the printer.
TM
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
So, I read the article, the bulk of which was that the reporter's 17 ppm printer had a throughput of significantly less than that when printing a trio of single pages.
No kidding. The problem here isn't that the printer manufacturers are trying to pull a fast one on the consumer. The problem here was that the consumer in question was ignorant about what the rating meant.
I bought my first laser printer back in the 1980's. Back then it was only computer geeks buying these toys, and we all knew that when a printer was rated at 6 ppm, that meant that the printer engine itself was rated at 6 ppm. The engine speed didn't account for the time the printer's processor took to render the PS or PCL code into a laser raster. We all knew that in order to get 6 ppm you would have to set the printer to print 6 (or 12 or whatever) copies of the same page. That way the printer's CPU only had to parse the PS/PCL file once and just start spewing forth paper.
Back then, when most home use dot-matrix printers were printing at about 100 cps (roughly 1.1 ppm if my math is right), this seemed like a fair and equitable way to rate laser printers.
So it's not that the printer manufacturers are trying evil ploys to up their PPM ratings. It's simply that times have changed, and that consumers no longer bother to educate themselves before making a purchase.
At least that's how I see it. It's a free Internet--you can disagree if you want.
I usually use a Xerox Phaser 1235DT, and am quite happy with it.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
If the heads clog up on an HP or Lexmark, you buy new cartridges. If the heads clog up on a Canon, you buy new heads. If the heads clog up on an Epson, you end up sending the printer away for service. How convenient of them to do that.
(At home, I currently use a Lexmark Optra Color 40 and a Brother HL-630. The inkjet supports PostScript, while the laser printer supports PCL 3. I've used both with Linux with no problems...use Ghostscript with the Brother printer, send stuff straight to the Lexmark. Lexmark supplies are a little on the high side, but the HL-630 is one of the cheapest-to-operate printers on the planet...the drum and toner are separate, so a new 3000-page toner cartridge only costs about $30. I've not even bothered checking the refill price.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
When you get a printer just get a PostScript 3 compatable printer. As long as you pipe the the postscript right out to the printer you will never have to worry.
:)
You made have to tweak the PPD file some, but thats half the fun
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
I'll say! Those vendors really know how to sell a piece of shiznet. I have an HP 845c that prints every single copy upside-down. In order to right them again I have to use the company photocopier.
Anybody have a patch for the CUPS driver that can fix this?
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
The speeds listed by the manufacturers are 100% accurate. It's just that those are the page-per-minute ratings for blank sheets of paper being pushed through the printer. It doesn't include any actual printing.
One thing to keep in mind is that many "dumb" printers require the host computer to do a lot of the processing. This keeps the printer cost down but requires a fairly fast machine. Is the times the author mentioned from the moment he hits the "print" button or from the moment the computer receives the data? How are the printers attached? If via USB the bottleneck may even be the connection.
What prompts this fantasy is a round of tests I just ran on three new printers advertised as delivering speeds of "up to" 11, 15, and 17 pages per minute, respectively. In some ways, all three are excellent products -- I'll have more to say about their virtues in a future column -- but none comes close to its "up to" speed.
The review was overly harsh. It's really very simple. Just fill a file with "^L^L^L^L^L^L^L^L^L^L^L...", and send it to the printer. You'll be amazed at the ppm.
And behold! ... it was naked, ... and it stank. - J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Return of the King_
Couldn't resist. How did JRRT know about CowboyNeal way back then?
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
When I bought this printer (new) over 5 years ago, I didn't know it came with a toner cartridge so I bought an extra one -- I still have the extra one in the box as the first toner cartridge is still working great. Buy a laser printer!
...sucks. It is a total scam.
Oddly, I bought a second to replace the first because I had invested in a large quantity of ink cartridges during a sale. It turned out to be cheaper to buy a second Canon and use up the ink rather than shift to a new printer. Once this ink is gone, though, I'll never buy another Canon.
I own an HP LaserJet 1200 Personal printer, and it is by far the best home printer I have ever purchased. It's very fast for a personal model, 15 PPM, with the first page always printed within 10 seconds of the print command. Size-scalable paper trays, which are great for envelope printing, and it supports an addon module for scanning & copying. Even the price isn't too bad, Pricewatch.com has it for less than $400.00 US.
And if you're wondering what OS it works under, well, you're in luck. It is fully PostScript compatible, and works under Windows, MacOS, and Linux. I've used it under all 3 with perfect results. HP gets a big thumb up from me with this printer.
This is still the most stable and reliable printer ever made - not the fastest.
...
The PCL5 driver date is from 1987 - and it still just flat out works
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
I'll have to try something similar at home.
"Up to twelve inches long, depending on usage."
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
The PA8700 chip on the HP3000, HP has put
some sort of "delay" feature that is not
on the HP9000 Unix box.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
I still wouldn't use an HP printer. Who wants to give them $25 for every cartridge? That is where they make their money.
When my HP-600 died a couple of months ago, I bought an Epson. Their windows driver kinda sucks. It seems to render the entire print job (locally) before it sends it to a networked printer.
I just bought a Samsung ML-1450 laser printer. They advertise linux support, and so far, I haven't found anything in what they advertise to be a lie. Of course, I haven't used up the toner yet, so who knows if it's only half full like some of the inkjet manufacturers have been doing. But I have to say that so far it's lived up to its specs, and you can't beat the price. I paid $230 for it.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
It is a gross generalization to say that "openness generalizes across dimensions." Providing Linux support just opens up one more market segment where HP and its ilk can cheat its customers through deceptive claims. HP's aim is to get as many people churning paper and ink as it can. How else can it prop up its PC business?
....because by adding Linux support you obviously show that you are compassionate, like puppies, can sit still during a chick-flick marathon, are in touch with your inner female and are just an overall good person.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Brother lasers are cheaper than HPs and my 1440 works beautifully under Linux natively and through Samba, complete with all the functionality in the Windows drivers (manual duplex etc).
the San Francisco Chronicle doesn't publish another I-hate-technology-and-computers article?
Seriously, this "newspaper" is starting to read like the Unabombers manifesto.
They hate everything that plugs in or lights up or beeps, and constantly portray the companies behind them as though they are satan's personal lackies.
While this coincides with slashdot's "if'n its ain't free beer then its ain't none no good" agenda, but sheesh..
Is this article any different than mitsubishi claiming that this glorified go-kart I'm driving can get 'up to' 36 MPG? (it does BTW.. when I'm pushing it)
Though, I'm sure the think-green lobby in California hates the auto industry too..
Whether you call it 'good marketing' or 'fraudulent lying' depends on how much you love or hate the company, I suppose.
I just can't take anything this tabloid prints seriously anymore.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I bought mine at Best Buy for about $150 and have been very happy with it. The longest it has taken to process a page after it warms up from energy saver mode it about 4 seconds. Then I really do get 12ppm. The quality on toner saver mode is decent and you can get anywhere from 2500 to 3500 prints per $70 cartridge. It has great Linux support with both the parallel and USB interface on the unit.
I used to be afraid to printe ANYTHING with my old canon bubblejet since I was only getting about (seriously) 20 prints on a $10 tank even at the lowest quality. Now I print up entire anandtech articles to bind and later review when I don't have a computer handy. Which by the way, I have to really thank anandtech for creating awesome articles and makeing it so easy to print them I have a binder full of them neatly organized for quick access anywhere I am, even at work where we have one internet enabled computer for about 100 employees. Weird thing is that I work in a computer store.
