Re: Printer recommendations
On Fri, Mar 02, 2001 at 02:17:55PM -0800, kmself@ix.netcom.com wrote:
| on Mon, Feb 26, 2001 at 08:26:36PM -0500, Alec Smith (alec@shadowstar.net) wrote:
| > I'm faced with recommending a new printer for my parents as their old unit
| > is starting to show its age. The goal is to find something for $350 or
| > less which is Linux friendly since I'll also be using it. The printer will
| > be connected to the LAN through an old HP JetDirect EX. Right now we're
| > looking more towards a laser but I'd also be interested in inkjet
| > recommendations as well.
| >
|
| My recommendation is for a laserjet. Inkjets are slow, expensive to
| run, and tend to be maintenance-happy.
|
| I just purchased a used HPLJ4m for about $380. The footprint's about
| twice what the HPDJ6xxC was, but it prints about ten times faster,
| literally, native postscript. If you have the space, an HPLJIIIx is
| even less expensive, though I suspect you'll make up the difference on
| power bills if it's on all the time. Ideal would be to rig up something
| to power on the printer automajikally when needed. More modern LJs have
| a built-in powersave option, the IIIs and 4s I looked at did not.
|
I have an old LJIIIp printer. It works quite well. I don't know how
much they cost since I got this as a hand-me-down. It prints 300 dpi,
4ppm. Has PCL5 natively and a PS (Level 1) card with it.
A few years back the LJ6l was the "personal" laserjet model. It had
PCL builtin, 600 dpi, 6 ppm. I think it ran ~$400 new. I think the
1100 series has replaced the 6l series now.
The Laserjet 5/6 M and friends did have a powersave feature with an
"instant-on" fuser. Quite nice. 600 dpi, 8 ppm. Toner is quite
cheap per-page and gives much better quality than inkjets for black.
I would highly recommend getting a laser jet printer. I like them and
have seen them give good performance. My particular model was
manufactured in '92 and is still chugging along quite well. Models
with built-in postscript interpreters are the best since PS is quite a
standard format in *nix. Windows drives can deal with it. PCL
(version 5 at least) is supported and in my experience usually prints
faster. I had it set up to use PCL by default on a RH system using
printtool.
-D
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