----- Original Message ----- > > I've got an old Brother MFC-8860DN (laser, BW, duplexer and wired > network) printer which works great. The kids can print to it from > anywhere, and they raid it fro scrap paper too. I just poked at it > last night and found I had printed somehing like 8800 pages, but > about > 4400 on the most recent toner cartridge. Or seomhting like that. > Haven't replaced the drum, says it should be good until 16,000 pages, > which is quite a ways off. At least until the kids start writing > more > papers for school. > > I don't miss color at all. > > JBS> We had an HP 1510 or 1610 (can't remember which now), and > JBS> definitely had problems with the ink cartridges drying out over > JBS> time. Nice to hear that this isn't as much of an issue any more. > > JBS> -Josh > ([email protected])
Kind of a timely discussion....in that I'm in the search for a new multifunction printer... My HP Photosmart 8450xi seems to be nearing its end (think I got it in 2005)...sometimes acts like its going to shake itself into pieces when I print. I had gotten a Brother MFC7065DN last year....but found that its a GDI printer, and can't get all the functions to work from FreeBSD (not being able to duplex print is the biggest problem.) I do currently have a VM that I bounce through.... though I find that I'm not using it as much as I was when I first got it...which was enough to result in buying high yield toner refills and a new case of paper. Though its partly due to needing color or convenience....the printers are at opposite ends of my home....and when I had gotten it I was spending most of my time on computer near laser printer and now I'm spending most of my time near the inkjet. (and what I do on the computer near the inkjet is more likely to call for color....) The one oversight was fax in the MFC. Even though I so rarely have needed it...there have been the occasions where it would've been nice to have had the direct (the Brother replaced an MFC that did have the capability...though there was a 5 year gap, while I was trying to find the perfect new MFC....and instead went for one that was an Amazon lightning deal....there are laser MFC's that do postscript [BR-script]....in fact one that's identical to this one, but doesn't map the POSTSCRIPT_P1 id to /dev/null. ) The issue of ink drying out, is a concern though....since that was one of the reasons that had gone into getting the HP Photosmart. It was a time when I needed to do a lot of photo printing.... And, I used to have an Epson...which would go through months where I didn't print anything with it....favoring printer with duplex printing. One time I burned through entire ink cartridges before I got all the nozzles working again....so when I ran out of ink trying to do it again...I opted to toss it rather than buy more ink. Though its hard trying to find out whether new printers are of the new head with every cartridge type or not.... ALso it has been challenging to find out if they support normal print protocols, like postscript, PCL, etc. or are GDI-only (like Canon Pixma MX922 or Brother MFC-J835DW...which I guess MFC-J875DW is its successor? which were printers I had been reconsidering....) Partly due to having gotten cups-cloud-print - http://www.niftiestsoftware.com/cups-cloud-print/ - working on my FreeBSD system. But, I guess I'm still leary of committing to a GDI only printer.... Though both of these have the direct printing to CD capability...which I've decided is a highly desirable plus...given that I found I have a unopened spindle of inkjet printable CD-R's.... Not entirely sure how I came to have that...since I haven't had the home capability since the Epson....and I don't think I ever did any personal discs at work...maybe I had intended for that possibility.... MX922 has a duplexing ADF....which I've often wondered why more duplexing MFC's didn't offer....might be nifty to have. Probably as long as I can make use of all the printing aspects....and it has good stand alone support for the rest, I'd go with that. Oh yeah...the OP had touched on the requirement.... > Linux and Mac friendly, including print head alignment etc. Brother has propriety drivers for Linux for the MFC7065DN, which might be the case for other Brother GDI printers (though I don't recall if I found if they had Linux driver for MFC-J835DW). But, the part about "including print head alignment etc." gave me pause. The HP Photosmart 8450xi...had a big proprietary driver for Windows XP...but Microsoft had a basic driver for it in Vista and forward....as HP no longer supported the printer. The problem was all the printer maintenance functions weren't part of the basic driver (and neither was support of the memory card slots on the printer.) There was even a note that the print head cleaning function through the XP driver was capable of being more aggressive if needed while the Microsoft driver nor the front panel couldn't. Of course, with this printer you could just buy a new cartridge if the basic cleaning fails. Though it was kind of nice with Ubuntu that it would discover the HP8450 on my network and it had a driver that did everything I needed for it....FreeBSD doesn't have an exact match, but it generally works. -- Who: Lawrence K. Chen, P.Eng. - W0LKC - Senior Unix Systems Administrator _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