I got a Lexmark X73 multifunction printer/scanner/copier from my wife as a Christmas gift last year. The "X" series of multifunction printers (X63, X73, and X83) don't have ANY Linux support whatsoever. Much of their output is driven through (Windows) software. I e-mailed them asking about PCL support, postscript, or raw ouput support I couold use for Linux. I also offered to work on a driver for it if they sent me specs. What I got was the e-mail equivalent of a form letter telling me that the X73 had no support for any platform except Windows, and that the interface to it was proprietary (ie, locked up tighter than a drum).
After hooking it up to my wife's Windows PC, I also found I couldn't write to it from any other box on a network, even another Windows box, as the driver for it won't install or run correctly unless it finds the printer hanging off a USB port on the box you're installing or printing from.
I stayed with my battle-scarred HP Deskjet 400, which happily prints from Windows or Linux, and across the network via Samba, etc. Meanwhile, my wife loves the X73...although it does cost us a fortune in cartridges...
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
Most companies are replacing their old machines (those on the Cannon SX engine, for example) that only do about up to 8ppm. For the typical home user, or even a SOHO, that would be fine. Usally the only parts required to fix them are a new seperation pad (cork bit) and a new feed roller. At my university they have surplus sales, where you can get a HP Laserjet 3/3p, or apple laserwriters for about $20.00 Canadian. They typically come with a brand new toner cartridge (costs more then the $20.00 for the printer in stores)
As well they will last over a year with about 10,000 pages per cartridge.
Lastly they are tough. I have had A LJ2 for 3.5 years, got used, and it has done about 500,000 pages in its life, with just the replacements mentioned above. Total cost about 20.00 over the years.
I don't know why everyone's complaining about the Lexmark printers. Mine was worth every penny
(Of course it *was* a $100 printer that I purchased with a 1/2 off coupon, and there was also that little detail of a $50 rebate.... You do the math)
I have a perfectly good HP printer in a box with an "out of date" cyan carterage. The software has disabled the entire printer, because the cyan carterage is out of date. Of course, its out of date because I very rarely print with color. It turns out that there is a "date stamp" (actually a little integrated circuit chip attached to the ink carterage) that the software uses to decide if its time for me to give HP some more money. F**K HP. I'd rather trash the printer and move on than play their sneaky games. Oh yes, this was not a cheap printer, a HP 2000 cxi, to be exact. There's not a chance in Hell I will ever buy from HP again!
I don't know about the rest of you guys but when I use a printer I use it until it dies. I mean a motor quit, stripped a gear, feeding 5 pages at once for no particular reason, prints only ascii garbage, etc. I would NEVER buy a used printer on eBay. You have no idea what the person has done to it or how much it has been used. A refurbished printer from the vendor is a different story. Those have to pass QC at the factory. eBay printers don't.
:)
Remember you get what you pay for
I have an HP Deskjet 692C, works great under GNU/Linux. I got it for $25 used three years ago, been going strong ever since.
the lower end printers are just not worth the headaches at work. too costly to run and the output is not the best.
after going through 9 hp colour cartridges and 8 black hp colour cartridges in three months i was able to have the stats to have the company purchase a high end minolta. the cost per page for the company on the hp 1200 and the epson inkjet (that died during printing a presentation for the boss) was more than going with a minolta cf 2001. the minolta, once the file has ripped - prints 20 pages per minute, 95% - 100% paper coverage. it's fully networkable, ps 3 and handles on average 3,000 pages a day.
at home i have an old hp 2p+, it runs great. better than my newer lexmark inkjet. (that i never use anymore) when i need colour output, i go to kinko's or alphagraphics.
design is art - art is design
If you care about print speed, then you are using the print enough that it will never enter power saving mode anyway. I print a few pagers a month. I don't even turn my printer on most weeks. When I do it takes a minute to warm up, but I don't care. freeBSD has a preety good print spooler and is willing to wait for the printer. Sure it would be NICE hit print within a few second hold the printout, but in practice you don't need it instantly.
Ignoring paper costs, the HP can deliver an image at about .7 cents/sheet as compared to 1.2 for the Lexmark. Though .5 cents doesn't sound like a lot, it adds up when you're cranking 20K copies each week.
Print speeds are as advertised, I get 17 ppm from the 4050's and 24 ppm from the 4100. I looked at some very high end printers because I didn't want to wait forever while the paper churns through. The 40 ppm, and better, printers came in above $10,000. So instead, I bought 3 HP's and wrote a little bit of code that spreads the load out over the 3 machines. Saved $7,000 and had fun while I was at it.
Unfortunately, there has been a downside. All of this ran on Windows 98 with not too many problems. I had to write a prompt into my code to remind me to disable power saving sleep mode whilst printing and it helped if I rebooted before firing off the printer job. I was fairly happy with the setup but thought I could do better if I migrated to Win 2000. (Stuck in Windows for other reasons.) At any rate, Win 2000, Excel, and HP do not seem to get along. One of those three pieces seems to drop a bit every so often and away goes a print job. Away, as in, I've got to watch the printout carefully to catch random imaging problems. I don't know if it's Microsoft trying to coerce me to upgrade from Excel 97, which didn't help, or HP not fully testing Windows 2000 with the 4050's. Right now, you don't want to be around me when I struggle with the mess the problem engenders. Ain't a pretty sight. Fortunately, the bug has migrated from Heisenbug status to reproducible so it's just a matter of time before it's fixed.
I've been thinking about this a bit and I think I'm okay with the printer companies. I think it's probably the fault of media companies like PC Magazine or CNET that there's not a standard benchmark for printer speed or cartridge lifetime. If one of the well read publications would set a standard for reviews, the printer companies would fall in line and report the standard benchmarks, without silly legislation.
Sure, the printer companies run a racket, but I'm okay with them because the rules to their racket are basically clear when you buy the printer: We make cheap printers and expensive cartridges, we have a private interface between the printer and the cartridge, we're tricky people and we will do our best to keep this interface private so we can make more money.
I kind of like it, there is plenty of competition and plenty of good companies to choose from. Before I spend $70 on a cartridge I look and see what the other companies are up to. It seems to be an efficient market and the printer I have now is about a million times better than the printer I had 10 years ago.
Now, compared to something like the music industry, the printer guys are saints. The rules to the music industry are something like: We sign young artists to ripoff contracts. We pay radio stations a lot of money through independent producers to play songs over the free airwaves many many times, but we will sue you if you give a copy of a song to your friends. We think it's legal to make an analog cassette of a CD but illegal to make a digital copy of a CD. We would like to legislate that copying bits isn't always legal. Now I'm getting wound up...
jeff
I've been burned by Epson in the past with regards to their 5700i Laser printer and not updating the Mac driver for OS X.
After that I resolved to only use PostScript laser printers and my current one is a Brother HL-1650 with an internal printer server installed (with Ethernet jack)
It is black and white but, lies up to Brother's claims very well.
My advice is that if you are buying an inject you are buying lot of ink all the time (have yet to replace the toner cartridge in the HL-1650 and I've had it since last March)
Me, I hate inkjets.
Now, if you print to Linux using it it should work even though you will need a PPD (it is PostScript Level 3) to use the Duplex unit without using the printer control panel or the web admin tools.
Manufacturers who provide Linux support are enabling their users. In my modest life experience, those people and organizations that are more generous in enabling others are also more likely (not a perfect correlation, but a significant one) to be honest and straightforward in other ways. Openness tends to generalize across dimensions.
Give me a break!
Or perhaps they're just shrewd businessmen, and would like to sell as many printers as possible by opening it up to more platforms?
"And like that
I got bit by this one too - a user has one at home, & I couldn't get the drivers to install for a pcAnywhere printer. Pain in the butt.
a) Deskjet/Laserjet are HP-specific brands for their inkjet and laser printers.
..."?
b) Um, did you read the subject of my comment? "Lexmark inkjets
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Uhm, unless your wife knows more about computers than you, why'd you take her advice in the first place? Every female I've ever been involved with sees only the price tag on things they don't understand. (ie. Your laser printer that works with linux.)
