On 12/04/10 14:23, John Levine wrote:
Network is the way to go. USB *may* be okay. Parallel is not
living anymore - allthough I'm still using it that way, but
my home setting is a life support system for obsolete
technology anyway. :-)
My printer is a sturdy old Lexmark Optra T610. CUPS has a driver,
which does duplex, N-up, and so forth. Each toner cartridge is good
for over 10K pages, so I buy one about every two years, and I can
usually find one for $100, making the per page cost very low.
I bought a USB to parallel adapter cable for about $10 which works
well, drives the printer fast without swamping the PC.
R's,
John
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Pardon me, but Oh God No! Anything but that!
As a tech from the industry (and I'll have to adjust my comments from
before) I must say some manufacturers were never meant to build
printers! IBM should have stuck to the computing and stayed the hell
away from printers...
Lexmarks are very badly designed (but very slowly getting better
ergonomically), expensive to run, and crap themselves with generic
toner. They are unreliable, and I've seen big corporations jump up and
down about it not running, and then if they're not in an IBM contract
they will go out and buy two small kyocera 1010/1020 (whatever they're
up to now) to do the same job better and with more features for a lower
cost- and give them redundancy to boot.
Bottom line is that unless they've entered a contract with IBM there are
many _far_ better printers out there cheaper and heaps more reliable.
And a 610 was one of their first- so not only was is crap to start, its
worse now, and EOL by about 5 years so no parts.
For comparison the closest Kyocera (the most reliable cheap printer I've
experienced- and I've been repairing printers for over 10 years now, and
Xerox biased) say 10xx is half the footprint, at least triple the output
per month, double capacity toner, and half again in speed. New they're
about 1/6 price, and I've only serviced them a third as much. Lexmark
parts are double and more the price, and last half as long. I'd visit
them around once a fortnight (and thats being nice) for service, more
frequently under heavy load. The newer ones can be worse- they look like
kyoceras but are very touchy and a pain to fix.
So, to adjust my earlier statements: just about any printer will work,
just don't expect photo quality- just stay very well clear of a Lexmark!
I agree ink would not be a good way to go, toner is more efficient and
cost friendly, but either way cheap upfront and low cost maintenance is
still a very tall order. As others have mentioned, a good ex-office HP
is probably a good investment. Very durable and parts plentiful- and
probably the only way to achieve the cheap tall order :)
HTH
BTW if you have a HP laser check Canon for toner compatibility- cheaper
and essentially the same.
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