Slashdot Mirror
Color Printing Without the Inkjet Mess?
Above writes "Many recent /. stories have been about the problems of inkjet Printers. Seems they all want to sell the printer for cheap, and then use the ink to make up the difference. There are also problems where a lack of printing, or printing too much, could make it much more expensive to use your inkjet. So, since mine just died, what are the best options? I'm intersted in two catagories, a 'personal' color printer, probably USB to a machine, and a 'workgroup' color printer, with ethernet, postscript prefered. While Windows is good for my application, something that plays well with FreeBSD and Linux would be a major win as well. I'd consider laser if it's cheap enough (read $500/printer), and I don't think that it is. I'm willing to pay a bit more for the printer if that means bigger ink tanks, better cleaning, and easier to buy replacement supplies, the question is, are there really good options out there or have the low-end 'throwaway' printers taken over the market?" One option is a modded inkjet like the ones here, liberated from tiny ink cartridges. Any recommendations out there for decent color lasers?
You're looking for a hardcore printer it sounds like. Pay the extra buck and get a color laser printer - it'll do everything you want (sounds like it) and it'll last a while - postscript won't go out of date for a long time! Besides, toner costs are pretty low given how long they last.
Sig & Below
Yuck Fou
I recommend Canon printers with the seperate color cartridges. I laugh at my friend who saved 50$ on his printer, but has already thrown out 2 good tanks of red/blue because his yellow ran out.
Best color printer I have ever used. Fast and reliable. Tonner should last quite a while, however at $200 a pop (x4), it's probably going to be out of your price range. Most lasers today, and even some high end inkjets support PostScript, so they should be compatible with Linux.
Multi-function...approx. USD$850.00 - Mac/PC
Samsung's ML-1650 offers Linux compatability and Postscript level III as an option. All for around $300.
For a cheap InkJet solution THG recommends the Canon i850.
If you live somewhere that accepts 3rd party cartages / refils, then inkjet is probably the way to go... cheap printer, cheap source of toner.
If you live in a backwards nation like the US (not-so-proudly a resident as of late) where the DMCA makes you pay out the ass for toner, then you are in a bind... pony up for a color laser, which, if you can expense out over time, or know you will be printing a lot for the next 4 years, will more than pay for itself, or.... Hmm, I dunno if there is a low up-front cost solution for long term color printing in a country that doesn't allow 3rd party ink carts / refills.
=(
I hopr somebody gives a better answer than this.
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
Check out ebay... I snagged a Phaser 740 for $100 or so, plus $100 shipping.. Though I had to replace a few of the consumables (which can be expensive), its been a great printer.. Networkable, Postscript level 3... Slow to warmup (3-5 minutes..), but hey, it works, and prints great..
I got that for the reason that I don't print enough, and my ink was constantly drying out...
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
You're not going to find a color laser printer for $500. Not even close. You'd be pressed to find a decent black and white laser printer that does postscript for that price. You might want to look into a printer like the Epson 2200. We have several of them where I work, and while not postscript or laster based, there is a continuous flow kit that works pretty well, and they're firewire based so not too bad in terms of speed. As a note on the price range, we spent ~$5k on our last crummy color laser printer and are finally getting a really nice one in a few weeks for $25k. They're not cheap by any means.
Well, consider the technology for a moment. If you're not willing to shell out the ton of money a color laser costs why not get a deskjet and a B&W Laser?
I have an older laser printer that prints reems of black and white (text documents mainly) and I've never replaced the toner. For photos I have a 100 dollar epson that prints out 7200x7200 or something ridiculous. The laser was 70 from ebay and the color printer was 60 dollars on special from best buy. Figure you'll print 2-3 cartridges worth of color and then buy a new printer (specs will have improved and at the cost of color printers a new one isn't much more than new cartridges).
The HP 4L I have is old but its a workhorse. 300dpi but it never complains about the documents I send it. Its outlasted 3 colorprinters now.
Go to http://www.freecolorprinters.com
A friend of mine has two of these solid ink lasers. She has to buy ink from them at normal prices, but she gets all the black ink she wants for free. Service included. You have to qualify in terms of how much of various types of docs you print.
About 10 years ago a few companies experimented with wax based color 'laser' printers. I haven't seen any advertized in quite some time though. There might be one or two companies out there still doing them. As I recall, thier advantages were very low 'ink' (read: wax cartrage) costs, color, price (As compared to color laser at the time... was still 8-10k then). Thier disadvantages were: long warm up times, very slow printing, requiring special paper, poor image detail, inability to laminate, and probably a few others.
Some quick googleing hasn't produced much for results aside from a few kodak photo printer models in the $800-900 range
If anyone has any knowledge as to how these printers evolved, I'm interested as well.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
plus shiping. Just do a google search for "ink" and click on the ads. Brand name ink for this printer is about $50, but knockoffs are cheap, and work. I guess if you stay away from lexmark you should be OK.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Check out PCWorld's running Top 10 Color Laser Printers list.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
I needed an ink cartridge for my Canon S450 and Lexmark X32. Well, I checked the prices on both, and it was $38 and $32 respectively (just black). While I was at Best Buy, they have a new Epson C82 printer special. $99.99 and you get two mail-in rebates for $20 and $50, making the cost of the printer $29.99.
My friend calls them disposable printers.
Printing is for wusses; crayons add so much "feel" and atmosphere to a picture!
Hate me!
If you live in a backwards nation like the US (not-so-proudly a resident as of late) where the DMCA makes you pay out the ass for toner, then you are in a bind...
What does printer ink have do do with the DMCA?! I'll answer that for you. NOTHING!!!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
While that is a very cool idea, and one I've never heard of, one look at the price says why. It seems logical to me that any 4 color, CYMK printer would cost pretty much the same to convert, but obviously this is not the case. Epson C60 sells regulary for about $65, and the converted one sells for $499 Wheras the C80 sells for about $85 and the converted unit runs $749. Why the extra cost I have no idea. And that website is very porrly designed and aparenty unfinished. While a cool idea, and a 6 color large formant printer like the ones they sell would give great results cheaply. This site offers the kits to do it yourself, so you can save yourself from cartridges and save yourself $200 by doing it yourself in true slashdot fashion.
Bork Bork Bork!!
That's what you want my friend if you want the lowest cost per page. Quite a few people are running these in Cannon S series and some of the middle tier Epsons for commercial use. More Info here http://www.weink.com/ecart/crs.htm although I'm sure there are other manufacturers as well. The inks in the kits are rated for 20 years under glass. I've been using them myself (not the CRS, but the same inks) for about 7 months now and I'm happy as a pig in slop.
there have been a lot of specials on color lasers lately.. the cheap minolta has what you need but is a bit more spendy in the long run in terms of toner life.. we just purchased an HP 1500 color laser and just love it. plus.. even the coated and photo-style paper is far far cheaper than their inkjet equivalents (like.. 3 to 12 cents a page when compared with 50 cents with some premium inkjet papers...) in a workgroup situation, i see a color laser far out-producing the inkjet and paying for itself in savings even before the toner runs out.. (the 1500 is good for about 4,000 sheets per drum. plus, it also actually keeps track of how much toner it's used from each color and recalculates the life expectancy of the cartridge.. neat huh?) We're still using up our inkjets.. (two canons, an 8200 and a 800) and love them.. got a big stack of the spendy ink too gott sell or use. oh yeah.. the color last much longer too and is definitely waterproof.. I hate to hock HP a lot, but they have some archival quality paper they call tough paper, waterproof, tear resistant, coated both sides, and are supposed to last 30 years or more.. priced it just under the paper we had been using (premium kodak photo paper) and couldnt believe it.
I've been dealing with LOTS of printing issues and printer headaches for years and years. (I did PC support for 6 years for a company with lots of networked printers, not to mention doing sales for a few years that often involved printer recommendations.)
I really do like a good color laser printer, BUT, I'm not convinced these are practical yet for most home users. I know prices have come down quite a bit - but a color laser is still a very complex piece of machinery. You generally have 4 toner cartridges, plus all the additional hardware that allows the printer to mix those toner colors on the page, fuser rolls, charger grids, and other assorted "disposable" items that aren't a factor with a plain black and white laser.
Everyone I know who bought a Xerox (formerly Tektronics) color laser is sitting there now with a broken laser in need of expensive repairs.
Inkjet printers have virtually no repair costs, because if one stops feeding paper properly or a print nozzle just quits squirting ink - you throw the thing away and buy a whole new (likely faster and better) printer for less than the cost of a service call, and you're back up and running.
Last time I saw a real cost analysis done, a color laser cost you about 2 or 3 cents per page to print in full color. If you buy the right inkjet printer, the cost is probably about 4 to 5 cents per page.
These cost calculations don't factor in the issue of repairing or replacing broken printers. They make the assumption that both units are fully functional for the duration of time you print those pages. Figuring in repair costs, I'd say an inkjet becomes cheaper and more convenient in the long-haul. (They use less electricity too.)
Beware of freecolorprinter.com. Not as good a deal.
I'd venture that a lot of those inkjets people want to get rid of are from the cheaper end of the spectrum. No matter the era, you get what you pay for. In this case, regardless of the price of the cartridge. When looking at inkjets set your minimum price to about $280 for light use consumer printers, or maybe something like $380 for a heavier duty/business higher use unit.
I've had an HP Photosmart 1000 for over 2 years now with no problems. This printer goes through a couple of idle months, followed by couple days of heavy photo printing. Runs like a champ. Of course cartridge prices are a little high, but printers with dedicated black cartidges are a lot more economical to run that ones without. Given the amount of printing I do, it's still more affordable than laser.
I think you'll have a hard time buying a color laser in the price range your looking for. If your willing to pony up the cash, today's color lasers are really nice and the way to go. If you are going to do a lot of printing, the laser will be cheaper in the long run.
The ink is, uh, a copyrighted formula? And the printer access hatch is an access device. Yes, yes, and by opening up the printer to refill it and walking backwards, you are reverse engineering!
Et voila!
this is a sig.
I think he's referring to the chips in the manufacturers cartridges which have features specifically to prevent refilling. DMCA might have some influence over whether a 3rd party can "hack" the cartridge's chip back to a full state after doing a refill.
Actually, it does. Certain manufacturers are sueing people under the DMCA for refilling ink cartridges. The cartridges contain a chip saying whether they're empty, so cracking this chip is arguably circumvention...
You might want to take a look at the Minolta magicolor 2300W, Its $200 over your budget but the 2300DL one we have here has served us well so far, the main difference between the W and DL is the addition of a ethernet port and an extra $100 to the price.
The chip is not a copyright access control, since copyrights are not involved, neither is the DMCA.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Wish you were right, but...
Google search for Lexmark+DMCA
They've got a color laser at $500. I dunno what the brand was, but given today's printer market, it's probably a rebadged HP,Lexmark, or Epson.
While I can't comment on particular models, as my laser is a b&w, lasers kick the ass of ANY inkjet quite handily. As long as the printer can handle postscript, getting it to work in unix is a snap.
TODO: Something witty here...
Is there a guide out there to modding an inkjet yourself? I can't even afford to have a printer, I just get by without.
Recently we bought a HP 2500 Color laser for ~$800. There are other cheaper color laser out there, but having used a few Xerox (Tektronics) laser printers at work, the HP's work much better.
IMHO, Lexmark's arguments are very strained, but resellers aren't looking for a fight, even one they can win. As a result, generic ink cartridges are hard to find.
obTopic: I think a lot of people are boycotting Lexmark over this, so don't go there, whatever you do.
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The color is usually superior (at a given price point, it's almost always superior), and the price per print of a dye-sub is much better than an inkjet. The resolution is higher as well.
you're going to want to keep your inkjet printer for b&w document printing, because it'll be slightly faster, and much cheaper than than dye-sub for this purpose.
Wrote a story about it....
Plenty
Why should the DMCA have anything to do with printer ink? That's a much better question.
We bought a used Tektronix Phaser printer several years ago for the office. We've never looked back. Maintenance is virtually zero. Adding more wax is trivial, possibly easier/cleaner than toner. Black wax is free with our model (ie, ultra cheap per-page costs for B&W documents), and you pay for color wax. Output quality is fantasic whether it's B&W text, solid color regions, or near-photo quality. You could certainly burn a lot of wax if you printed color photos or solid pages all the time, but your B&W docs will be cheap.
As far as connectivity and compatibility...
Windows: Great. Drivers are easy found and work great.
Linux: The printer sits on our LAN with its own IP address, etc. so when I print from my Linux desktop I simply have a script that fires the [text/PDF]->Postscript straight into the printer's listening port. And I'm sure there's a better way to print to this printer from Linux (with Samba) that allows for proper queuing, etc.
First cavaet: The printer has a warmup sequence that keeps itself clean and ensures liquid wax is ready when needed. The good news is you never really have to think about turning it on or off or whatever; it just wakes up and warms itself up. (In fact, don't turn it off or it goes through an extended power-up cycle that burns additional wax.) The downside here is that it does burn a small amount of color wax each warmup and eventually I guess you'd run out of the color wax even if you weren't doing color printing. In real usage, this hasn't been an issue for our office, but I thought I'd mention it.
Second cavaet: This is a fairly big, heavy, expensive printer. It performs like a professional printer, not a light-duty home inkjet. So you do get what you pay for here, in my opinion.
Ours is an 800-series Phaser, but here are some current models from Xerox. And check into the free black wax issue -- I'm not sure if it's still the standard policy.
You might want to consider why you want the printer. It's probably cheaper these days to buy a whole computer for everyone you'd want to share them with and send them burnt cd's full of images...
If you are making pamphlets and the such, then shell out the cash for a swanky laser printer. In my experience HP networked printers are good while not being outrageously expensive.
Now days it seems that buying catridges run 40-50 dollars for a low-end inkjet and Cosco and the likes sells brand new printers with ink for 50-70 dollars. So what about buying new printers every time and selling what you don't use on ebay. seems you could get ink fairly cheap with just a little extra time spent on posting and shipping printers.
I recommend anything by QMS (which is now minolta-qms). In the past, I've used a QMS 2040 (which is a b/w laser than can handle at least 11in wide paper) that was 8-10 years old (give or take).
It is still working today, more than 5 years since I have last used it.
Is it slow, yes, is it old, yes, but it is still working after 13-15 years.
QMS has traditionally been a bit more expensive, and the price of the toner was no more than an equivanent HP.
-CPM
---You're all I need, When the water runs deep, You're all I need, Now I cry my soul to sleep -- Collective Soul, Needs
A few months ago Xerox was offering a "free" color laser printer if you were willing to buy a few hundred $$$ per month in toner from Xerox.
Since when did SQL require that you put apostrophes around column names?
The apostrophes are used to delimit literal character data.
I still have an ALPS MD-1300 "micro-dry" thermal printer, with tape-based cartridges like a typewriter. It's a workhorse, never has any inky mess, and puts out great output, especially in dye-sub mode. Alps doesn't make printers anymore, and although the cartridges sets are on par with inkjets as far as package cost, they're separate for each color and last quite long.
I'm not sure I'd buy a discontinued printer, but I wish someone would continue developing this superior technology.
It may be out of your price range, but when you consider just how much better a solid ink printer actually is, it becomes worth every extra penny. i have used a Xerox Phaser 850 for years. It has been the best printer i have ever used in just about every regard from print quality and reliability to cost and ease of use.
:)
and it is sort of like printing with crayons
DO NOT BUY XEROX!
Outside of the connotations the model number may bring about, The BJ3000 is pretty awesome. large ink tanks, not small cartridges, capillary ink feed (gets all that weight off of the moving parts) and pretty spiffy print quality.
Networked inkjets, as late as a year ago, were fairly prevalent, with models available from just about all of the major vendors. I don't know what happened - whether it's a sign that color laser is entering the sub-$1000 marketspace or what - but when we looked for a networked color inkjet, HP was really the best option out there.
Epson seems to have dropped their mid-range workgroup inkjets. The only model they have networked out of the box is the C82, which is a rather low-end printer - nothing I'd consider a workgroup printer. Canon likewise has absolutely no networked inkjets at all.
Lexmark has a few networked inkjets, but what with the recent stuff with their using the DMCA to corner the inkjet cartridge market, and given we've used Lexmark printers and had mediocre quality out of them, I decided to pass. The only model they are still marketing/selling is the Lexmark Optra Color 45n, if you're interested.
HP has a couple of decent models - the 2280 and the 3000. We ended up going with the 2280 here, but both are very good models. The one caveat that I'd have to say - make sure you get the latest JetDirect EIO card. The older ones had a PITA for a web interface, while the new ones are a dream to work with (and support ZeroConf/Rendezvous!)
site mirror here.
For day to day printing, I use a cheap HP 3100 monochrome printer. Toner can be stored a long time, costs little, and gives excellent results. However, businesses learned long ago that owning and maintaining and owning something like a color laser printer can be expensive. When I want to print something special, I use the Kinkos KFP tool and just pick up my prints anytime (open 24 hours). If I want a photo, I upload it to clubphoto.com when they're having a promotion or I'll use the Fuji machine at the local super wal-mart. I generally avoid using the Kodak kiosks as they use thermal dye sublimation, like a color laser printer. The Fuji's use real photo paper and expose the image. Pretty decent results. But my best prints have been from clubphoto and yahoo photo prints. So I've completely eliminated little ink cartridges from my life, that is except for relatives needing them. I usually direct them to ink4art.com.
My school got a pair of Phaser 840s for free under some stress-test program for the main lab. All we had to do was provide the paper, and call the service guys when it broke (which it did only once in my four years there).
Seeing that this model has been discontinued, you may want to check out the $300 savings on the Phaser 8200.
"Dying tickles!" -- Ralph Wiggum
As their carts are smaller, and much cheaper.. plus normally their colors are sold in individual colors..
Qualit is good too..
For work group, go Laser.. if you can afford it..
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
Generally, my experience with color inkjet printers has been that you get what you pay for. My first color inkjet was a Lexmark 5700 that my folks bought for me. I think it was moderately priced back in the day. And that printer performed admirably. It was fairly quick, produced good quality output, and was pretty reliable until it up and quit on me for no real reason one day.
I replaced that one with a Lexmark Z23 because on paper it had similar specs to my old 5700. Yeah, it was cheaper, but I just kind of assumed that the Z23 was a cheaper, updated version of my old 5700. Wrong. I had more problems with that printer than I've ever had with any other printer. It seems like every time I printed out a document to turn in for school, I had to clean the nozzles 2 or 3 times and realign the cartridges. Even then, I would still have some gaps in the print where the printer just didn't seem to cover.
Since then I have bought a used HP Deskjet 895ci. The thing was in practically brand new condition and I have yet to experience any problems with it.
I don't necessarily think that the market has been taken over by the cheap printers. Yes, they are quite common and they sell very well. But, I think that as long as you are willing to spend a little more than the average consumer (I'm guessing above the $150 range) then you will probably get a halfway decent color inkjet printer.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
Go to EBay and look for a 740 or 750 model. We have one of each, and they are great. Very good color, good reliability, and you can pick one up cheap. Grab all the cartriges you can find, because they dont make these models anymore.
Not a copyright access control, that's for sure. DMCA does not aply.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Price is right.
I have yet to get a color printer, I use an HP 6L for B&W here at home. It works with my Sun Ultra/2, Apple Beige G3, and all my x86 boxen. Printer is connected to an OpenBSD IBM ThinkPad 300X.
This setup could be done with a color printer as well. This is an energy effcient, PostScript-compatible RIP, that can also generate PDFs (as well as other Raster, Bitmap, and Vector based formats).
I can print PostScript 3 and native PDF from *ANY* platform, thanks to MagicFilter and GhostScript.
Oh yeah, this post was about color, well, when I print color, I use the Xerox DocuColor 2045 Digital Press at work via SSH/LPD.
=)
For image quality you absolutely cannot beat the Epson Stylus 2200P. Laserjets just don't have the color saturation and resolution of something like this wonderful instrument. Pictures look absolutely wonderful.
This is my sig.
There was a nice looking color laser for ~$600-$700 at Sam's Club. I know it had parallel and Ethernet, I am reasonably sure it had USB too.
If you do a lot of printing, I'm sure the extra cost is well worth it.
What the author really means is "I intend to use this exclusively on Windows. But since this is Slashdot, I have to mention *nix somewhere to get it posted."
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
They're backquotes, not apostrophes. Some dialects allow this (or variants) to enable referencing of column names which are reserved words. Though I question the need for them here...
GENERAL PUBLIC SIGNATURE (GPS) Any replies (derivatives) of this post must also use the GPS
I've seen the guy who modifies the Epson printers at ComputerPro shows in Charlotte. They look nice but we very careful. He's never answered any of my emails asking about the ink. He'll claim he's tested all kinds of inks and is using a custom formula. Riiiight. I sell printing machiens for packaging. This guy's printer business is a hobby. He's got custom small batches of precise ink being made just for him? Uh-huh. Maybe it's a standard ink with a ph modification or something like that. Custom ink is expensive. The point is, if you buy one of these, all indications are you'd be locked into him as your sole source for ink.
My favourite printer is the one at work. ;)
...a more robust setup. I would recommend a monochrome laser printer for text operations, paired with a dye sublimation printer for color.
I use two Kodak 8650 printers (pick one up for a couple grand on ebay) for a commercial application that is probably beyond the scope of the submitter, but the quality (indistinguishable from a lab print), reliability (over 800 9x14" prints/week at times), and durability (light-fast for more than 20 years)
Olympus, Kodak, Sony, and others have items at more reasonable price points.
No doubt; for color, go dye-sub. Then again, I own an Epson 1280 photo that does really nice work as well. I have installed an Epson 2200 for a couple of clients and they are even better.
Anyone have any experience with Minolta Magicolor printers? They do pretty well as far as price goes but I've never owned one and have been really tempted a couple times... The 2200 has a $200 rebate right now too.
Tigerdirect seems to have pretty good prices on those printers. Look here.
Every printer, whether laser or ink-jet or anything else, costs a certain amount of money to operate per page. Manufacturers are pricing printers in different ways: some have bigger up-front costs and smaller ink costs, others do it the other way around and charge a premium for the ink.
If you don't erroneously assume that a cheaper printer translates into a cheaper product, you are fine: just calculate what the per-page costs are and pick the cheapest one for your needs. You can save some money with refills, but at the cost of more hassle on your part; you yourself have to know whether you want to bother. I generally don't. Once ink costs are of the same order of magnitude as the paper, I really don't care that much anymore.
Had it about 6 months, moderate home use. good quality (great if you are willing to wait for forever for the "Best" quality, but "Draft" is fine for most uses and prints pretty fast, like 12 pages a minute or something). Replaced both the color and b&W cartridges once sofar and have had no problems. I think you can get them now for under $200. I saw a similar one at cosco the other day with a few less bells and whistles for around $120. Worth a look for home use.
I picked up a Minolta Magic Color 2200DL (I think that's the model number, there are a couple that are pretty close) for just over $500 from a Dell Deal(tm) a few months back. I'm not a heavy duty user, my HP 5mp is still on its original toner cartridge. The Minolta lacks postscript, so it is 'windows only' but last I checked it looked like one of the ghostscript drivers and/or something from CUPS could be adapted to do the right thing.
Plus side: Takes standard PC100 or PC133 ram, so stuck some old dimms in it to take it up to 192MB or so.
Down side: It doesn't come with much RAM to begin with.
Plus side: It comes with a 100baseT port built in.
Down side: Speaks an officially undocumented, but apparently well-known queueing protocol.
Plus side: It was under $600 shipped.
Down side: Comes with partially filled toner cartridges, good for like 2000 pages instead of 5000 or something equally unfull.
Plus side: You can buy individual toner carts, instead of all 4 CYMK carts at once.
Down side: Toner costs a lot, like $125 per cartridge.
Plus side: Prints really fast, like a real 4 ppm color and a real 16 ppm b&w
Down side: Takes like two minutes to warm up out of stand-by.
YMMV, I was too lazy to double-check my facts and just went from tequila-addled memory.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
There is another variety of printer not covered in this...
Line Matrix. Instead of a small moving head of pins, there is a large oscillating shuttle with a number of pins evenly spaced. The oscillation allows the pins to cover the entire print area. The ribbon is angled across the print surface so that each pin uses a different space on it.
I have worked on/with a few of them - primarily old DEC high-volume green-bar printers.
Not that this is an option for the initial request. They are good with multi-part forms, though.
I liked the Apple Color LaserWriter 12/600. The Canon engines in Apple's printers and the compatibility made them excellent choices. I don't know what you could pick one up for these days, though.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
My predecssor got suckered by the very cheap up-front purchase price on this machine. It was, IIRC, something in the order of AUD$3900.00.
'course, it is during my reign and my budget that the beast needs new toner cartridges, isn't it! AUD$400.00 a pop (times four, C, M, Y, and K)
This machine proved to be so expensive to run that we made a commercial decision to shut it off for a few months, and now we run it with a FreeBSD box bridging it from the rest of the network, with MAC layer filtering restricting access to just a couple of people.
It isn't even that nice a printer on quality terms. Any cheap inkjet gives far better quality (resolution, clarity, colour match, etc) results than this huge beast!
Your Mileage May Vary - mine obviously does!
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
...that is currently cost effective. If I remember correctly, the manufacturer's name is crayola.
And of course Canon printers are supported by foomatic. My BJC-2110 works with Red Hat 9 out of box.
If you're only into printing pictures, do what I did: throw your printer out or give it to someone, and print all your photos online. I recommend ShutterFly.com.
Just do a search on Lexmark DMCA. You'll be surprised.
There's no such thing as 'copyrighted encryption'. I suppose you could patent an encryption algorithm, but that wouldn't be covered by the DMCA.
The encryption on a DVD is there to prevent copying the code on an ink cartage is there to prevent printing Only one of them has anything to do with COPYRIGHTS, and the Digital Millennium Copyright act applies to only one situation.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I love those Tek Phasers! It was well worth the wait to print from one of those. When my school got rid of them, and replaced them with a cheap HP injket, the picture didn't look right. I should of picked that one up that was on a donation pallet...
Actually I have tried 2 printers with the gimp-print drivers for linux, both perform better than windows (note i only use b&w).
I had a Desktop 340 (smallest printer i've ever seen, smaller than the size of 2 shoeboxes or so.. and quite old) ... the quality was a tad higher in linux, but the quality is so poor already its hard to notice a difference
Epson Stylus Colour 600 ... now this surprised me.... the quality is poor in windows... even at highest quality at 1440 res... lots of bleeding... in linux it is like a high quality laser printer (even though it takes 10 minutes or longer to print a page), and even with hardware microweaving off (which can damage the heads) it is excellent quality... and the thing is somebody gave me this printer because they were dissapointed with the quality...
my guess is the manufacturers make the drivers use more ink then is really needed so you gotta pay for another cartridge ... or they for some reason cant make quality drivers...
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
How much does that cost?
I worked at HP for a bit testing printers. Neat stuff, boring job. I'm under an NDA with them so no hints.
The explanation I received from several people was that they were either thinking about or suing people removing the tags from the cartridges and reselling them. My assumption that this has less to with the DMCA and more to do with perception of quality. I think reverse engineering the printer bios would be covered more under the DMCA and would get them quite frisky.
I would advise against using refilled cartridges for most anything except sheer text printing. The heads themselves can get clogged, damaged and etc over the due course of usage. Thus leaving toner debris, smudges and etc..
Those toner carts may be pricey, but I can testify that they run a hell of a long time for what you're paying.
Plus many of the cheap colour lasers I have been looking at are quite dark/dull when compared with expensive colour lasers or even cheap inkjet printers. They also seem to be quite poor at continuous tones.
You can afford to buy several "disposable" inkjet printers for the price of even a cheap colour laser.
Colour lasers also seem a bit hit-and-miss quality wise, even within a manfacturer. We have some that are fine, then others that are pretty much lemons. I just looked at someone's Xerox that's been in for 6 months now and it seems OK. If we get one, it'll probably have an extended on-site warranty.
I am thinking of buying a cheap inkjet for home and emailing pics I want printed to the local camera store, where they are printed for about as much as it costs to get a good set of 35mm prints done.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Got money? Buy the Lexmark C750. It's not cheap, but
it prints color pages as fast as it prints B&W, which cranks. Beautiful prints and enough toner to last a decade. On the down side, it's large and heavy enough to be a washing machine. On the other hand, you can get a duplexer, auto-stapler, and other fine toys. Be your own print shop! I lust this machine. It's too fine.
If you want to save money on ink go with dot matrix. They even have color models.
I've had an Epson Stylus 740 hooked up with a CIS system for about two years. I would do it again in a hearbeat. The benenfits:
.12=(200+150+8*8+75)/4000 (200 printer, 150 for CIS, $8 ream, 75 for ink. Obviously, YMMV.
- You can tell exactly how much ink you left at a glance.
- Your price per page is around $0.12, if you print 2000 pages a year for only 2 years:
- My print quality is very good- no banding at all.
- I run two weekly crons, one to print a color bar pattern and one to run an extra cleaning cycle. Only once did I have a clogged head, and a couple extra cleaning cycles cleared it up.
- With any amount of diligence, you will never run out of ink in the middle of a job.
- You get the satisfaction of knowing you're not paying pure profit for carts.
I would definitely recommend that if you go this route, you get a new printer and do CIS from day one. If not, invest in the cleaning solution to get every last bit of old ink out and your heads totally clean. This I learned the hard way.
If you have more questions, you can email me at jmgallag at attbi dot com.
Also black ink is free. If you buy a color set, you get a free pack of black. Picture of ink. One thing and I can't stress this enough. Ink is not cross compatable across many models, so the bow tie ink should not go into the oval slot even if the color is right. The different printers they make use different temp inks. If you load 800 series ink into an 300 series system you'll damage the print head because the ink will solidify in the tubes. If you do the opposite, you could burn the ink. Common preventative maintanance is to run a cleaning page. If the print has lines in it, run the "light stripes" test. After a while you have to replace the oil roller. There is a small chip on the roller that counts pages to keep you from using the printer past the roller's designed usage period. Also after about a whole pack of ink has been used, you'll have to dump the drip tray. The easiest way is if the tray is still hot, run it under a cold water faucet, the ink will shrink slightly and you can bang it against a trash can and it will come loose.
I picked it up at OfficeMax/Depot for something like $50 and got a $30 rebate (it was listed on slickdeals.net). I then go over to eBay and buy cheapo ink from someone and buy enough of it to make it last for about a year. Total $$ spent, less than $70. Works good enough for me and the little bit of printing that I do. Even looked pretty good when I used the free borderless glossy paper that came with the printer.
Its a USB printer, so I can use it with my iBook and my PC, will someday setup the wireless printer through XP, but that is another post.
Man, I have a serious case of envy.. those printers are really nice. I had a chance to use one (at $3/page, thnx) at university several years back and was very impressed by it.
I'm currently looking at getting an Olympus P400 (A4 dye-sub).. mmm.
I just bought an HP 2000c for $5 at a salvation army. You should check out your local resale shop.
what sig?
I just bought one too, and this is a really impressive printer. I paid $40 at amazon.com, and the ink cartriages are cheap. I am very impressed with this Canon.
kinko's is about a buck a page. Shutterfly charges about 50 cents for a 4x6 print.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I recommend the Canon i850 Color printer. It does excellent photos, is relatively inexpensive and canon doesn't seem to encumber their ink cartridges.
I also got a hawking USB print server (~ $60) and it's now a network printer.
Take a look at how easy it is to assign this thing an ip address and have a network printer.
I pay $1.00 for color at Kinkos in Seattle. I think BW is $.50. For an occasional homework cover sheet for the kids it's great. You can specify standard or glossy finishes,and weights from 20 to 60#. The default printer is a Fiery(sp),but you can also print on a Tektronics if you are in a hurry. My son's artwork looks like a magazine cover and I will NEVER change another color cartrage again!
I bet with the economy the way it is office equipment suppliers would have some excellent package deals that you just couldn't beat trying to DIY.
***
Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).
The parent's Sig at the time I write this:
"My database does not encompass the dynamics of human peer bonding." -- T-101
I believe you will find that "human pair-bonding" is more like it, as that term refers to courtship and mating rituals.
Then again, maybe the T-101 really just doesn't know how to get Freenet talking to other nodes.
Or maybe it was "pear bonding" and he is trying to glue fruit to himself, unsuccessfully.
With that accent, who can tell for sure. You would think that a machine sent infiltrate the Resistance HQ in order to kill John Connor would at least speak with the same accent as the rest of the (former) 'mericans at the base/hole.
Wait, what were we talking about? Printers? Yay! I love printers. Stupid ADD. Oh look! A kitty!
I think you can hire an Indian scribe for $5/hr, which is less than the TCO of most printers.
Dude, you should so get one of these.
Ha! I kill me!
As a previous commenter pointed out (and I replied with details), Costco is selling Minolta-QMS color laser printers with PostScript support *and* 10/100 Ethernet for $599.
Check it out.
Their website doesn't mention ethernet but I know that these have it--I saw one over the weekend.
I generally avoid using the Kodak kiosks as they use thermal dye sublimation, like a color laser printer
I would just like to note that color laser and dye sublimation are two totaly different technologies... dye sub prints are vastly superior to laser prints, and have nearly the shelf life of a standard wet print. If you are looking to print primarly photos... get a dye sub such as a kodak 8500 or 8660.. or heck even a cheep olympus p400... youl never regret it.. espicaly since unlike inkjet prints... dye sub prints are totaly water proof... spill your coffie on em??? no problem.. just wipe it off!
True but like all inkjets. Take care of that printhead. The number one repair complaint I got was related to bad print quality. Which could be traced to two things. One customer using the wrong ink in the machine. The customer let the unit sitting around a long time without doing at least a print a week. Using good quality paper is also important (especially for inkjets).
BTW Don't forget to periodically clean the unit inside. You'd be surprised how dirty these units get inside.
One thing I've been googling for recently is a cheap printer for syslog use. ;-] .... You know the only thing worse than being owned, is not knowning that you've been owned.... Hardcopy might leave me a clue.
Basically, it would need to be tractor, or have paper on a roll, and I'd say be at least 6"
wide, AND wow, anyone notice what dot-matrixes are going for ? Very few have them for 100$. Most 200+. I did find one site in my price range ( 50$), but then I reconsidered, -- can I even get ribbons for it still? Eventually, I thought tape might be better, still pricy even for old tapes... and finally I' settled on a refurb zip drive 18$ and 2 disks 12$ -- yeah I'm a cheap skate.... Basically the idea is something extra for my homenet's loghost....
Anyhow the grail of ideas of these sorts is the line printer teletype terminal, which I saw once locally in an electronic surplus store, but alas as poor college student I had no funds to purchase it... AND, yeah since I know 'ed'.. I could even use as it my only secure console for root! [Security thru nerdity
Anyone have any idea what it would take to make a printing termal today? Could someone build their own using "commodity" parts?
BTW if you have no idea what I'm talking about check out the Michel Criton (sp?) Movie Andromeda Strain, one plays a promient role there...
Anyhow it doesn't seem like thats something you can just buy anymore.. are there any firewall devices with printers?
I gave up on inkjets last February. I had already switched to doing my photo printing using dotphoto.com for about .15-.19 per photo.
I bought a Minolta 2300 DL network color laser on sale from OfficeMax for $600. The network interface is included in the base price, which makes this printer the best bargain I've seen in a color laser printer. An optional duplexer adds about $330 to the price. The protocol used by this printer is Zenographics ZjStream (JBIG based). I wrote an open source driver for it, called foo2zjs.
The printer with my driver is good enough for business graphics and casual photo printing. The resolution of this printer is 2400x600 with one bit (1 dot size) per CMYK color plane. The printer is not good enough for photo printing, but I prefer dotphoto.com for that anyway. For the price, I would buy htis printer again.
I've also got an unreleased driver for the HP LaserJet 1500 color laser printer. This printer uses Oak Technologies OAKT protocol, also JBIG based. This printer has two bits (3 dot sizes) per CMYK plane. The driver currently produces output that can be parsed and turned back into the original page images, but has never been tested on a real LJ 1500. I shelved further work on the OAKT driver due to HP's lack of interest in loaning me a LaserJet 1500 for final testing.
Anyone can sue anyone else for any reason, and invoke anything they damn well please. If Lexmark wins the case, and only then because of the DMCA, then you'll have a point. It's entirely possible that Lexmark could win even if the DMCA didn't exist. (It was always illegal to distribute someone else's copyrighted works, baring fair use)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
MagiColor 2350 by QMS.
Cost my about $900 at Office Max on sale.
More than you want to spend tis true, but it is a damn good color printer.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
I'm unemployed, you insensitive clod!
You're going to have a hard time finding a color laser for $500, but that should get you a good quality inkjet. I've seen and owned most brands (Canon, Epson, Lexmark) and to my mind nothing beats the quality of HP. Their published specs might be stated lower, but you'll never notice it on the page. I had a Canon BJC 4200 while I was in school and if I didn't use it for a while, the print head would get all buggered up. Then I picked up and fixed an old HP and the thing has run like a horse since - even after not printing a page for 6 months.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
Tektronix/Zerox gave us 3 of the 840's (educational institution). They print very nicely, with vivid colors and good saturation.
But, it continually shit its ink into its drip tray that I had to dump out every few days. Tek said there was nothing wrong with the printer and to just order more ink (not cheap!).
We finally turned it off. We had gone through 3 sets of ink and only a couple hundred pages. Now, if someone needs a print, we turn it on for them , they can print to it, and we turn it off again. It costs much less that way.
Also, you don't want to put your prints in the cover of a plastic binder, since the wax will stick to the clear plastic of the binder.
For what it's worth, our group (http://sam.phys.lsu.edu) )uses a variety of systems (from redhat linux to various Windows versions to Mac OS) with our HP Color Laserjet 4500N. I dont know about cost, but this baby's been pretty reliable for 6 ot 7 years, over several systems. Perhaps you could find a used one cheap?
There is one major drawback every one is neglecting when they suggest a color laser. The quality sucks. Laser is great for black and white text, but color laser prints are flat and have a much smaller color gamut than inkjet. A good quality inkjet will last a long time, and should offer ethernet.
I have always been partial to Epson as they offer lightfast inks, and cater to people looking for photo quality output. I have used a Epson 1280 for a while and had no issues. I don't have any experience using it under linux, but under mac OSX it works beautifully, esp. with colorsync. The major down side that has been mentioned is many inkjets do not have individual ink carts, this is changing, most of Epson's printers now have separate carts. HP's nicer printers do as well.
Good luck on deciding.
There is no such thing as a "cheap" color laser printer. They are very messy and very expensive to maintain, as the printer engines tend to be insanely complicated.
:)
Personally, I went the monochrome laser printer route. I was tired of being bent over on ink cartridges. Toner cartridges, although they can get expensive, last a longer time and give way more consistent results than inkjet. Laser printers are also way, way faster. If you are put off by the price of toner and if you are brave, you can buy toner refill kits online. Yeah it can get messy, but toner can be vacuumed up, whereas ink just stains forever
If you are looking for a cheap laser printer, there are a few on the market for under $500. A good one that comes to mind is an Okidata LED printer. I installed a few about three years ago for some customers and they worked pretty reliably. At the time the toner was cheap because it was in a separate package from the drum. It's possible that's been changed in the last few years, and now has the drum and toner are integrated into one package as so many other manufacturers love to do, so as always you are advised to do your homework on consumables.
If you are really a scrooge then you can look at the Samsung ML-1710...This is a laser that costs $200. However, I can't vouch for its reliability, as I have never worked with one.
When I require color, I just drop the job on the color laser at work. If you don't have that option, buying one of those el cheapo inkjets for the occasional color job is a possibility, albiet you'll have that much less desk space.
-R
On a related topic, I have a Lexmark Optra E312
laser printer. With the economy being what it is I don't want to buy new cartridges.
I've noticed that the carts open up by unscrewing.
So I would like to replace the actual powder toner.
OK I know that refilling the cartridges this way
ruins the cartridge faster then taking it to a pro, but considering that I have three cartridges now, and they last about nine months, I'm willing to let them get ruined after the third or fourth refill. I figure by the time I run out, it will
be time to get a new printer anyway.
The thing is that I don't know how to identify the brand of powder toner, or where I can buy some.
Any advice?
There was a generation of Canon printers between the 3000/6000 and the current crop that use the same cartridges. Tom's Hardware reviewed those and found they were the most economical to print with. The latest ones using the same ink cartridges would probably be likewise. I myself have a 6000 and am happy to buy the Canon cartridges. They last a while and I've never needed to replace them all at once.
Wade.
The company I used to work for was evaluating a product which was designed to produce studio quality prints in serious volumes ... the thing had about 20 of those Epson printers. I was DAMN impressed with the quality of the prints, and that isn't easy to do considering how much I loath ink-based printers.
Print quality is a complicated issue. Color lasers have greater sharpness but lower color resolution. And the cost of toner is even more eye-watering than that of a Lexmark ink cartridge. Unless someone else was paying, my preferred small office solution would be a cheap networked mono duplex laser like the Samsung 2151N, along with an HP 2280 or, if I needed 11" by 17", a 2600.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
As someone else pointed out, color laser prints and dyesub prints are two totally different animals.
.. but, that's generally the difference between a $5000 printer and a $25000 printer. :) The silver halide printers are harder to tweak to output the "right" colors though -- the colors generally look "flat" (best word I can use to describe it) out of the box. They're also harder to maintain -- the one we had back at the office could have some nasty chemical spills and whatnot. I probably wouldn't use a kiosk that has one of those built in -- I'd rather send it off to a large facility that spends more time keeping their printers in calibration.
Dyesub printers, while sometimes finicky, produce excellent quality prints. A company I used to work for uses them in all of their portrait studios for "on demand"/instant prints.
It is definately "different" than the print you get with a silver halide printer
It seems like a lot of people forget that, I know I did until recently. Ink jet printers seem to be a cheap solution - until you realize just how much you are spending on ink.
I own (but no longer use) an Epson Photo Stylus 700, which I bought because I loved the quality of the output when used with the "special" photo paper. I never printer one picture on the paper. I think the greatest thing I *ever* did with the printer was make some nice Thanksgiving party invitations.
It seemed like I was always buying ink - because we rarely used it, but left it turned on. This tended to leave the print heads uncapped (I think they do this on purpose, rather than auto-capping, to sell more ink), and caused the ink to dry out prematurely. But you wanted to leave it on, because it seemed to take forever to "boot" (turn it on, and after minutes of "self-checking" and "cleaning" it would finally be ready. I took a look at how we were printing (rarely, but we wanted good output *now* when we did), what we were printing (most of the time, simple text only stuff, black and white) - and I bought a printer based on that.
I ended up buying a used HP Laserjet 6 (there is a P or something there at the end, too), and a refilled toner cartridge. Total cost: $170.00 - and I have postscript, too. I installed some old 72 pin SIMMs I had lying around to bump the cache up some, and I haven't looked back.
The printer is great - what was really nice was the low page count (25000 pages). I also like the fact that I can use el-cheapo paper in it, and it still looks great (the Epson, on anything under 24lb weight, would "fuzz" - lighter weight paper had more "fur", and the print wouldn't have crisp edges). I also like it that I can leave it on - and then when I want to print out to it, I instantly can - and it just works!
Now, maybe if your job or hobby requires color, an ink jet is what you need to get. But I learned my lesson quick - I don't have *any* need for color. If I want to look at pictures, I look at them on a screen. Just about anyone else can do the same (most people I know have a computer). If I need a print of an image, I will print it in b/w for "checking", then the final can be done at a copy shop or something. I have yet to need to do this, though - but it is the most sensible option, for me.
I will never regret buying that laser printer.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I run my photography business on a 2000P and LaserWriter Pro 630. The Epson cost $800 a couple of years ago and does wonderful output- the new 2200 is even better. My laser printer handles all letter-size B&W quickly and neatly. Epson's OS X drivers STILL aren't up to snuff with the OS 9 and Windows drivers, but I can workaround the missing features like borderless printing.
It wastes half a stick of each color every time you turn it on. It is better to leave it on.
It was me, I did it, I moved your cheese
Yes I forgot to mention that. They are not really suited to be turned on and off. They go to sleep. Also not designed to sit on the floor. (One user insisted and it was nasty inside a few weeks later)
Warning this is a plug.
inexpensive ink is coming soon to a shopping centre near you.
www.islandinkjet.com
can't wait that long? franchises are available in most areas.
Yes, I work for the company, and yes we've been doing this for nearly 3 years and yes we have nearly 100 locations, and yes we're the North American leaders and yes we'll save 1 million ink cartridges from landfills this year (approx 779 million to go) and yes, our locations can save you 50-90%, with a 100% satisfaction guarantee.
I followed the link and I was so impressed, I went to the USPTO and tried to find some technical background in the patents.
Using "Xerox" and "Phaser" as search terms I found number 6,042,227 and it seems to be right on the nose. The patent was even more interesting than Xerox's marketing hype. Apparently this hot crayon-like system is among the most environmentally friendly printing systems of all and is potentially very cheap. I would guess it's just a matter of time before this technology moves into the budget slot.
Question is, do you americanos have Aldi North or Aldi South, because that makes a big difference. And also, do you live in the northeast, because I think that's the only place where you can find Aldi markets...
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
This axiom is written in blood on the wall over my desk, lest I ever forget.
Seriously, I bought an Epson C1000N color laser because it was very cheap (550) but it's the laser version of the Epson inkjets. It goes through toner and oil drums like no other printer I've seen. It's drivers are pathetic. It doesn't understand different paper sizes, if you can believe it, so if you try to print an A5 size page on A4 paper (half-page on standard letter size) it stops everything in the queue and blinks a little red error light at you. The drivers don't tell you what's wrong, and the red light blinks the same way for every fault, from "wrong paper" to no paper, to a jam, to low toner. There's not even a distinct blink code for different faults. You can't reset it via telnet or through the web interface and there's no reset button, so the only solution is to power off the printer, dumping everything in the queue. Power cycling it takes about 3 minutes.
If my experience is anything like th norm for low-end color lasers, I'd stay far far away from them. The next printer I buy for the office will be an HP, and price be damned. "I hate this printer" translates too easily and too quickly into "Our net admin sucks".
Whatever happened to JonKatz?
Actually, the current terms are that the printer is yours after 3 years, not two.
Thanks for the link, though. I think I'm going to pick up one of these.
.-.--
You can get a tektoniks printer free at www.freecolorprinter.com but you have to buy ink from the same people. Anyone ever try this thing?
If you need colour, buy a colour laser and don't think twice. Inkjets (all manufacturers I've experienced) are tempramental if you use them infrequently, and while even some cheap ones will take heavy use (I've pushed insane amounts of work through a low-end Epson) you could have bought a laser for what you'll pay for consumables.
I'm running moderate volumes through a Minolta-QMS 2350 which is reliable, fast enough, and didn't cost a fortune.
Keep in mind that printers are mechanical and need regular maintenance, especially if you are working them hard.
Chances are nobody will see this but as it is somewhat relevant I will ask it anyway.
Does anobody here have a HP Laserjet 1300? This is currently the printer I am considering.
Any negative thoughts or comments regarding this one? I am especially interested if you have problems using linux with it.
Tomshardware loved the i850 so I went out and bought one.
It is very quick in black and white (almost laser speeds), quick in colour and can produce photographic quality prints on gloss paper. It is a four colour cartrige system (as good as other 6 colour machines) seperately replaceable. It uses a prism to actually see when its out of ink and I guess you could refill them but as Canon refills are cheap, I haven't bothered. They also seem to last a long time before needing replacement.
I just can't recommend this printer enough.
wot no sig
Not sure about their colour printers (As i was only looking for a low end mono laster printer) but Samsung have excellent support for Linux with many of their printers.
Promotional material for the model i bought included a Tux logo featured prominently alongside the Windows and Mac logos, and it even says Linux support on the box.
Apparently the CD and the samsung web site even has linux drivers on it, not that i looked as Redhat already had support.
The Canon i850 is a nice printer. It doesn't use much ink, the ink tanks are separate and cheaply priced, and it has excellent photo reproduction and print speed.
It wiped the floor with prety much everything else in the Tom's Hardware end of year printer lineup, so I bought one, and have been impressed.
``Why should the DMCA have anything to do with printer ink? That's a much better question.'' ...and nicely illustrates one of the problems with the DMCA - it is too widely applicable (as are many patents, incidentally). Although the expansion to Digital Millenium Copyright Act suggests that it is intended to protect copyright (and it does this, as witnessed by the famous Sklyarov case), it hurts many forms of reverse engineering (namely anything that could result in built-in protections being bypassed).
It is illegal to watch DVDs with any program that doesn't use the licensed algorithm to decrypt them. Many (all?) open-source players use DeCSS, which can (and does) circumvent the region codes. This is illegal unde DMCA.
802.11g cards have their signal strenghts (I think, may be something else) limited. Usually, this is implemented in the driver, because that's cheaper than doing it in hardware. Reverse engineering the card is prohibited under DMCA, because it could be used to circumvent this protection.
Printer cartridges contain chips that (among other things) report how full the cartridge is. Without reverse engineering those, 3rd party cartridges will always be reported as empty, or may not work at all. DMCA prohibits reverse-engineering the chips, because it breaks the vendor's protection.
Remeber that the USA is the land of the free.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Sorry about this, it was 1999 that I was looking for printers, and when I evaluated them then, I remember that the wax-deposit printers had a cpp something like 22 cents per page for a color photo: not cheap at all. That said, after reading all the other comments, I have to say that probably the price has dropped significantly.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I don't think hp4600 cartridges are so expensive if you see the cost per page. It's still cheaper than inkjet color prints.
But with the hp4600, people start printing nice looking pages with white letters on a dark-blue background and similar toner-wasting things. With an inkjet, they wouldn't have done this because it just takes too long to print.
So the real cost increase is caused by the users, not by the printer.
Does anybody have an idea how to fight this? Perhaps some print filter (we use a linux print server) that measures the amount of toner used for a page and charges the user based on that?
Buy a good reliable black/white laser printer. And if you really need to print out high quality pictures (1 - 5 a month for most people if that) Just take it to kinkos/print shop.
Do the math.
$400.00+ Just to have color prints. That's over 250 prints at kinkos. Then you need to replace the cartage, another 100-200 so another 125 at kinkos.
At this point you know everyone at kinkos, and get your prints for free anyways!
TruePunk | Games
I've had commercial experience with using inkjet printers with retrofitted continuous flow systems attached. Basically you can get a cheapish Epson inkjet ($300+) and attach this kit for another, say, $200 and then you can attach ink bottles upto 5 litres per colour. It works out very much cheaper than cartidges and the heads don't block because of drying and having not to changing cartridges at all.
m l/cob ra.html
Each colour can be purchased separately in various sizes. This option is so much cheaper than dyesub printers and better photo quality than colour LASERs.
One such system can be found at:
http://www.inksupply.com/index.cfm?source=ht
I think Lyson make another but it just maybe another OEM product from the first link.
My fiancee and I decided that, rather than pay a printer to do our invitations, we'd buy a new printer (our old Canon died after taking a header off the desk) and print them ourselves. While the geek in me loved this idea, the part of me that loves my fiancee dearly feared nights of her (or me) struggling with the printer, trying to get invitations to print straight, piles of misprinted invitations everywhere, struggles of anguish unleashed. We bought an Epson Stylus CX5200, which is a combination scanner/copier/inkjet, for about $150, with a $35 gift card to the office supply store thrown in (which we used to buy extra ink). To my amazement, the printouts all came out perfect. No lineup problems like with other inkjets I've tried, and the printing was fantastic. The copier function is also nice for rebates and work items, and the "footprint" on the desk is much smaller than the two devices were. So there's a recommendation for anyone looking for a quality inkjet. Apologies if that doesn't answer this particular question, however.
If your serious about your printing, and can deal with the fact that the agreement meams you have to print so many pages a month and buy all your supplies direct from Xerox, this might be something you want to explore.
Caveat emptor and all that crap, though, since it's literally the HP "free printer up front" - it's all too likely it's also a "pay megabucks for printer supplies you don't really need."
I bought an i550 and printed out mostly black images pages.
After a while it strangely ran out of colour ink. went back to the shop who asked me to bring it in and couldn't understand what was wrong.
Turns out to print anything other then text in black it uses a mixture of the three colours....even when grayscale setting is selected......
Took a bit of fighting but i returned the printer and got my money back.
As my company does printer drivers and has several metric tons worth of printers, I'd recommend doing one of the following options:
1. Get a used HP Color LaserJet 4500/4550; excellent color output, fast black output, best price/page and reliability of any of the color lasers we've tested. Avoid the 4600 which is a completely different engine and produces inferior print quality. Avoid the Xerox/Tektronix Phaser printers, as the price/page and reliability suck (twice or more the price/page of the HP and half the part/toner life, plus the color quality of some Phaser printers leaves a lot to be desired...)
2. Get a B&W laser for fast/cheap text printing and a new color inkjet (EPSON and HP have good free software support, Canon is hit-or-miss) with separate tanks for color prints. I like the EPSON Stylus Photo 2200 and high-end HP inkjets, which have separate ink cartridges for each color...
Avoid non-PostScript laser printers and "consumer" inkjet printers that cost less than the ink cartridges - they are more trouble than they are worth.
I print, therefore I am.
Theres an after market add on for ALL (even the ones with chips) Epson printers that lets you add external 350ml or 1 litre tanks to the printers. It costs about RM500 to setup, but after that, ink is about RM160 per LITRE per colour in bulk. Good luck using that much ink.
(n.b US$1 = RM3.80)
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
I thoroughly concur with the posters who have recommended Canon's printers e.g the i850. The separate ink tanks are just simple plastic tanks; you can easily refill them or you can buy 'compatible' refills very cheaply. I've printed thousands of pages on a couple of these printers without a glitch. The whole print head assembly is also easily replaced and is surprisingly cheap, too, and that's all you'd ever have to replace. Better to have a couple of these units, IMHO, then an expensive laser printer.
Ink-jet printers are a rip-off! Calculate what you spend on printing over the next ten years, and you'll find that a decent color laser is already cheaper in the long run.
Check out HP Color Laserjet 1500L! That would be around $600. There are other decent color lasers in that price range too. If you have more money to spend, look at Oki 5300 too, which is more expensive but great quality.
then throw it away when the ink runs out!
Seriously.
I used to be really concerned about the DPI and speed and color capability, etc, but these days the cheapest printer is far better than the best I had a few years ago. Add to that the fact that new ink cartridges will be more exensive than a bottom-end one on sale and there is no point in replacing the ink cartridges any more. Just pitch the old one and go to Target/Bestbuy/Circuit city/etc and pick up the cheapest inkjet they have on sale.
I know this is probably horribly irresponsible from an environmental standpoint, but it does make good dollars sense.
Minolta makes a Color Laser Printer that sells for about $750 at Staples or just about any other computer retailer.
I have an Okidata color laser postscript printer that ran about $1050, and toner carts are about $60 apiece.
Overall, I like okidata because of their low consumable prices. The printers are more expensive, but the long term TCO is less than just about any other.
The printing cost on my B4200 B&W laser is about 7 cents per page and the color is about 30 cents.
I ran into the "wasting the wax when the machine power cycles" problem on a couple of Phasers. I called tech support who told us how to turn off power cycling and sent us a free box of ink for our trouble.
wherever I go, there I am.
How about a real laser printer that works by lightly browning the paper but without setting it on fire. No refills ever...I want one. How about it science?
For great justice take off every sig.
Not sure what the technical solution to THAT problem is!
This is my sig.
Is there a "postscript server" application for Windows that would convert a windows-only printer into a network postscript printer? It seems like it would be a good idea to get *nix support for some printers by just hooking up an old desktop or laptop running Windows and treating the whole mess as a postscript printer.
We have a Lexmark X83, and this would allow even the vendor-supplied sound effects to work ("printing started/complete!" "black ink cartridge low").
This seems so simple, but I've searched the web over and haven't found something to do this. We also have a MacOS X box with Lexmark X83 drivers, and I'm kinda surprised that MacOS X doesn't have some kind of "printer sharing" either. Any pointers?
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned it, but the HP color laser 8500/8550 prints 11x17 (sadly not full bleed, but 1/4" margin or something close to that). The toner cartridges last forever and a day and the output is quite nice. It was also designed before Carly / the compaq merger, so it's not a piece of shite that will break in 13 months. It's not that I don't trust the 4600, but I trust it less in the long run. ;)
I've seen them for sale in stores for $1500ish - they are getting kind of old, and I think HP wants to discontinue the product, but get that and the onsite warranty (you aren't moving this in your car) in case something should happen and you'll have a workhorse machine for $2k.
The printer is also huge, if you need that whole geek factor thing
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We just bought a Tektronix 8200, and it rocks. People who are so used to inkjets and lasers are really amazed when I show them a) how easy it is to check the amount of color left (pop the lid and count the wax blocks) and b) how easy it is to replenish the color (each wax block is uniquely shaped so that it only fits in one hole -- virtually idiotproof).
The output is gorgeous. It is big and heavy, like you say, but it's a workgroup color printer with postscript. It's not expensive; in fact, it's quite cheap. After all, it's not competing with inkjet printers, but with color lasers. We bought a color laser (Tektronix 7700) at the same time, and the 8200 was about half the price of the 7700.
Pull your head out of your ass and read the news. As pointed out many, many times (though you still seem to feel the need to be "right" in the face of overwhelming evidece to the contrary) the DMCA is beig used to stop 3rd parties from making cheap toner replacement carts. Whining that the DMCA has nothing to do with toner (and it shouldn't, I agree 100%, that's why that law blows ass) till you are red in the face doesn't change the fact that it's being used to stop cometition in the toner market.
Have a nice day.
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
Get two 12/600 or 12/660 Apple color laserwriters from ebay or usenet. Prices will range from 50-200. Combine parts from the two to make a working printer.
Advantage? It's a postscript color laser with ethernet/tcp-ip so drivers for nearly any OS will not be a problem. Granted, it won't be a photo printer, but for most things it will work quite nicely.
i use the cannon S9000 even tho its not labled as linux compatible the CUPS S900 driver works with it perfectly,it uses ink tanks that are quite big and one for EACH color so you dont waste just cuz one colors used up the tanks also cost $11 each (try to find that for any other cartriage) and it has high res printing. printing 3 pages of photo quality images hasnt even drained the ink noticeably,its a verry ink efficient printer the quality of the prints is about the same as what I would expect out of a $4000 tetronix
I recommend a Xerox/Tektronics printer.
Mainly the solid ink models.
My company makes ink for these printers, toners as well and also have many programs to keep the costs low when buying the printer and ink. We also sell the ink much cheaper than Xerox.
www.mediasciences.com
The S750 has been my favorite printer in the last 10 years. The color cartridges are seperate and I can buy an entire set or replacement cartridges (the 3 different colors and a black) for under $10 total. It's fast as hell and does an excellent job with color. No problems with Win XP or SuSE on my computer at home. It's not in stores anymore, but you can find retail boxed ones from online PC shops and E-Bay.
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Agreed. we have a limited use 4600 which has revolutionized out productions here. We had an old HP1200 deskjet which would suck ink. It was running about 2 cartridges every two weeks. Now we're at one cartrisge a month on it, and the big jobs get done on the laserjet. It's going to be about 600$ a year to run the hp4600. As opposed to well over 600 for the deskjet. And we get a lot better document quality. The deskjet or our hp4050 and 4000 are used for drafts, with the final cut being made on the hp4600.
-=fshalor
Most non-Windows print applications work with a JetDirect solution. The 170x run about $170 (no pun). Then, it doesn't matter whether the printer supports network printing.
-------------------------
As easy as herding cats!
They aren't 'apostrophes', they are `backticks`, you insensitive clod! MySQL uses `backticks` to delimit field names {in case you used a reserved word such as `date`} and either 'apostrophes' or "speech marks" around literal data. One can never be sure what new words are going to be reserved in the next release, so it makes more sense to stick the `` in than risk running afoul of some future SQL extension making a reserved word out of your fieldnames.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I have an old Epson, (Stylus Color 800). And the ink is pretty cheap. $13 Canadian/Cartridge (So one black and one color). Sure its old, and not very fast. But the quality is pretty good, and its cheap to maintain. For personal use, its great.
If you, like I occasionally do, like to print engineering drawings/draftings (which heavily use PostScript's more processing-intensive features), then you may have to wait a little longer on the spool.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
HP has a number of sub $1000 color laser printers. the 1500 look good for home use (no postscript). The 2500L has postscript and is still less than a grand. This model has an EIO slot so an EIO network card can be attached. Or there is the 2500N that is over $1000, but comes with the EIO network card and a secound paper tray.
So now you're spending $900 for both, $300 of which comes from your ink jet versus $600 for just the ink jet?
I have a friend who just grabs an inkjet printer whenever they are super cheap ($50 - $70) and stores it away. When his current printer dries up he donates it for a tax write-off and cracks open a new box. He says he has consistently been saving money doing it this way.
Keep in mind that ink cartridges, where the primary printing mechanisms are, wear out. Part of the "reason" for the forced replacement is that the printer manufacturers wanted a way to keep this part of the printer from breaking down. (Granted, I think printer manufacturers abuse this today.) Essentially, if you continuously refill a cartridge, the print quality will slowly suffer.
You're asking for a girlfriend on Slashdot?
That is wrong on so many levels..
Will code a sig generator for food
There are reviews of printers, with prices and links to retailer all over that thar inner-net.
I bought a used Lexmark Optra S 1855 for $300 plus a high yield OEM toner cartridge for $200 plus tax and have been pretty happy so far. The printer is fast and quiet and the per page cost is going to be lower than with inkjet. The added network card that i got for it also made it really nice ;-)
If you shop around at your local computer stores or on ebay you may find something that will be in your price range.
--I don't have a sig.
There used to be hot wax color printers -- they kinda melted crayons to make the color or something like that. Perhaps you could look into it. I doubt they're all that, but short of photo printing, or an Epson 10000 with archival ink, all color printers suck.
stuff |
Isn't it cheaper to buy a new Lexmark printer for the consumables than actually buying the consumables? Should all buy Lexmark and when the carts run dry, just buy a whole new printer. They'd lose quite a bit of money that way and you still come out ahead. Then, one day, we could all get our 20 or so Lexmarks together and dump thousands of them in the Lexmark parking lot. Should start with employee of the year's parking spot, since they are obviously the brain child.
I use my Inkjet for photo printing very rarely and mostly use it to print maps, coupons, etc (in B&W). I probably average about 15-20 pages/month (1-2 colour). and a low-end inkjet printer works fine for me. If I want to print more than a few photos, I just upload them to Walmart's website and pick them up a few days later. Can't beat walmart at 26 cents per 4x6 print.
Recently bought a Xerox Phaser 8200 for
my department. It uses wax transfer rather
than ink or toner. It costs about the
same as a typical color laser, the consumables
are much cheaper (40% cost of HP laser
per page), is extremely fast, and produces
breathtakingly beautiful output. Perhaps
more impontantly, it produces beautiful
output on cheap paper stock. You don't
need fancy coated paper or extra bright
stock to get production quality output
as you do with lasers and ink jets.
