Re: a printer for Linux
On Sat, May 05, 2001 at 01:59:54PM -0700, Ron Farrer wrote:
> It may have been misleading. I should have expanded on what I was
> talking about. Sorry, my bad. However, before I bought my current
> printer I wanted to buy a lazer printer that had color and
> postscript and didn't print slower then 6PPM black/4PPM color. The
> cheapest I found was $2,000 USD. That was WAY out of my budget (and
> still is). Printers that support postscript seem to be 30 - 40% more
> then similar featured printers that do not. ghostscript works pretty
> well with some printers and I couldn't justify paying 30 - 40% more
> just to have hardware level postscript support. I'll agree that
> ink-jet printers have a higher cost per page, that is why I buy refill
> kits. Besides the fact that the refill kit ink is higher quality then
> what you get from the manufacturer.
I don't think postscript support adds very much to the cost of a
printer. The processors used in a postscript printer are only 75 MHz
or so. The extra cost is probably do to the printer being higher
quality, since printers with postcript are generally the better models
with more features.
Color lasers are very expensive. But, as someone pointed out, if you
need a good quality color printout (which probably isn't very often
for most), go to Kinko's or something. Color inkjets won't do a
really good job anyway.
That said, my postscript laser was $550 new, and for the speed, B&W
quality, ease of setup, reliability, and cost per page, I don't think
that's bad at all.
> > Probably the only significant advantage of an inkjet is color
> > printing. Most inkjets will do a decent job at printing in color at
> > far lower (initial) costs than a color laser.
>
> Yes, and when I was buying I wanted color. My ink-jet printer does
> 12PPM black/10PPM color and supports 1440 x 720 DPI. There are not a
> lot of lazer printers that can do that, add in postscript and you are
> looking at an expensive printer...
I'm no expert on printers, but I don't think resolution is a very good
indication of print quality. I think it's entirely possible that a
600x600 laser will have better quality than a 1200x1200 inkjet.
> > If you do choose an inkjet, be wary of driver support. Most inkjets
> > have pretty lousy support in linux.
>
> That goes for any non-postscript printer, regardless of the printing
> mechanism (lazer, sub-dye, ink-jet, dot-matrix, etc.)
Yup.
--
Brian Nelson <nelson@bignachos.com>
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