I don't give my lady unsolicited "how to's" regarding what she does best, and likewise I don't appreciate unsolicited advice from her on how to do what I do best.
Yes, I take her advice on how to run my business (she's an MBA) but no, I don't take her advice on setting up squid...
Who did what now?
Anyone else find it funny that an article about printers would have the dollar bill logo next to it? So thats how cowboyneal gets all the goodies.....
So I get the flashing red.. "low on ink"
Then I get the solid red "out of ink"
I go buy a new black cartridge..
I look at it. No contacts. No electronic interface. How does the driver know I'm out of ink then eh?
It doesn't. The driver shuts the printer down based on a bogus *guess* that the cartridge is empty!
How do I know?
I went through the motions, but DIDN'T replace the ink cartridge. 30-50 pages later.. still printing fine!
I've noticed that I can get about 4x as many pages per ink cart on my Z52 when I print from Linux as opposed to printing from Windows. The print quality appears to be the same, as far as I can tell.
Lets ignore linux support for just a momment. I think it's commonly agreed that printer manufacturers are out to extract every last cent from consumers any way they can.
What about the magazines that "Review" these printers? I mean it's pretty obvious that magazines like PC World, Home Computer Luser and all the other magazines that target clueless users, are basically just glorified advertising catalogs. But try researching a new printer.
I recently tried to find some reviews on photo printers and found that whatever reviews available are highly biased, largely unscientific, based on old models and generally useless. This article links to some other reivews which are horribly old:
Canon S820D February 2002
Epson Stylus Photo 785EPX July 2001
Epson Stylus Photo 2000P February 2002
HP PhotoSmart 1315 November 2001
Kodak Personal Picture Maker 200 by Lexmark January 2001
If you can make your way through those articles you'll see that there is no common baseline for comparison. A fault in one printer may be talked about extensively, but in another printer it's mentioned casually. The Canon 820D has been recently replaced with the 830D (about 1-2 weeks ago) and there is no mention of it. Compared to the offerings out there the units reviewed are few.
I wish more "reputable" hardware review sites would take the time to review printers. I still haven't been able to decide between the Canon 830D, the Epson 960 stylus photo and the Epson 2200 stylus photo mainly because I don't have enough information.
As it is now it seems like printer reviews are conspicuously absent or out of date. It's almost as if the printer manufacturers are supressing reviews so that people will "gamble" on printers due to their low price and how good those "specs" on the box are.
Anyone happen to know anything about the Canon 830D, Epson Stylus Photo 960 and the Epson Stylus Photo 2200?
-- Button up, your ignorance is showing
So, does this guy realize that there are print processes besides the "inkjet" out there? Granted, I'm not happy with the fact that Epson won't let me use Piezography inks in my new Stylus Pro 7600 (oh, wait...their Ultrachrome inks should be better), but they have the gaul to tell me they won't warranty my printer if I use someone else's inks. Has the Magnussen-Moss act not reached Seiko yet?
Anyway, the author can rant, but he's bitching for pissy reasons. Anyone literate in printing knows that if you are going to print something, you need to configure the driver to get the best results from each print, or use a RIP.
The Win2K drivers for the HP 4000 series SUCK. I have problems out of Crystal Reports and *all* of the Microsoft Office products - both 98 and 2000. So I don't think your problems are limited to Excel97.
If your workstations are Win98 and your server is Win2K and you have the HP Win2K drivers on the server - that could be why you're having problems. My NT workstations bluescreened when printing if this was the case. It's the driver differences between older OSs (like in our case, NT) and Win2K that means I have both NT and Win2K print servers and users go through one or the other depending upon the client OS. WinNT and Win98 users use the NT print servers, Win2K users use the Win2K print server. It's a mess, but hey - it's my mess.
But other than that, the HP 4000s and 4050s we have are workhorses. Now the HP 8500 that I'd like to toss in the dumpster is another beast entirely...
Consigned to flames of woe.
Oh, and it actually does about 10ppm after it has warmed up, and because of the memory in it, never slows down from this. Fantastic thing.
First, have ou read the article? Of the three printers he comments only one (incidentaly the best one) is a laser printer. The two ink-jets wild claims do not have the PS/PCL excuse.
But this is not even the main point. Their consumers are not specialists anymore. They are selling to the average consumer who has absolutely no obligation of interpreting what they mean to say.
If a manufacturer printed "Average number of matches: 50" on the side of its matchboxes and consistently delivered boxes with 10 matches (and now and then send out a big box with 2000 matches to make the "average") it would go to jail real fast. There is no excuse for using unreal or confusing specs as a selling point. The continuing use of such data to sell printers is just bad faith.
There was actually a class-action lawsuit settled just recently regarding this problem. See: http://laserjet.classaction.hp.young-america.com
The problem is that the "separator pad" on the 5L and 6L's got slippery over time, causing it to feed a whole stack of paper at once. HP "reformulated" the rubber on this piece, and you can get a replacement separator pad that will fix the problem.
The settlement entitles owners of 5L and 6L's to get a free replacement kit for the pads.
I run a $80 HP 610CL on my Linux print server. Here's how I figure it...
... Bought from Wal-Mart ... Bought from Wal-Mart or CompUSA ... Bought at a computer show
The printer cost = ~$80
Blank Cartridge = ~25 (Black) or ~$35 (color)
Universal Ink Jet Refill Kit = $20 (Black/Color) (3 refills)
or
Custom Ink Jet Refill Kit = ~$30 (Both Black & Color) (~30 refills each)
Now, you could buy a $200 printer, but I doubt you would be as likely to do your own refills.
Cartridges can only be refilled up to 3 times. (don't buy "recycled cartridges") So, you are saving roughly $30 for every 3 refills...If you are using the Custom Kit, it's more like $60 per 3 refills...
And figuring for $30, you are paying back the cost of the printer in cartridges after only 3 cartridges.
Here's the other thing...printer technology is always getting better...the printer you buy today at $80 is probably going to be replaced by another with more features (higher resolution, faster, etc) 6 months from now.
With an $80 printer, you can really throw it away when it breaks. With the $200 printer, you feel like you have to fix it.
I've had good success with epson printers in linux. I had an epson stylus photo 1200 (6 color), which I gave to my sister, a photographer. Currently, my wife and I have a 980 (4-color). With CUPS and gimp-print, my printing looks beautiful. There is a utility (epsutil?) that I use to get ink levels, reset the printer, etc. I NEVER use epson inks or paper. There are plenty of aftermarket solutions for paper. For ink, I use a continuous flow system and bulk inks from MIS Supply It's never clogged or dripped, and when I screwed it up by causing a siphon, MIS sent me a new cf cartridge and a set of regular cartridges to use in the meantime.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
My last two were the Canon BJC-6000 and the Canon S400 (essentially an updated version of the 6000, with smaller box and USB support). The only problems I have had with them were the result of things I caused to happen, like when I tried to cheat the sheet feeder and sneak another stack of paper in behind the last sheet, as it was being fed. This resulted in the feeder picking up 100 sheets of paper. It was never the same after that, hence the move to the newer s400).
One nice thing about these two printers is separate ink cartridges for black, cyan, magenta, and yellow. You can also buy special "photo" colors (supposed to represent skin tones and other photo things better, but I have always used the standard colors with no problems, even for photo). So if one of the colors runs out, you can replace it without having to scrap the remining ink in the other cartridges. The usage on the colors seems to run pretty even (ie I go through a complete set within a month or so of each other, and don't end up with 5 extra yellow cartridges). You can buy the cartridges separately for roughly 10 dollars each or as a set (for about 40).
