15 Sep
2011
15 Sep
'11
6:09 a.m.
On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 10:12:49PM -0400, Rob wrote:
On Wednesday 14 September 2011 21:35, Ken Restivo
wrote:
Thanks to everyone for replies!
Yes, a laser would be a much better solution, since I only print black-and-white anyway
most of the time.
However, I hadn't even considered lasers, since the last laser printer I bought (and
not with my own money) was like $5000 (in the early 1990s).
But I guess they've come down a lot in price. A laser for US$60? That's awesome,
and right in my price range.
Thanks all. I'll have a look at some of the low-end lasers you mentioned, from HP,
Lexmark, Brother, etc.
Thanks!
-ken
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.