[LAU] OT: printers

[Kevin Cosgrove]

On 14 September 2011 at 18:35, Ken Restivo <ken at restivo.org> wrote:

> That said. Is there no-one who will rid the world of printers
> that suck, and whose cartridges cost more than the printer?
>
> (Also, works with CUPS on Linux, in such a way that it actually
> presents useful ERROR MESSAGES, instead of just unhelpfully
> blinking a light over and over with no details as to what
> exactly is wrong?)
>
> I figured I'd ask this group.

I had the same issue.  About 6 months ago I got a Brother
MFC-8480DN from Costco.  The toner cartridge it comes with is
supposed to be good for 50k pages.  The unit prints in b/w but
scans in color.  Scanning works with [X]SANE.  Scanning works
over Ethernet.  Printing can work over Ethernet or parallel port
and I think USB too.  It's also a fine copier and fax machine.

I grabbed the easy to find Brother drives free from their site.
They installed just fine.  These are brmfcfaxcups, brscan-skey,
and brscan3.  All that cooperates just fine with CUPS.  I can't
tell you about error message usefulness as I've never had one.

I have two friends who got the color version of this unit.
Neither one survived a full year, only about 11 months.  Another
friend of mine has a unit like mine, but older, that's never had
any trouble in the years he's had it.

G'luck....

--
Kevin