Printer Makers' Ploys 456
Ellen Spertus writes "The San Francisco Chronicle has an interesting article on printer makers' ploys, such as lying about print speeds and selling printers with crippled cartridges. I'm sure that slashdot readers could identify more deceptions. Are there any printers that actually live up to the manufacturers' claims, ideally with Linux support?"
lexmark and hp (Score:2, Informative)
Lexmark inkjets and Epson inkjets (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know about speed, but quality-wise when printing photos, Epson is one of the best AND has *excellent* Linux support. (Not from the vendor, but Epsons always seem to get the coolest new driver improvements under Linux.)
Re:Lexmark inkjets and Epson inkjets (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Lexmark inkjets and Epson inkjets (Score:2, