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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.
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
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.)
My HP 842C (840 series) printer's black ink replacement cartridge is rated 450-500 pages; cost is $40 CAD. The Samsung ML1710's cartridge (includes drum) is rated for 3000 pages, cost $100 CAD. You do the math.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
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."
Yes, I would agree with that. My comparison isn't really fair. Don't anybody laugh too hard, the network was already setup this way when I started at this place and I have no control over it.
To get from my machine to the printer, which is about 20 feet away, I end up going through three 4-port hubs, and one 16-port hub. The 16-port is also hooked to another 32-port hub.
Printing a large document takes down the network.
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 agree... people like him who have no control over the idiotic network they use shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a network!!!
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.
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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.
A member of our IT department did a report on exactly this about a year ago. I don't have the report with me, but I can dig up details if required. The laser printers we evaluated were high-end workgroup printers and we took all costs into consideration (initial investment, rollers, maintenance kits, labor (whether we have an in-house technician or contract out the maintenance)).
We also used more realistic estimates on toner/ink usage than the industry defines. The standard industry test for toner cartridge life is at 5% coverage: they have a standard letter they send through the printer multiple times to see how long toner lasts. I wrote the print server software we use and for a few months I calculated and kept logs of ink coverage (on spare CPU cycles, render pages from postscript using printer's DPI and count pixels based on a gray-level heuristic that makes the standard test page come out at 5%). In (what I would call) a normal office environment, our coverage was around 8%, significantly higher than the "industry standard." There are lots of variables here, but the numbers we got for coverage roughly matched how much toner we actually purchased versus pagecount (also logged systematically). As such, I would not put much faith into the numbers printer manufacturers give you. The cartridges we buy are either refilled or we get a good enough volume deal on OEM cartridges that they cost the same as refilled.
Anyway, end results:
Laser: circa $0.07 / page
Inkjet: circa $0.25 / page
The inkjets costs were driven that high not just by cost of ink, but by cost of initial investment and maintenance. We usually have a lifecycle of at least four years on our laser printers in a high volume environment, but our investigations turned up the the average lifecycle of a personal inkjet is about two years. Also important is that most inkjets are simply thrown away when there is something wrong with them but laserjets like the ones we use are repaired and eventually retired to lower-volume environments, but rarely scrapped.
If you're looking at a personal laser printer instead of higher-end workgroup stuff the difference will of course fall (similarly to how the difference would grow if you're looking at professional print-shop stuff), but I'm pretty sure the savings would still be significant. As for myself, I don't own a printer - I just print my personal stuff after-hours at work :)
How is the paper handling on your E310? My Optra E312 is prone to jams and multi-feeds. Lexmark tech support denies it's a problem and will supply a long document on how to properly feed paper, what kind of paper to use, how to tighten the guides and then loosen them to the exact paper width, not to ever add an extra sheet to an existing stack, don't use used paper, etc. In fact it comes off as one long excuse for their sucky paper feed mechanism.
The only real solution I have found is to feed one page at a time. It works pretty well with Linux, but I'd never buy another one just based on this multi-feed problem and Lexmark's unwillingness to fix it.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
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 was going to recommend the HP LJ 4/5 series as well. They are very robust printers, Linux plays very nice with them (and every other OS as well). Replacement parts are also still avaible and very cheap. I've got an 5L and had a 4 at work and both work without any problems for years now.