The version I got is network enabled,
duplexes, and I believe runs postscript
so Linux should be good to go.
FWIW, my calculation of actual cost per page
for printing out typical full color brochure
pieces is about 8-9 cents per page (plus the
cost of paper.) Although it has a slow
time to first page, when it gets going it
cranks out pages about one per second, even
when duplexing.
If you want to do full color brochures I'd
highly recommend it. (Only downside, it only
prints to within 5mm of the edge.)
It's really a damn shame Kodak discontinued these printers. The quality really is phenomenal. I recently got a chance to check out the new 8500 series, which seems cheaply made, and more consumer oriented. Those 8650's are pretty solid units, with lots of metal framing. The Kodak service guys can take this printer completely apart, replace something, and reassemble within an hour. The new 8500's don't look that servicable, and almost look disposable.
Hopefully our Kodak service contract will keep being renewed.
Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
Duplexing? Tabloid? Color for bar charts or photos? This site is pretty good:
http://www.laser-printer-reviews.org/
Did a search on Ebay, and there are plenty of great dot-matrix printers for sale in the $15 range. Great for any budget!
Much cheaper to buy an old dot matrix.
--
Grant Taylor <gtaylor+slashdot_bigbg072203@picante.com>
Well, it'd be slow if you decided to send a raytracer or some fractals or even the Mandelbrot set itself to the printer.
Yes, I've actually sent a fractal to an old LaserJet with PostScript, and waited ten minutes for the page to pop out.
For normal usage, of course, you'd never run into any sorts of problems. But if you decided to be crazy about it...
More on-topic, there's a refurbished HP color laser on PriceWatch's "not exactly new" section for $650. I've seen them for moderately cheaper than that at the local computer chop shop---used, of course.
Color laser is faster and better than inkjet, and you won't go crazy refilling or replacing ink. It's worth the extra cash.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
They don't have any right now, but about every other week, I've seen a couple HP Laserjet 4050's (or 4500) Colour Laser Printers at AuctionDepot starting bidding at around $200. You could probably get one for ~$500 as you said. They also often have old rack cabinets (great for geek-class bookshelves - if not a little expensive.. but definitely cool. :D
Check out linuxprinting.org, they have lots of info. on printers. If you have questions about HP printers, email me at linux_deskjet@hp.com and I'd be happy to answer any questions. My reccomendation is the deskjet 6127. It has built-in ethernet and is designed to be a workgroup printer.
The thing is pure crap. It does print nice but I have a client with one and it locks up very frequently and need to be turned on and off... And then of course the still have some Win 9x clients so it's near impossible to clear the print queue without a reboot...
Tektronix/Xerox Phaser 850DP that was got with that deal. The print out quality is decent, I would rank it very low for color accuracy and the the like though. The wax sticks are great for not drying up and being easy to replace. On the downside one color stick runs about $35. I would say the price is quite comparable to that of inkjet cartridges. You have to really do some serious printing to keep them free too. Our has broken down numerous times as well. If you are a high volume shop printing alot of statements or something, it might be worth going for, although I would still keep a backup printer just in case, we needed it many times. Overall its okay, but I think you could do better.
"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it." -Voltaire
We use one of these at work. Prior poster mentioned the ink sticks.. That's what this uses. Great quality, low cost per page, and the printer is FREE! You need to commit to a certain level of usage and buy supplies through them (easy to do and inexpensive) and they mail you a free printer.
http://www.freecolorprinter.com/
I use a Tandy DMP-201 for very inexpensive B/W or color output. Plusses: cheap, ribbons last a long time, B/W quality is pretty good; Minuses: sometimes hard to find ribbons, slow, color quality sucks.
Who's Larry and Fuzzy Pink Niven?
And can it do anything special, like write novels on its own, or bark?
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
$150/month if you don't print X number of pages or submit the report on your personal printing habits back to Xerox.
Seriously.. I don't think I have printed a page of paper in the last year - what do people still print that can't be used on a computer/disk media?
----------------------------
Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
My company recently aquired one of these units, http://noritsu.com/ Pro units, Model 3011. Very high quality prints. Then again, the price tag may be a bit high for the general consumer...
I purchased a HP ColorLaserjet 4500 about 2 years ago. I bought it new for $1100 including toner. It has not given me any problems. (this was around the time 4550's were going for $2200 +) Its a wonderfull printer and couldn't be happier with it. The only downside is its a monster and takes 2 people to move. I saw a post saying that is costs $400+ to replace the four toner cartriges, that is only true if you purchase genuine HP toner from the factory. There are two other options for replacing the toner:
1. Buy a genereic set of 4 cartriges for about $200
2. Buy a 4 color refill kit for about 70-$90
Either way you are getting full color pages for about a penny each (maybe less)
Ive seen the Color Laserjet 4500 advertised on ebay for about 500-700 dollars which is not too bad. One thing to look for in buying a used printer is a low page count. that is the odometer of a printer.
Well, cost per page is a really tricky number to state accurately anyway. I'm not a big fan of using it for anything other than giving you relative cost information between different models of the same type of printer.
I mean, does the "cost per page" for inkjet printing take into account ink used up on the cleaning cycles they go through every time you turn them on? How about when you haven't printed for a few weeks and the thing is clogged up, needing 4 or 5 cleaning cycles done before it prints properly? For a laser, all sorts of things skew the figures. For a long time, Tektronics sold a model of color laser printer with a promotion saying they'd supply all of your black toner for free for as long as you owned the printer. Do you buy the high-capacity cartridges or the regular size toners? Do you/can you refill them when they run out? (Often, you can refill your own toners with better results than refilled inkjet cartridges.)
We only have so many trees to go around.
I think the original Poster wanted a printer that is also NON WIN dependent!!
The W in the 2300W should have tiped you off.
It uses the WIN OS for printing, NOT an onboard Proc!!
Where ever you go, There you are
So I buy this big ticket HP photo printer and a couple of years later an el cheapo printer costs less than the two damn HP ink cartridges.
Since then, when the ink runs out, I just buy another printer. Fuck those marketing weenies and their damn cartridges.
best regards,
buck
I would hate the expense of inkjet printing too, if I didn't know about this source for ink: MegaToners.com.
For example, the black ink cartridge for my Epson 600 normally sells for about $23. MegaToners sells a compatible cartridge for only $1.40!
No, they're not brand-name cartridges, but I've had zero problems with them.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
http://www.searchlores.org/realicra/hp_slobo.htm
IIrc, that's the model that uses solid ink sticks.
Hi,
A bit of a late comment, but I had to mention the teachers college I train at have just installed colour lasers in two of their three computer labs. Reason? Just two inkjets attached to one computer for each of these labs to were making them haemorrage money at the rate of knots.
I must admit that the staff and trainees here have been quite taken by the quality of the lasers the college have bought... though only one's up in action while the other's doing groundhog day and spitting out a billion duplicates of each printout... *sigh*
Which incidentally, I've found a good educational use for it -- printing out Internet cartoons with dates on them to give me date dividers in my handouts clipbind. Honest.
Jonathan Ah Kit - Lower Hutt, New Zealand - jonathan@metalab.unc.edu
I bought my Apple Color Laserwriter for $100. It was in fairly good shape, but 3 of the toner cartridges were low, and so was the fuser oil. I got each of those things on eBay (carts for about 25 each, and fuser oil for 10). I then got some denatured alcohol and cleaned the whole thing out. After that, it worked great! It won't compete with current inkjets at photo quality, but it has postscript and ethernet built in. Supports appletalk and LPR... what more do ya want?
Repeat after me: I will never cycle the power on my solid-ink printer again.
Those things waste lots of ink on power cycles. Leave it on, and you'll be fine. I've printed nearly 110K on mine, and have emptied the waste try exactly twice.
-sid
You have to believe me. In the course of about 3 weeks, it would crap out all of the ink I put in it - you know - about 4 sticks in each track. That was with very little, or no printing. We even tried putting it in it's "power/ink save" mode.
So sure, it craps out a bunch of ink every time you turn it on, but a lot less than leaving it on.
I'm convinced it was a flawed unit, but Tektronix/Xerox insisted it was operating normally.
We're getting about twice as many color pages out of both printers (that we're keeping) , and have cut out outsourced printing down to nearly zero. Since the Deskjet was so poor, most people would end up printing multiple copied of each thing to try to get it "better".
Now, since they have to think about using both printers, one for a draft and another for a color final, -or- a b&w laserjet for draft and finishing with the 4600, they tend to make less mistakes. Everyone's happy with it, and I haven't gotten any more complaints about the deskjet.
This printer is really rock solid, fast, and heavy as hell.
best,
-=fshalor
We have one of those pieces of shit at work, and the thing jams nonstop. It also reads empty paper as a paper jam more than half the time - real useful.
I'll concede the output looks great, but everything else about them is horrible. And I'm not alone - once, when looking to print a color presentation after our own lovely Tektronix went toast, I went to kinko's to make use of their self-service. Unfortunately, all of the printers at that location were down. Maker? Tektronix. The guy was nice enough to call around to all other Kinko's in our area of SoCal. Result? All theirs were dead too. Also Tektronix.
I'm glad your experience has been better than ours, but I'd recommend any printer over Tektronix shit.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat