[TriLUG] Best printer?

[Aaron Joyner]

I recently bought a HP LaserJet M451dw.  It's so awesome, I literally
wrote a song about it.  This was partly prompted by the fact it has a
front-panel menu option to print sheet music.  It is a
network-accessible (wired and WiFi) printer which directly supports
PostScript and PCL, JetDirect, AirPrint, HP ePrint (eg. Android or
iPhone direct printing via their app) and a host of other buzz words.
It prints fast color and black and white, and has a built in duplexer
for two-sided printing.  I also bought from PCRush, and was quite
happy with their price and delivery.

On the down side, it does not scan.  IMHO all-in-one devices are just
bad-compromise devices, until the cost gets well out of my price
range.  It also only holds about half a ream of paper, rather than
what should be an obligatory ream-sized tray.

Aaron S. Joyner


On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 10:35 AM, David Burton <ncdave4life at gmail.com> wrote:
> My HP LasjerJet 4 w/ Postscript card (basically a 4M w/o the AppleTalk
> adapter), is now old enough to vote.  I've repaired it twice (replaced some
> feed rollers, and I've now forgotten the other problem).  I think I also
> upgraded the RAM in it at some point.
>
> Dave
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 9:49 AM, William Sutton <william at trilug.org> wrote:
>
>> and here I'm happily sitting on an HP LaserJet 4100N.  No muss, no fuss,
>> but no scan or color, either.  I got it for $1300 back in 2000 because I
>> didn't want to fuss with shared printers under CUPS.  Since then, I've
>> replaced the motherboard and JetDirect card ($500-ish).  It still has 99%
>> of its toner left, so at this rate, my grandchildren will be using it
>> (assumuing ethernet still exists).
>>
>> William Sutton
>>
>>
>> On Mon, 25 Mar 2013, matt at noway2.thruhere.net wrote:
>>
>>  A few months ago I was in the same situation (old HP with expensive
>>>> cartridges), and a good friend of mine recommended the "Canon MFC8380Cdw"
>>>> printer.  I purchased it from PCRush for about $380 (cheaper today at
>>>> $360) and received it in just a couple of days.
>>>>
>>>> After using it for a while, I must agree this is a very good printer.  It
>>>> is a color printer with fax/scan/wifi capabilities, and it prints
>>>> fantastic.  Best of all, the replacement cartridges are very inexpensive
>>>> compared to the HP stuff.  I am able to scan using the flatbed and
>>>> scanner
>>>> feeder directly to an SMB storage area on my linux machine.
>>>>
>>>>  One thing that I would suggest you do, after you think you know what you
>>> want and before you purchase, is go to the 'add printer' through CUPS or
>>> whatever system your using and verify that the make and model come up
>>> listed.
>>>
>>> I have an HP that (supposedly) has Linux drivers via the HPLIP, but is a
>>> model that is not listed in drop down list.  This makes finding a .PPD for
>>> the printer a royal pain.
>>>
>>> I will also say that there seems to be a lot of variation in how well a
>>> printer works and how easy it is to connect amongst the distributions.
>>> This same printer was a massive headache trying to get it to connect via
>>> the wireless network on Ubuntu, but was a snap under Slackware.  Then just
>>> yesterday, I spent ~6.0 hours trying to get the damned thing to work under
>>> Arch.  It worked flawlessly when connected via USB but gave me nothing but
>>> trouble as a network printer.
>>>
>>> Ultimately the solution was a combination of running the hp-setup utility
>>> under KDESU (since root = !GUI) to get the correct PPD filter and
>>> discovering that the AVAHI daemon wasn't running, which is necessary if
>>> you use DHCP and identify the printer by name.
>>>
>>> Hopefully by picking a standard supported printer you can reduce the
>>> likelihood of such issues.
>>>
>>
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