[LAU] OT: printers

Rob lau at kudla.org
Thu Sep 15 02:12:49 UTC 2011


On Wednesday 14 September 2011 21:35, Ken Restivo wrote:
> I said "I'm just looking for a printer that doesn't suck, and where the
>  cost of the ink cartridges isn't more than the printer costs".

Well, the fact that you said "ink cartridges" probably means you're not 
interested in this, but we got a Brother HL-2140 laser a couple years ago 
from Newegg for 60 bucks and the generic toner available for it is about 25 
bucks. We have it set up on our Linux server and access it from our Linux 
laptops through CUPS, and we've printed thousands of pages without a 
problem.  It was totally plug and play under Ubuntu Hardy, so it's been 
around a while.  Newegg has a newer model with duplex for 80 bucks as I 
type this, but it seems to have been a sale that ends tonight. I have no 
idea if the new ones still use the same driver.

But it is black and white, and a laser, so not as energy-efficient as an 
inkjet.  We got an HP Officejet 4500 g510n (they really need to rethink 
their naming scheme) all-in-one, mostly for scanning but do what little 
color printing we need to do on it.  We had to mess around with it a bit to 
get it working on Ubuntu 9.10, but 10.04 and up seem fine.  

We're able to print to it and scan from it over wifi without hooking it up 
to a computer.  A full set of first-party ink runs about 40 bucks, but 
we're still on our first set so I can't comment on how long they last.  You 
can find "remanufactured" (meaning refilled) ones for a little less, but I 
don't think I've seen generic ink for it yet. I don't think I'd print my 
family photos on it or anything, but my old standby Epson has really fallen 
hard for the "charge more for the toner than the printer" model the last 
few years.  So, any port in a storm.

Rob


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