The printers seems to do well with photo, graphics. They handle thick and thin paper, envelopes, labels, without trouble. As for speed, I've never tried to quantify it, but I can say that it's "fast enough" in the sense that if I need to run out a 12 page black-only document a few minutes before class, I've never been sitting there waiting anxiously on the printer.
Just to give some perspective, my usage is personal (not business), and I'm a student so there's black only and color printing. I probably print 700-1000 sheets a semester (3 montsh) and replace the cartridges about that often.
So remember kids, failure to cooperate can have DIRE CONSEQUENCES!
ah, hell! Here's a goatse for good measure.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Someone mentioned HP's offer of a free replacement rubber separation pad which is supposed to grip all but the one page that the printer needs at a time. This is listed by for the 6L, 1100, 3100, and 3150 printers but works fine for the 5L also (I used it to fix mine.) The page is here:
t /D ocument.jsp?docId=927
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSuppor
If you use linux and want a inkjet printer - Don't go for a Lexmark z25. Despite the fact that they have a Linux peguin on the box they only support some RPM based distros. Namely Redhat (up to 7.2) Mandrake and Suse. I was given a Lexmark z25 for my birthday, my parents thought the penguin on the box was a good indication that it would work. I run gentoo linux at home, a great distro, that supports both cups and LPrng. Unfortunately the z25 driver wants LPD - who in hell uses LPD these days? I read somewhere that Lexmark is owned by IBM. For me this is a concern - does this mean that IBM have a view that the only linux distros worth writing drivers for are RPM based distros ? Why didn't lexmark release a cups based driver i don't know. Another great problem for the driver is the documentation that comes with it is really not helpful. They provide no clues on what file does what on the install. My z25 is a paperweight and has been for about a month now. Don't get the z25 on principal - even if you are on a RPM distro - they have little regard for the non-rpm distro users out there!! BTW another sneaky trick they do is put the driver on their install page in a tar.gz - I got my hopes up when i saw this!
I love the HP Laserjet IIIsi that our office uses. Quite simply the best printer ever.
I picked up a Lexmark Z65N at Costco last week for $169.99 which seemed quite good considering the 21ppm and 2400x1200dpi ratings. Plus it has a built in ethernet port. I knew it claimed support for Windows and OSX only but I figured it would likely work somewhat under Linux with another driver.
As it turns out it's a mixed bag of good and bad. The Windows driver doesn't work with sharing since it wants to speak directly to the printer and fails if it can't. This means Linux is _not_ supported in any way and Lexmark tech support says they have no indication that Linux will ever be supported. Luckily I have access to enough printers and Windows PCs (and Win4Lin) that I can live with this. It does also mean, however, that I can't queue jobs and share drivers, etc.on the Win2K server. In addition the installer on the supplied CD won't run off a network share. I downloaded the latest driver from the Lexmark website to get around that but still I'm left with fairly poor text quality and much slower than 21ppm. Photo quality is good but not much better than the HP970cxi (1200x1200dpi) that it was supposed to replace. On the up side, the printer was cheap. The cartridges are a little cheaper than the HP ones (I don't know anything about mileage yet, though) and it does have an ethernet port. For me it works just well enough in the areas that I care about to be worth keeping. It's not the incredible deal that I thought it was but it's not too bad. I just wish Lexmark would tell you the limitations of the printer. I think Lexmark was smart in many respects because the trade offs that they made cause this printer to work well for many people. However, for some it won't work at all. They just need to be a little more forthcoming with the details.
http://partsurfer.hp.com
You can order parts and everthing. And the separator pad and pickup assembly are about the only things to go on most HP laser printers.
RoundTop
Our family has been using the same printer for over 30 years now. We have been very happy with their quality of work, and same-day service is provided for many smaller jobs. From business cards to wedding invitations to funeral programs, nothing beats a local, family-owned printer service.
True, cost is slightly higher that the Kinko's shop near the mall, but they know me by name and will deliver items to my job if needed.
My printer is retiring in December. He says his children don't have the skillset needed to operate or manage the business. If they cannot find a buyer, he will close shop and liquidate all assets.
SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL PRINTER ! ! !
This appliance has been reliable (that's RELIABLE with no qualifications) since 1995. HP emailed to let me know about a driver update six years after I bought it. Moved with me to Mac OS X. Just works well, quiet, superb print quality, toner costs are OK for a low-volume printer. Appears flimsy but has survived envelope printing by verry drunk user. Print speed and toner-life are just what it says on the box, once you understand that ppm tells you about the engine and not the warming and RIPping. The printer box has been ticked for a while, and I would buy HP again, though probably a heftier machine.
The rather dubious policies of the inkjet vendors (cheap printer expensive ink) the whole are hard to pin on any single firm: that's the competitive environment they work in. Imagine what would happen to a firm that decided to reverse the formula by going for expensive-printer-cheap ink. We would praise them but they would never sell any printers.
It's ME!
Yea, I'm your daddy!
Know why I'm your daddy? Cause I did THIS to your momma. Yah, YOUR momma. Oh, YOUR momma. You suck man, but your momma's sweet. Far out man, you DO suck - not as good as your mamma. Hey man, spit or swallow?
Oh my fricken head, I'm so wasteeed.
What are you crazy man, you piss off supahfly?! Bonzai!
If this doesn't make sence, you haven't been to joecartoon.com.
And with the LaserJet 1100, with it's multi-feed problem, it can truely go through a lot of pages per print job.
My S750 is great. Guess you can't make blanket statements about an entire manufacturer based on one person's experieces.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I also have an HP LaserJet 1200n (networked version) at home. It starts printing very quickly and it was very easy to setup to use it with both the Linux and Windows 98 systems I have at home. It is a very quiet printer too! Now if the paper tray would only refill itself automatically... :-)
Those pieces of crap wear out all the rubber pads very quickly. A service call to replace them runs you about $250USD. I just replaced the feed rollers and seperation pads on an 1100 to save a customer some dough. The parts were $17 from HP and shipping was $18!! Anyway, it was a BITCH to work on this thing. You have to remove almost everything to fix it. What a pain. Get a real laser- not one of these "personal" lasers which are as much throaway printers as inkjets. The only reason they're so cheap on eBay is they're feeding multiple pages and the end-user found out the repair costs was more than a new one.
If you're concerned about cost and speed, lasers are the way to go.
Period.
I bought a Lexmark Optra E310 laser printer about three years ago. I printed about 4,000 heavy-coverage pages over that time and only recently had to replace the $90 toner cartridge. My previous inkjet was using two or three $35 black ink cartridges per year. It connects via USB, and reliably cranks out 8ppm (its rated speed) on all but the most graphic-intensive documents 'cause it actually has a built-in 66 MHz processor. (I added 32MB of RAM which helped tremendously with full-page high-res images.) It has a built-in PostScript emulator which really comes in handy for me 'cause I have a Mac.
On the other hand, my uncle just bought an Epson C80 inkjet ($150) for his business. It is rated at 20ppm IIRC, and will print at that speed but only in draft mode, when the output looks pretty bad. It's not a problem for him, 'cause he mostly prints invoices and checks. However, to get output comparable to my laser, he has to use Epson's special paper ($$$) and switch it to "720dpi Text Mode" which slows output to around 2-3ppm.
It's truly amazing to watch this thing run in draft mode, though. The swath (printing width) of the black printhead is almost 2". It makes about 5 passes back and forth and the page is done! It really is faster than most laser printers I've used.
Thanks for writing about your recent experiences with HP! I'd have to say I had similar suspicions about their products over the last few years - and this was even before talks of the merger began.
Traditionally, I always recommended HP for anyone buying a laser printer, and almost always for a networked inkjet. (I never thought their inkjets matched Epson's ability to print near-photo quality images - but Epson's print drivers can really bog down a network print server.)
