http://www.linuxprinting.org has collected stats on this subject. Should give you a list of printers to choose from based on how well they work in linux, if at all. Of course, any postscript printer will work perfectly.
-----Original Message----- From: D-Man [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 6:50 PM To: debian-user@lists.debian.org Subject: 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 ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 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 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]