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Grex > Micros > #254: Budget laser printers - sick of my inkjet | |
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| Author |
Message |
| 9 new of 26 responses total. |
rcurl
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response 18 of 26:
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Mar 14 05:23 UTC 2007 |
I chose a Brother 2070N. No legal paper option. I chose it for being both
inexpensive and network ready. Uses a printer driver.
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ball
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response 19 of 26:
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Mar 14 06:02 UTC 2007 |
Re #17: It's one less layer of software to debug.
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keesan
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response 20 of 26:
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Mar 14 15:49 UTC 2007 |
I print with ghostscript or netpbm (which prints to any PCL 5 printer).
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ball
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response 21 of 26:
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Mar 14 20:54 UTC 2007 |
Ghostscript is definitely a useful program. If I found a
laser printer that lacked PostScript but met my requirements
otherwise, I'd certainly consider it. I usually track pkgsrc
-current and occasionally a package breaks. It would be
frustrating if that happened to ghostscript and I couldn't
print. If the printer understands PostScript, that's one
less package to worry about.
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keesan
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response 22 of 26:
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Mar 14 23:33 UTC 2007 |
I just compiled ghostscript myself. Not much involved other than downloading
a few things it requires you have the source code or, or the installed headers
and .so libraries for. I got a much smaller executable by choosing only the
printers I do have, not everything on the default list. 2.6MB plus fonts.
Including the init files (1MB of them). I chose most of the deskjet and laser
printer drivers and p?m devices. A postscript printer might have more
physical things on it to break. We recycled one with a motherboard that had
a dead battery.
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ball
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response 23 of 26:
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Mar 16 01:50 UTC 2007 |
Not much involved when it works ;-)
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keesan
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response 24 of 26:
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Mar 16 17:28 UTC 2007 |
Has it ever stopped working for you? The motherboard with dead battery would
have been $800 to replace ($450 if you hunted around). What does a new
postscript printer cost now?
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gull
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response 25 of 26:
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Mar 24 06:16 UTC 2007 |
Re resp:16: Try to get a printer with a network interface built-in.
It's more convenient *and* it seems to increase the odds that the
printer will support Postscript. I don't have any specific
recommendations, though; lately most of the units I've been dealing
with have been large business-class printers.
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ball
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response 26 of 26:
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May 22 21:53 UTC 2007 |
My wife was itching to buy a new printer and I didn't have the time or
inclination to research a lot of different printers so I just said
"buy whatever appeals to you". She came home with an HP inkjet that
has a 10baseT (or perhaps 100baseTX) port on it. I have yet to figure
out what protocols the printer uses, but it would be nice if I could
print to it from my NetBSD desktop and my Linux laptop.
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