Nowdays, I have to really re-think that.
A while back, I had problems with a Deskjet 1600C that died - and was met with endless frustration getting it repaired. (Despite this being originally a $1400+ business-class inkjet with optional paper tray, HP acted like it was disposable - and couldn't understand why we wanted to fix it instead of just buying a newer model.) HP refused to sell the repair parts needed, and insisted that we ship it in for repair.
In another case, we bought several HP Laserjet 6L printers, all of which developed problems jamming when feeding paper. After over a year of putting up with this problem, HP *finally* acknowledged it as a design defect and offered to ship customers a "repair kit". When I got the "repair kit", it turns out it was simply a piece of cardboard with a double-sided block of sticky foam on the end. You were supposed to use the cardboard to shove the sticky foam down inside the printer, so it would stick to a part beneath the vertically stacked pieces of paper. That way, it was again able to "grab" sheets without trying to suck in too many at once and jam up.
Granted, this work-around did cure our problem - but it's obviously not going to be a permanent fix. HP screwed up and used a rubber material that got hard over time and lost its "tacky" characteristic needed to grab paper. They should have supplied a substitute part for the defective one - not a stick-on-top band-aid fix.
Another thing of interest is that there is a class action lawsuit over this misfeed problem. If you have enough of the paperwork, you might get something back from HP.
HP LJ 1100 = $25.00 secondhand.. Pagecount on it was 635 pages and is cherry.
:)
Paid 20 bucks for a MC-30 cable for the printer.
prr, prr, prr.....
It's still on its first cartridge too, approaching a thousand copies right now and has yet to hit its stride.
Lexmark JP 5770 = 25 bucks... It was used to print out a thousand brochures and put aside..
Two fresh carts in it and two spares for it too.
Prrr, prrr, prrr......
Gotta luv how things come together, ya know?
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Not too long ago, monitors were sold in this fashion where the screen size was marketed as being a 17" monitor but in reality you got 15" of "view-able" area.
We all know what a class-action did; we ended-up with a refund and a label on the monitor box (and advertisement) explicitly telling us the true view-able size.
I think printer manufactures are not too far behind.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
And don't forget how often you have to clean those print heads! I use my $100 Epson inkjet about once a week to print a page or two. Almost without fail, the heads need several cleanings before the print will emerge without blanked lines. I waste far more ink (and time!) cleaning the stupid heads than I do actually printing. And of course, the Epson utility wastes all six colors of ink during a cleaning, even if, say, black is the only offender. Sells more ink, I know.
This pumps up the cost-per-page of an inkjet even further.
Its only quality better than a Laser is that it's small and easier to stash under my desk. Still, it's the last inkiet I'll ever buy.
For selling desktop printers that are HPLJ compatable AND include Solaris drivers.
After taking it home I was so impressed with the speed and quality of the prints, that I wasn't worried about their claims. It is FAST and BEAUTIFUL. It replaced an Epson Stylus Color that doesn't even come close to the speed and quality of the image (but not a fair comparison because the Epson is a couple years old). I can print a 13"x19" color photo taken from my Canon G2 digital camera with such high quality that you cannot tell it from a professional film print, and it takes only 5 minutes of actual printing time! (after my old laptop processes the image for 5 minutes). A 4x6 is around a minute or less.
Unfortunately, I have to boot up an old windows machine just to use the printer. I really wish Canon would support Linux.
Your example is better than mine, although I believe that under very restrict and controlled situations those printers may even reach their claimed speed.
In Court the manufacturer will probably say that those speeds were acchieved in a clean room with a special cartridge filled with a non-consumer grade ink (with a density far bellow or far above the practical and profitable) printing on special, handmade paper found only in a Russian village.
I purchased a Z53 a while back because it printed fairly quickly and is one of those printers that embeds the printhead in each ink cartridge. I had an Epson before that which died of a plugged head and had eternal warm-up times which I was not eager to re-experience. The Lexmark starts up very quickly and has reasonable Linux support-- there's a binary RPM they provide which handles printhead cleaning, alignment, etc, and works quite well. The only beef I have is it doesn't support the USB port on the printer. There is also an open-source driver available that seemed to work well.
Printer cartridges are predictably expensive, but I haven't purchased one yet as a cheap refill kit works perfectly. If you must buy an inkjet it's not bad, and it's either that or an HP (which doesn't have very good support for the latest printers), since I refuse to buy another inkjet that has a non-replaceable head.
We bought an HL-1050 about 3 years ago.
The print quality is top notch. It does 10ppm iirc and just never seems to need toner.
Inkjets are good and well for photo prints but not what you need when u have a 50 page paper due in the next morning.
If the 6ls do it again, buy a kit from here.
http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/kkg0.html
Just about every network printer now supports LPR, which is a lousy protocol but is the defacto Unix "standard." What more do you want -- CUPS support?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I've been using the Samsung ML-4600 as my home laser printer for about a year-and-a-half, and I have no complaints. It seems to print as fast as they claimed (who tests?), the toner lasted way longer than the box said it would, and, as promised on the box, Linux setup was very easy then (required installing an RPM in RedHat 7.2, IIRC), and has gotten dead simple with subsequent Linux installs (Mandrake and Slackware). And it was only about $150.
It is a very good printer, but it doesn't meet it's ppm specs either, even on low quality settings.
:-)
I found with colour, that using heavier cardstock (for inkjets) really worked well.
But the thing sucks back cartridges like no tomorrow. If my mother didn't work at Grand & Toy I would be pretty sunk
Maybe you should turn down your artificial gravity generator. You might even lose weight!
Fat lazy geek!
For as often as I actually print something out, the el-cheapo HP 640 that came with my setup is good enough. Hell, I'm still on the starter cartridge and that was a YEAR ago!
Something like four years ago, I bought a Panasonic KX-P6300. It was, then, a no-brainer: 6ppm, 600dpi, low desk space requirements, and it was about the cheapest laser around. It got rave reviews, and was A-listed, Highly Recommended, Best Buy or whatever in just about every PC magazine there was.
And the really impressive thing is that, four years and probably 10,000 sheets later, it's still doing that same 6ppm and 600dpi it always claimed to, pretty much every time. I had one minor problem with a bit of toner stuck somewhere awkward that left marks on paper as it passed through until I found it and cleared it, and that's been it.
It's a truly excellent piece of equipment, which I'd still rate above many "personal lasers" today. I think they actually still make them, or at least did until recently...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Upsetted me so much with their photo printer that I started to paint instead.
I'd rather be sailing...
It does 10ppm iirc and just never seems to need toner.
Ah, forgot to mention the toner.
Amazingly enough, both mine and my parents' HL-12xx printers still have their original toner cartridges. They also both have the light flashing to let the user know they need toner, but a year after it started saying so (6 months for mine), it still prints nice dark pages (I print a lot of images off teraserver and similar sites, full page coverage of >50% mean density).
So, while their toner detection method may need work, the actual toner use seems very efficient indeed.
Oh, and since someone else mentioned it, I will as well - I don't work for Brother in any way whatsoever, just a happy customer.
Again, these ploys are for the nave consumer that sees "Wow, 17ppm. That's much better than Brand X at 14ppm." It's like the Auto Industry's gas mileage B.S.-timates. Sure you can get close to those numbers (and indeed, much better than the printers, apparently.) but it's the same idea. Promise the world, deliver next to nothing.
you can still cat myasciidoc | /dev/lpt0 with an epson printer.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
you can set up ad-hock printer sharing by having a program on the windows machine monitor a shared directory. Whenever a pdf file appeared there, this program would print that file to the local printer. The linux "driver" would simply generate a pdf file and place it in the shared folder.
the average cable that you pay around $15.00 for at the 'puter store cost them less than $2.00
How's that for mark-up?
