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Laser Printing Without the Hassles?
yeremein asks: "After yet another black ink cartridge has fizzled out, I've decided that it's time to stop giving money to a known DMCA abuser and buy a new printer. Since I'm fed up with the clogged jets and drifting print head misalignment, not to mention the exorbitant cost of ink cartridges, I'd like to go with a laser printer this time around. It doesn't have to be a high duty cycle one, since it's for home use and I only print maybe 100 pages per month. And black only is fine. Any suggestions for an inexpensive laser that is Linux friendly, and does not employ any 'smart chip' technology that would prevent the toner cartridge from being refilled or cause it to 'expire' and stop working at a certain date regardless of the toner level?"
I've come to accept the burnt holes in the walls and the loss of retinal cells as a result of using lasers for printing. Perhaps there is a better way, laser printing without the hassle!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
They can be found for $150 and $250, they have no smart chips, they are fast and they work with Linux, Mac, oh an Windows. It even says Linux compatable on the box and it comes with linux drivers on the cd! (which are opensource).. I would also think the latest cheap HP laser would be a good choice too.
keanmarine.com
For less than 100 Dollars a Samsung ML-1710 should do the trick for you.. Sold at most compusa's, best buy's, or Fry's.
I've had one for almost a year and it's still running great.. Even under Linux using the foomatic Samsung 4500 drivers.
Look for a LJ 4/5 'M' model. These printers support Postscript 2 and are ideal for any unix.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
My wife brought an HP LaserJet 6P into my life and it works fine with my Linux box (Redhat 7 onwards).
It's been very reliable and we haven't changed toner in about 2 years. Of course, we don't print that much.
They have 3 printers priced at $200, $400, and $600, information is here.
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Samsung has a nice line of laser printers. They are cheap (I got mine for $120), have linux support, and work very well. Not to mention the cartridges are cheap ($50 for a 3000 page one) and refillable (look on ebay). I owned an ML-1210 for over a year now, prints beautifully, not a single paper jam yet.
I use a Samsung ML-1210 hooked into cups on an OpenBSD box that serves print to Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Really great driver support in UNIX. You can copy the cups ppd files to any other NIX and use them there.
Bought it at a yard sale for $15. Worked fine for 3 years, using the same cartridge that was in it when I bought it.
Just shows Error 50 now though and has been retired to the attic. The things are tanks though. It's gotta be 50 pounds. It's kinda like an IBM XT case.
Much better than the current crop of HP printers in my opinion. We use the 4400s at the office, and they're ok, but the speed isn't any better and the increased resolution isn't a big deal for text. But they start reading "low toner" 3 weeks after a new cartridge is put in though, even though they'll last for 6 months after that warning first shows up. A little suspicious.
Every time I've tried something else, for myself or the company I work for, I've regretted it. Inkjets are slow and expensive per page, Lexmark lasers are flaky and expensive per page (because there are a dozen different things that can run out besides ink, and Lexmark has a monopoly on all of them). HP stuff always Just Works, and there's a large third-party toner market. If you're up to spending $650, buy a 2300it's absurdly fast. Alternately, used LJ4*s are cheap (like $50 cheap) and ubiquitous on eBay; just make sure you pick up some spare parts, too. (The roller thingies tend to die after a while.)
I've been wanting to leave inkjet and go to laser soon as well, but I'd like to check out the cost savings first. Anyone have any good data on cost per page for inkjet printers vs. laser? Toner cartridges nicely provide an estimate of the number of pages they're good for but I haven't seen anything like that for inkjet.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
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"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
short answer: any postscript printer should work just fine. longer answer: i've had my lexmark optra e 310 for nearly five years now, printing several hundred pages per month and i've had to change the toner exactly once. bonus: toner and imaging drum are all in one package, so it still prints as beautifully today as it did when i first bought it. yes, i know we all hate lexmark, but at least take a look at the optra e 220 or e 321.
Look for used HP printer. Ours is a 5P which just goes and goes and goes. It's probably the one bit of technology here that hasn't been upgraded, replaced, or even cleaned in the last five years. Needless to say, every OS since the C64 seems to support it out of the box.
Three Squirrels
I don't think they sell the HL-1240 any more, but you could get a comparable model. I'm not sure what retail price is on these because I got it at a garage sale, but it's a good printer. Works fine with CUPS and lprNG, and the toner cartridges last for a while. I don't refill cartridges, but it looks like the stuff is available to do so.
Sorry, my karma just ran over your dogma.
Hi Jeremy,
I would recommend an HP LaserJet.
I bought a new HP LaserJet IIP+ with a postscript cartridge and four megabytes of RAM in 1992. It cost me a small fortune, and I have never regretted it.
If you are a patient fellow, and can accept that something isn't brand new, then you may want to look for a used HP LaserJet online or in your local second-hand computer shops.
I bought a laser printer for home last week. I already have two inkjet printers at home but they suck.
This is the one I bought from local Bestbuy:
Samsung SCX-4016
It lists at about $280 with $ 70 mail in rebate. I paid only 250 for open box buy. With mail-in-rebate, it's a good price for a laser printer!!
I love it so far. Print quality is good. Though you have to set it to dark while printing in photo mode...
Best value for money I could find...
Brother HL-1440, and a $20'ish memory upgrade from crucial.com. I can personally vouch for the printer, even bought one as a present for my dad, no complaints from him either.
I do a lot of graphics printing on them, not as much text. Not sure how that translates to pages per month, but I can tell ya I'm well beyond several ink cartridges from my old inkjet.
"Derp de derp."
It's a tank. You can't kill it. Send me an email and I'll sell you one cheap. I get better than two years per toner cartridge. Shipping will cost you more than the printer is worth though...
I just bought a Brother HL-5040. linuxprinting.org gives it a "works perfectly" rating, it's fast, it's quiet, it has expandable memory using a standard SDRAM DIMM... The toner is cheaper than Samsung's if you use the extended capacity cartridges.
I searched for "OfficeMax coupons" on google and found a $30 off rebate deal + free shipping from a local store, and it cost me less than $200 after rebates. So far it's all good - just a satisifed customer, as they say.
I recently purchased a LaserJet 4M for $50 on ebay 75 with shipping 600 DPI and you will most likely never reach its duty cycle for a month in the time you use it. Like teh poster on the HP III said this line is bullet proof. Want the ultimate Bulletproof Laser printer? Lok for a Laserwriter II NT its slow but you could use it for an anchor drop it out of a plane hook it up and it would most likely still run just fine :)
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
I consistently hear HP, Samsung, and Brother recommended for personal lasers. I don't have any experience with HP or Samsung personal lasers, but I have a Brother HL-1440 which has worked very well for me (though I do sometimes wish I'd gotten the next model up with postscript emulation, or maybe even a model with auto duplex).
If you don't do much printing (like me), even a low-budget b/w laser printer is going to last a long time. Samsung makes several cheap-n-cheerful compact lasers that even come with a little penguin on the box. Watch sites like techbargains; recently some merchant had Samsung 1700 b/w lasers for $70 (after rebate) *shipped*. Not bad.
...
DMCA or not, I've been happy with my Lexmark E210, nicely Linux supported and (since I print little) still on its first cart. after 1.5 years
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I'll recommend the HP LaserJet 1300 which supports PostScript Level 2 for all your Linux printing needs and which you can find for as little as $350 on PriceWatch.
Ouch! The truth hurts!
See subject.
Okay, it is a generalization, so you can find exceptions. However that should be your guide. There is no reason and old eBay laser printer can't work for years to come with only toner replacements. Slow, but only compared to modern lasers, what is your hurry at home?
Inkjets are generally disposable. For as little as I print, a inkjet would have to be replaced every time I wanted to printer. My laser (which I got used for almost nothing) should last for years. Unfortunatly you never know, I said the same thing about my last laser printer and it no longer works. However used they are cheap enough that you can afford a lemon, and breaks are rare enough that you are unlikely to get two lemons.
Inkjets are still good for color. If you demand the best color, I've seen cheap inkjets that come out on top when compared to $50,000 color printers (when compared to a pantone standard after an expert adjusted the expensive printer for that color sample!). Most of us do not need that level of abilities in color, and if you do there is probably a reason to get the epensive color printer anyway. Still something to consider if you need color.
Postscript is in theory better than PCL, but Ghostscript does an excellent job in the real world, and not all printers have postscript that is up to standards. (but in most cases it it either real postscript, or an older version of ghoscript, so you can't really go wrong) Don't worry too much about it, but if all else is equal prefer postscript.
One warning, laser printers do need a lot of power, prefer one with an automatic power saving mode, otherwise you will want to turn it off after each use.
This printer is absolutely amasing. You dont have to buy a new drum each time the toner runs out (like on hp laserjet) as the toner cartridge and drum a seperate units. Its fast, reliable and is really nice quality. It also has a proper (i.e. not like horrible inkjet) paper feed mechanism so never jams, or gets layers of dust on the top sheet if you dont use to for long. On top of that it has a front and back manual feed (front for envolopes, transparancies and the like, and back for non flexible media) for when you want to do something without removing the paper already in the tray, which is really handy. And mine has been runnging solid for about 2 years (with 3 house moves) without a single problem you cant really go wrong. There are even linux/osx/whatevernix drivers on the cd.
Yep, a guy I know used to run a side business, he'd buy up used HP LJII and III printers and refurbish them and sell them for good money. Most of them needed nothing more than routine cleaning, although a lot of the more heavily-used printers would grab multiple sheets instead of one sheet, so those models needed a "spring retensioner" kit. It's very simple to refurbish those printers, since most of the hardest-working parts were in the replaceable toner carts. If the electronics worked OK, the mechanical stuff was simple to repair.
Bought one off Ebay for 50 bucks not too long ago. Works great under Windows and Linux. VERY happy with it. As a bonus, it's lightweight and can fold up fairly small, if you need to move it around.
Incredible machine, it is. It's big, sure, but it's worth it. About 1000 sheets paper capacity, 17 ppm, job separator (the print output rollers actually move, offsetting print jobs, incredibly useful once you get used to it). Very nice print quality, cartridges are cheap-ish and long-lasting.
Big plus: Expandible.
You can pop memory in there (up to 32 or so MB, if I'm not mistaken), I have a JetDirect ethernet card in mine, and you can even pick up a PostScript DIMM that fits in the first memory slot to provide PostScript support, if PCL isn't good enough for you. Oh yeah, you can also put in a duplexer for double-sided printing with no fuss.
I love mine muchly.
One note: feed it the right paper. I was using Xerox, but they changed their paper, and it jammed almost every page. Now I'm using Georgia Pacific, and so far *knocks on wood* it seems to work just as well as the old Xerox paper.
I recognize people by their sigs. Is that a bad thing?
Samsung looks cheap, but you will get a much better deal with the Brother HL-5040. The toner is much cheaper (get the high-capacity toner), it has more memory, and it supports Postscript.
I bought a HP 4Si duplex printer used for $30, and
a bunch of toners at $10 each. I expect to be
printing postscript friendly for several years
before I need to worry about printing again.
The local government and educational units
have surplus sales that make it easy to live
cheaply a cycle or two behind the "latest" thing.
We create our society every time we interact with each other. What kind of society did you create today?
I agree, it's an excellent printer, from the good old days when things were built to last, but honestly, you have it in your house? It's the size of a kitchen stove.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
I'm just now changing the toner. I bought one new in 1998 or 1999. Rock solid, postscript, easy to upgrade the memory. I've added an external jetdirect, and everything just works. I will never, ever sell this printer.
My toner would have lasted if I hadn't printed out about 5000 flyers a couple of years ago. I just kept changing paper the whole day, never concerned about the printer.
But don't take this as an endoresment for HP. The new printers suck. I supported about 30 of these until earlier this year. Constant problems. Driver issues, paper jams, even the occasional lockup. Go with the older HPs, or a newer Samsung.
I've used an HL1440 and HL1450 and they do seem to be reliable and work well with Linux (the only thing I wish they supported is postscript but it's no big deal and they do PCL emulation).
HP's Laserjet 4 is what I would pick up second hand. Those things are like tanks and I'm sure they last for decades. Stay away from HP's Laserjet 5 (you feed the sheet in the top) as the one's I've seen always wind up being nothing but trouble after a few months (stop picking up paper, jamming etc). I'm also less impressed by the Laserjet 4000 series printers (they just don't seem to be as sturdy as the 4).
Apple Laserwriters also seem good in the second hand market.
Copier people (nowadays a digital copier is scanner + printer) call this click cost - which is lowest for well-designed printers with long-life components. Drum life can vary greatly - one major cost factor.
Then check if the printer you have in mind is too slow (unlikely if it is a laser) or too fast.
Isn't faster better ?
Answer: Not always.
While it is simple to fuse toner to paper when printing 5-12 pages per minute, you'll need serious heat rollers for - let's say - 50 ppm. The whole engine needs lots more thought when paper speed is higher, all this adding to cost, size and weight. Energy-wise, a rather foolish thing to buy for home use. Besides, larger print endinges also have something like a lower limit for prints per month - expect trouble if you only print a couple of pages every few days with them...)
Finally, stay away from old printers. While they might still print nicely, they might produce loads of ozone due to old corona design. (Buying a cheap LED printer instead of a polygon motor based laser can help.)
One final remark - check the exact model of printer here, as something like a Frobozz 20X can work with Linux, while the Frobozz 20Xa is a paperweight...
Whatever you get, make sure it's postscript. Although you can 'make it work' when it's not, it's nice to have it supported out of the box. The biggest reason for this is cross-platform compatability -- if you've got postscript it's easy to print from Windows, Mac, Linux, *BSD, Solaris, HPUX, etc. If you don't, then its an exersize in finding drivers and setting up lpr filters. Postscript adds a lot of functionality to a printer. For example, one feature I like is to print 2 pages on one sheet. This is really easy to do if you've got a postscript printer since it's part of the 'page setup' when you print. Although it's possible to render 2 pages per sheet on a non-postscript printer, it's not nearly as easy to set up or use.
Another point -- make sure you plan for an ethernet lpd style connection. Right now you might just have it hooked up to one machine, but long-term you will likely have 2 or more machines to print from and it's a lot cleaner to just have the printer 'on the network' than shared from another computer. Many printers have ethernet 10baseT or 100baseT ports as options, or as part of a slightly more expensive model. You can also get 3rd party connections as well, from companies like Lantronix or Castelle. Built-in ethernet is a lot faster for printing than an ethernet adapter plugged into a parallel port.
I finally bit the bullet and got an HP LaserJet 6MP about 7 years ago. At the time it was around $1,000 -- and as far as I'm concerned it was worth every penny. Still prints great, cartridges last 2-3 years (and I print 300+ sheets a month).
I got a color inkjet last year and have already spend more on ink in one year than I spent on toner in 7.
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
I recently bought an HP LJ 4plus (around 1995) on ebay for 88 Euros, plus shipping. It has only printed 110000 pages (estimated lifetime: 1M). I got a new cartridge with it for free (some 8000 pages). You could drop it from the Eiffel tower and it'd still work. Perfectly supported under Linux, although you should have at least 16MB of RAM. It actually *does* print the promised 12pages/min. Funny thing though, it was considerably cheaper than any of the crappy "L"-models which yare consistently slower and of poor quality. When buying one, be sure that the seller tells you the total of pages printed (anything under 200000 should be fine). You might also consider HP 5-series.
Though you've already written off Lexmark for what I think is only barely a legit beef, try their laser printers. I purchased a Lexmark Optra E310 for under $300 almost 5 years ago. I have yet to replace the toner cartridge and I tend to go through at least 10 reams of paper a year [video game walk through can be lengthy :-)]. The main reason for your switch is the main reason I never bought an inkjet. All of the manufacturers face the same problem. It's the technology not the company. So, give Lexmark another chance.
The english language is in beta. It's evolving but has not yet reached a level of usability.
try the samsung ml-2151n
$300 from newegg.com (they go like hotcakes when they get them in stock - took me 2 weeks to actually catch one!).
Print Speed: 21 ppm
First Page Out: 12 sec
Print Resolution: 1200 x 1200 DPI
Printer Memory: 16 MB/144 MB MAX
Processor: 166 MHz
Automatic 2 Side Printing: YES
Paper Trays: Std 2, Max 3
Input Capacity Std/Max: 600/1100 sheets
Output Capacity Std/Max: 350/350 sheets
Cartridges: ML-2150D8/XAA
Connectivity: 1 USB2.0, 1 LPT, 1 10/100 Base-TX
OS Support: Win 9x/me/2K/NT4.0/XP, Mac OS Classic/OS X 10.x, Linux (Red Hat, Caldera,Debian, Mandrake, Slackware, TurboLinux, SuSE.)
Dimensions(WxDxH): 14.3 x 16.1 x 11.6 in
A warning about buying old laser printers is the power consumption. Some are especially bad in that they don't go into a power-saving mode so can draw upwards of 1kW constantly. Either make sure you've got some form of power saving, or remember to switch it on only as long as you require to do printing.
If it was made in Japan, it'll be rock solid.
The ones made in Thailand, while good, are not indestructable like the ones made in Japan.
The advantage of the Okidatas over the HPs is that the toner cartridges and the EPs are two seperate items. It is much cheaper to replace the toner when it is empty than the entire EP.
Any suggestions for an inexpensive laser that is Linux friendly, and does not employ any 'smart chip' technology that would prevent the toner cartridge from being refilled or cause it to 'expire' and stop working at a certain date regardless of the toner level?
I use an old HP Laserjet 4M. Toner refills are cheap and available from any office supply store, the printer is so durable it could probably take a bullet and keep printing, and they're cheap as hell. Just go on eBay and look for one in your area, and ask the guy if you can pick it up. I got mine for $81, with a Jetdirect card installed and a fresh set of rollers.
(And the print quality is great. My wife and I printed all of our wedding invitations on it, and people kept asking which print shop we had them done by.)
--saint
Oh, I know this very well. We have two kitchen areas. They had old gas stoves. We put a new stove in the bigger kitchen... and put the printer on a stand in the other, in place of the stove. :-)
I recognize people by their sigs. Is that a bad thing?
I bought a cheep Samsung 1210 a little over a year ago and it's worked like a charm. I have a it conected to a SMC barracade (with a bulit in print server) networked to 2 Windows and 2 Linux boxes.
When punk rock is outlawed, only outlaws will have punk rock.
I found one inkjet printer that last. It is an HP Design Jet 600. True, it is a 36" wide plotter, but I have never seen a printer that had more metal parts on it in all my life. I picked it up used last year, and I use it to make plot plans for new construction projects (im a Civil).
When this printer dies, it will make a great boat anchor, or bomb casing.
Yep. unlike modern HP's all but one of the gears on the HP LJIII Plus are metal, I know because I repaired one with 1.3 million pages on it where the plastic gear had developed plastic rot. It was a bit annoying to get to but it's been almost 4 years since that repair and the machine hasn't needed any additional servicing =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It seriously is a great resource for which printers work with linux. It even exlains how some work partially, fully or not at all. That said, If you can spring a few hundred dollars, I can't recommend the HP 1300 enough. I tried the 1000 but returned it immediately. Had no memory, and only a windows driver that was stored in rom. terrible terrible. So I upgraded to the 1300 which works great with my mixed OS environment (windows/OS X). and is rated highly on linuxprinting.org
Currently going for $80 after rebate from J&R Music and Computer All the reviews I've read, and USENET traffic I've looked through has been very positive.
Geesh, are you too '1337' to write properly, or just the sad product of years of public (that's the state-funded ones for you UK readers) schools?
-1, Retarded
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Anybody have recommendations for a laser printer/fax/copier?
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OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I have the previous model, the 1200, and couldn't be happier. I snagged it when the 1300's first came out and so to clear out inventory, i assume, the price dropped to US299(from US399)I have it hooked up to a fruity iMac and it spools jobs from everything from linux to solaris to windows. The quality is good and it warms up quickly. So I'm sure the same applies to the 1300.
--
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