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But you don't want to do the upgrade yourself. This job requires near-total disassembly of the feed mechanism.
There's a very funny video and parts kit available for this problem. It's a half-hour of unedited camcorder video of someone tearing down a LaserJet 5L and replacing the feed rollers. This includes the part where he drops one of the retaining clips on the floor, looks for it, can't find it, and gets another one from a parts drawer. It's almost worth the $29.95 just to see the video.
I bought the 1430 that's mentioned in the original article after looking at a 1210 but noticing the new model, it too has linux + OS X drivers on the cd and on the front page of samsung's printer site and prints according to the box 3 ppm iirc faster then the 1210, so it's at least a minor upgrade and costs exactly the same. Much better deal then any of the cheap HP's which are Windows only and reviewed highly by magazines and such.
I did some freelance work for a place that did color prints onto paper for thermal transfer to other surfaces.
Due to lots of shit the boss decides to buy a HP (note that the HP color LJ is based on the Canon) instead of the darn canon.
Served his stupid ass right when every single piece we printed on the first run of 600 copies came out with striations (basically its when yoou print a complete black page and see gray strips with white pin stripes runnining down the print).
Needless to say he lost the entire margin on that job replacing the paper printed. (don't even get me started on how he tried to pass of the bad print to the customers)
This is most useful, and everybody should see it.
I've had this happen to me a few times at work, and these programs work pretty well.
//FIXME: Bad
I got one of these jammies. It's a newer model of the 1240. It's a fast laser, prints clearly (1200X1200) and has a full toner cart.
16 megs of memory too.
This printer rocks. Brother rocks.
I didn't want to spend $99 on a throwaway ink/bubble/whatever jet (like my wife wanted me to). I needed a solid printer that has enough memory to print 50 page Visio charts without choking on page 1.
I'm a support person who buys printers such as 6L's, 5Ms, 4100's, and 4500's. I haven't tested the older printer speed but our newer two printers, an HP 4100 and an HP 4550, are about right on the money when it comes to rated speed in both B&W and in Color.
;-). HP relented and ordered a replacement. (The HP service techs were good to excellent people but HP policy should be abandoned along with at least one of their phone reps.)
We are on a Novell system with feeds from Windoze and Linux machines. We haven't had any problems.
Our first HP4500 was a nightmare of paper jams. Other sections had HP4500s also but with not anywhere near as many jams. Our jams were about 225 printed pages per jam while the others were around 3,000 and 4,500 printed pages before a jam. The only thing I could put my finger on was that we had a slightly earlier ROM version than the others. That's the bad.
The ugly was the stall tactics from HP. "You used the wrong paper.", etc, etc. Their manuals say we should not use paper with more than 5% GROUND fiber while the recycled paper packages say that they contain 30% post consumer recycled fiber. Needless to say that HP and the paper companies did not return my e-mails. They must have smelled lawyers!!! It wasn't until I said that we used the same materials as the other sections AND presented them with my statistics. Still they wanted to throw parts and service calls at the problem. It wasn't until the last service tech "fixed" the machine for good
Instead of an HP4500, we received an HP4550. Bless their hearts and my ulcer. The HP4550 is better but they have a way to go before it is as bullet proof as their B&W printer. We still get paper jams but mostly with HP branded transparencies. When doing transparencies, we have to leave the printer's "back-door" open. I'm looking right now to replace this printer with something other than an HP. Maybe somebody else knows the meaning of the words, "good warranty service".
First, the drums wear out FAR too fast for a high-capacity drum (10k pages? Pffft... I've seen single use drums that can do more).
:-) Not that I'd turn in any work printed from it though (UGH).
Two, they have a forced drum change counter.
Three, their drums are AMAZINGLY overpriced ($200 US for a drum for a printer they sold for $150 US? STUFF THAT).
Fourth, resetting the drums is a PITA. You have a cut up a home-made transparent reset sheet. Even then, all that gets you is crappy output anyways, since the drum really is worn out at that point.
When you buy a Brother, you're buying a 10k page investment.
Of course, as a tech I shouldn't hate them that much. I'm already enjoying a free, working perfectly, needed a drum reset page printer right now.
But I do like the 9-pin dot-matrix emulation, though. Heh...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Understanding, Reversing, and Hacking HP Printers
LED technology is distinctly different from laser- not so good at truly complex artwork or grayscales (Oki may've improved a lot in their new color models, *if* those are LED- they've made both), but excellent and disgustingly reliable for text documents. I'm pretty sure the 4W is LED, but I could be wrong.
A long time ago, I read a review of the Star SJ-144, which used a since-abandoned thermal wax system. The review postulated that the graphics weren't the best, but the text was 'better than a Selectric.' Oki uses waxes in their toners, again varying by model, and the one I put in place at my father's office is definitely as good as a Selectric- much better than the photocopy look of your average laser. I'd heartily recommend these for anyone looking for a document printer, but do mind the differences between models (read reviews before you buy), and keep in mind that the lightweight build quality in their recent models makes them a bit dangerous around morons. (The one at the office has been put through more abuse than you'd expect in an office, and it does still tick, though improper envelope feeding and damage during unnecessary and improper cartridge-changes has damaged the paper-jam sensor into creating false positives.)
Very nice equipment; the older, 'flat' models (which I believe came mostly in actual laser variants, vs. LED) were bulletproof, and on the desk of anyone who knows *not* to yank on plastic until it cracks, the new ones should do fine.
For cheap color output, 'disposable' Epsons should do the trick- I've just replaced a 600 with a C80, not a bad crossgrade. (Shoddier build quality than the 600, but much faster printing, archival pigments, and independent ink tanks.) Just remember, NEVER remove a cartridge when you let the printer sit. I thought I was doing a good thing, but lo, 2 years later I returned to find a dry mess. The ink sponges stay wet for a long time, and provide just enough humidity in the system to keep the heads moist and 'bleeding-through' into the pads provided for the purpose.
The author really only briefly mentions canon in the article,, i recently bought a Canon S520, while it isn't as fast as on the box, i don't really care, it seems quite reliable, and with separate, large, and moderatly cheap ink cartrges,, it's the best printer i've had in a lovg while. I'm not sure about linux support, i think i'm gonna check that out now... Reece, PS. my father recently bought a $200+ Hp, it's only USB, and only works with a USB cable 6' or shorter, and only came with 1/2 full cartrdges,,, (the canon thinktank carts or tranparent, so you can actually see that they're full, and when they're getting low, great idea canon!!) overall, i really wouldn't ever buy an HP myself after this,, Reece,
After dealing with those anoying inkjets that have to be hand fed paper because there paper feeders jam and you end up wasting all sorts of paper and worring about wether your printer will print that term paper at 5 am the day it is due, I decided to give up on printers all together, ( as well as short sencences). I am lucky enough to have free printing of stuff on the internet at my school library. So....I just run it though tex, then to pdf, then post in on the internet, then print it from school. Sure its a bit of work but who cares when your beating the system ( and oh do those tex documents look pro. ) ....
and lets see someone do that on windows with out paying lots of money or using cracked software.
Well let me start off by saying the compatibility of Canon Inkjets for Linux is non-existant. However, they do run on Macs, through USB, and on Windows through USB or Parallel.
The Canons (namely the S500 and the more commonly found in retail S750) are great.
They boast speeds up to 20ppm and get about 16 of them out on normal quality.
They run on a 4-cartridge system that saves money by seperating the print head, and you can buy all the cartridges in one box with the print head for less than the carts individually, and about $15 less than the color and black carts for Lexmark and HP printers.
As for photo printing, the speed drops, but the quailty sharply increases. 1 minute for a 4x6, 2 minutes for a 8x10 gets you borderless photos, which, on glossy photo paper, look like they were done at a camera shop.
Plus it comes with **FULL** carts out of the box. No starters here.
With a cost per color page of 4.2 cents versus 12 for most HPs, I'd buy a Canon any day.
And no, I don't work for Canon, I'm a retail sales guy at my local Staples. And no, I don't go by the info I get directly from Canon, I look it up on the net to make sure and even bought one. It works (except for the "up to" speed) as advertised.
On a side note, no printers come with the cable. Deal with it. This is so retailers can get you to buy their "warranty kits," ie a packaged warranty, cable, sample photo paper, and surge protector for $50. Sounds like a good deal when the cable itself is $25 on the shelf and the warranty is $40. But as we all know, you can find USB cables online for under $5.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
I purchased a Lexmark Z31 about 2 or 3 years ago, and I've had to change the cartridges only twice. This is with moderate printing, mind you. I've had a bitch of a time getting anything to print with it under Linux, but for the rest of my home computers, it works fine. Seems to me that it did everything it advertised and more. So far I've been happy with pretty much any Lexmark I've used at both work and home. I can not say the same with any other printer except for the HP *jet line. With the only major thing being price setting the HP and Lexmarks apart in my eye, Lexmark wins hands down.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
perhaps a tad off topic, but interesting none the less (also, i would like to say that i havent had any problems using epson printers in linux, in conjunction with the aforementioned gimp-print drivers, and the cups print server, as well as using cups to share the printer with windows machines via samba. ive used an epson C80 and an epson stylus photo 750 (ok, ill admit its not much of a sample, but its something...))
"we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!" --Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
I bought a Lexmark Optra E210 a few months back, and for what I paid, I personally could not be any happier.
In my own experience, inkjet is a major rip-off unless you actually _need_ to use colour in your day-to-day work, and most people don't.
Comparing the cost, it will actually be cheaper to buy an OEM laser cartridge sometime down the road than to buy enough of the super-cheap inkjet cartridges to do the same number of pages on any inkjet model currently on the market.
All things being equal, if you're buying OEM inkjet cartridges because you have no other options, you're probably paying anywhere from two to six times as much as you would be for maintaining a decent laser printer.
As for the Optra's Linux compatibility (as written on the box), here's how it went:
New laser printer: $300
Future cartridge purchase: $130
Being able to install your new printer in Mandrake in under 30 seconds with no problems afterwards: Priceless.
Hey everybody, let's start the ball rolling. TigerDirect sends me tons of specials in my mailbox every month, and I get their catalogs all the time. One thing that annoys me is that I can't see if any of the printers, scanners, printer servers or other hardware works with Linux. They carefully spell out in their catalog each operating system and version, 95, 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, Mac, etc. but no mention of Linux. Everyone reading this, go to TigerDirect's online contact form (they hide their email address) and ask them to include info on all their hardware on whether it also works with Linux, yes, no, unknown. This will help us Linux users, and will put pressure on other companies to do the same.
p
http://www.tigerdirect.com/sectors/Help/form.as
It can probably feed pages with a single pixel on them at 6ppm. But I wouldn't bet my life on it, the love of high margins is the root of all kinds of evil. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
We needed a good color printer for our computer lab at school. We have been using HP Deskjet 952c's, but the cart costs were killing us. Every third party cart we tried was miserable. Apparently HP has really made it harder than ever for third parties.
.05 cents per.
d uc t.pl?product=8200&cache=miss
Last month after a lot of research, we purchased the Xerox/Tektronix Phaser 8200 solid ink printer. Yes, we're not talking about a $200 inkjet here, but we spent over $2000 on inkjet carts alone last year! The printer cost us about $1800 but with the much cheaper consumables will probably pay for itself within a year or two.
This machine is incredible. The resolution isn't so hot, so don't look for the sharpest color, but because of the way the color is done (wax transfer), it looks really good for 99% of what our students do.
The most important things about this printer are cost per page and speed. It's one of the few color printers that can really live up to the hype speed-wise and they are not afraid to talk about consumables like their competitors.
Already third parties are starting to offer colorstix that are half of what Xerox is charging. That makes cost per page less than
Check out the campy videos on the Xerox page too.
http://www.officeprinting.xerox.com/cgi-bin/pro
They really put the smackdown on the HP 4000 series lasers. Whew!
It doesn't have anything on either the CUPS Printing system. Or anything on Lasers before the 4 series.
"As to the expense of Epson heads and repair.. I think some of the horror stories are overblown. I just killed my Stylus Color 600 trying to fix it, sadly, but when you know the tricks involved, it'd be downright easy to change the heads. Problem is finding a source, but I don't think Epson's repair depots really pay $200/head."
As a former Epson tech. It's very easy to change the heads on most models. And NO the heads on most models don't cost us anywere near $200.
There's a few models that do, but they're for the commercial market. And the printers are built like tanks.
I bought an HP LaserJet 1200 and I love it. It doesn't have true licensed-from-Adobe PostScript, but it has something completely compatible, and I am perfectly content. Great quality, fast speed, convenient paper tray. And I do double-sided printing by manually feeding pages through a second time, and it works with no trouble.
Here is a tip if you buy one of these. It comes with 8 MB of RAM, but it is expandable; you can insert one memory module of up to 64 MB of RAM. HP sells these modules, but they are overpriced.
I went to Crucial.com and found that they sell a 64 MB module compatible with the LaserJet 1200 for under $25 so I bought one. My 1200 is maxed-out with 72 MB of RAM. For that price, why wouldn't you!
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Ummm...The LJ 3P(which I have) doesn't support PS natively. It supports PCL natively, and PS via a cartridge that plugs into the right side of the printer. It also comes standard with 1MB of memory, and generally needs to be upgraded in order to go the limits with it. Other than that it's built like a tank. If you get one that has trouble taking up paper, go get some "belt dressing" stuff at an auto place and apply to the takeup rollers.
I don't know about Linux support as I primarily use Linux as a server, but the HP cp1160 - though expensive - is an awesome printer with automatic double sided and multi-page-per-sheet printing which I find great. Wasting trees sucks. Also the psc960, an all-in-one printer/scanner/fax/copier is pretty nice, but not as nice as the cp1160. As for Lexmark, they used to be good, and very cheap for their quality. But I've had a few problems with them recently.
I found most all inexpensive printers were all Winprinters. They were too cheap to provide a controller. Since they are not in the printer business but in the ink business, they don't want to spend much on the razor. I think many printer manufactures get support from MS with strings attached to entice them to produce WIN only printers. MS provides the software support so the manufacture can save a bundle on hardware costs. Of course MS is not going to help the manufacture provide cross platform driver support. They are only targeting the largest protion of the market.
That is why my main printer is a networked HP Laserjet III (off a hardware printserver with linux support).
The Windows box drives the photo printer. It didn't take long to figure the diffrence in operating costs.
The truth shall set you free!
Forget the kits. Look for bulk supplies instead. I've been happy with bulk supplies. Instead of 2 or 4 oz. bottles, get the pints. Search the web for instructions for dealing with the chips, tools needed, and other supplies. Black ink at $30/pint goes a lot further than a $20 kit with a 2 oz bottle.
For color photo printing on my HP 950, this has been a big moneysaver. I run the cartridge till it burns out.
The truth shall set you free!
I got this, with the Postscript ROM, for $500. It prints from anything on my mixed network (Mac, Win, Linux) via 10/100 Ethernet, and unlike most cheap printers takes a whole ream at a time. When I was doing my shopping I found out that HP charges way too much for Ethernet and most low-end lasers have paper trays that are far too small. It actually runs about 11-12 ppm on our typical workload. HP used to be the world leaders in low and mid range printers, but it looks like companies like Samsung are preparing to eat their lunch. Too much time spent calculating executive benefits after mergers?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Here is an other article from an HP insider : The great printer scam . It describes the strategies of printer manufacturers
Don't forget also Understanding, Reversing, and Hacking HP Printers , which however may be a bit off topic but was the original article to which the above on refers.
We used hundreds of these gravity fed HPs (5L,6L,1100) at a previous company and had the service techs in every week to sort out misfeed problems, which was costing a fortune. I couldn't believe we were the only people suffering from this problem and after reading around I discovered HP were offering a replacement separation pad free of change. I ordered 500 pieces, expecting HP to call me demanding a shipping fee, so it was much to my surprise that a large box arrived a couple of weeks later. Installing one of these pads was a piece of cake and was usually enough to extend the printer life such that we could write off the printer the next time it failed. If you have one of these printers with a misfeed problem, try a search on the HP web site for 'separation pad'.
After reading this post I went to Samsung site
(I have a ml1250 printer, not yet configured
for linux) in search for drivers...
There is a *linux* driver, and it is an EXE file!
After the first shock/amusement I downloaded
the file anyway and discovered that it is
a standard zip file with a bad name... phew.
A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous.
I guess all this discussion could be shortened a lot if anyone cared to check http://www.linuxprinting.org
l
The have a list of recommended printers (based on price, print quality with linux and manufacturer conduct) here:
http://www.linuxprinting.org/suggested.htm
Go on and read it, it will make your decision a lot easier.
P.S: Avoid HP LJ1100, we had two of them and after three months they stopped working. The repair kit HP sent us did not fix the problem.
That was my last HP, I am currently using a Kyocera mita Ecosys FS-1010, which works flawlessly under SuSE-7.3/8.0 with cups and gives very nice print results.
Moritz
I have to cast a vote for Epson. Not because thier printers are the best on the market... In fact they aren't any better or any worse than any I've tested. But the service is #1.
... My wife declares we need a scanner for all of here pics of my son. I say ok can I get a printer to.. She agrees. I go out finding an Office Max that was closing it's doors and buy both a scanner and an Epson 777 on sale. Dummy me forgot to check to see if Linux had the drivers. (ooops)
... so he wrote me personally) but for now the 710 drivers would work. Poof I'm up and running and sure enough the next version of cups drivers update had the 777.
November 2001
No drivers for the 777 in my then current Linux install. Send Epson an E-mail... Next day I get a response. They tell me that the next version of Cups will have the drivers (One the the employee's was a Linux user
May 2002 I changed the ink because it was out.. and now my printer won't recognize the new cartridges.... Call customer support... I'm under warranty. The tech has me perform a few checks to try and get it to reset... (all the tests were actually relavant too, none of this... is your printer faceing your computer or the wall BS.) No luck. The tech then tells me that my printer is dead but they have a problem.... since the no longer make my model, he can send me a new one, but it will have to be the next model up... at no charge. Well shoot me and call be a target. I'm not going to complain.. 3 days later my printer arrives via UPS with everything enclosed to send the old one back to Epson at no charge. I get a new printer. AND they even replaced the cartidges I bought since they weren't compatible with the new printer. All at no charge. Am I happy with Epson... you better believe it... Oh and guess who got the contract for my companies new printers...!
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
I work technical support for Second Fleet in Norfolk, and I can say without a doubt that most of our printer problems are because of the users ;) How? /shrug :)
;)
Well, my department is supposed to buy all the equipment for the rest of the command, but someone got lazy and decided to let each department purchase their own equipment. Evidentally it sounded nice to some commander, but in the end they all buy stuff without consulting us first (don't they all?)
Don't get me wrong, when we're in our building instead of the ship, the Phaser 850s and 860s we have are really nice, aside from the 10 - 20 minute wait while it melts the crayons. Heck, even the smell is kinda neat, reminds me of being a kid. But what they don't tell you is that Phasers are not approved for shipboard use... we've had 3 $1500 incidents that I know of because our clueless 'customers' won't turn them off when the ship goes into heavy rolls or when we swap power from ship to shore.
The 4050s that we have, they're pretty nice too, in fact, aside from some initial driver stupidity and the fact that our print switches hate bi-directional comms, they work flawlessly. Oddly enough once I put in charge of procuring drivers and misc software, most of our problems with drivers have ended.
Anyways, those are my two recommendations for good printers if you're on shore
ET3 Fuesting
Commander Second Fleet
Norfolk VA
Couldn't be happier. A new toner cartridge from half.com cost me $23 with shipping. Bought it just in cast the toner cartridge that came with printer *ever* runs out.
Sick to death of outragously expensive ink cartridges, messy refill kits that don't work, cartridges drying up is you don't use them etc.
No color, but the HPLJ II just works and works, not matter what I do.
I have a trusty Canon BJC-6000 for about 4 years. It is still performing to this day. The main thing that originally sold me is the individual color cartridges and replaceable print heads (one for black, one for color). It also has a special print head (and ink cartridges) for photography printing that can be swapped with the black print head. I run a lot of documents, full-color labels, and glossy prints; the quality is more than acceptable. If the quality starts to slip, replace the print head. Problem solved.
While it is expensive to replace the print head ($40 for black, $60 a pop for color/photo, full set of ink included), they last about 2 years of heavy use. Off-the-shelf ink is expensive, so I buy refills from http://www.extracartridges.com for $5 each.
Fools ignore complexity; pragmatists suffer it; experts avoid it; geniuses remove it. ~A. Perlis
the sp960 and sp2200 are both awesome printers.
on glossy paper, the dye-based sp960 looks, well, perfect. the color reproduction is really very impressive.
on matte paper, the pigment-based sp2200 is awesome, especially using the special "matte black" cartridge. also, pigment is water resistent and it doesn't fade in sunlight the way dye does.
also, if you will be using paper wider than letter-size, you'll want the wide-format sp2200.
basically, if you want long-lasting, large, artistic prints, get the 2200. if you want glossy photographs with rich colors, get the 960.
while i have little complaint with the general quality of epsons printers, i would warn you not to buy an epson inkjet if you are not going to use it frequently.
epson is one of the few inkjet makers that i know of whose ink nozzles are not a part of the replaceable cartridges. while this may sound like a good idea to cost conscious users, it also has the potential to cause a lot of trouble. whether due to the design of the nozzle or the formula of the ink, the ink has a tendency to dry out in the ink nozzles. unfortunatley, once this happens the only way to fix the problem is to have the entire print assembly replaced. every single person i've known has has owned an epson inkjet (including myself) has had it rendered useless within a year due to clogged nozzles.
perhaps hp's printer line has significantly deteriorated in recent years, but for me the deskjets have been some of the least troublesome electronic deveices i've ever used. my parents are still using their 7 year old 500C, and after my epson died, i bought a used 8(hundred-something) which has worked flawlessly for me ever since. maybe their quality died when they made the switch from white plastic boxes to grey swoopy things.
at any rate, out of the three manufacturers you list, i would reccommend canon. i don't know anything about their linux support (or if that's even important to you) but out of the three, i've had the least bad experiences with them. my girlfriend replaced her epson with a canon about a year ago and has been happy with it so far. (at least i haven't been called to figure out what's wrong with it yet) my dad also had one a while back that worked well for several years, although it did require a bit of care in handling (unusual considering it was marketed as a compact printer designed to be carried around with a laptop)
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Had the same problem with the 6L, as I assume everyone who ever owned one has, but was actually pleasantly surprised by the free/no-questions-asked cardboard fix. It worked & it was free -- problem solved.
Anyway, half-assed solutions aside, I actually got a message some time back about a Class-Action suit regarding this defect:
http://laserjet.classaction.hp.young-america.com/
Haven't read the fine print, but seems like some customers might get up to $75 refunded...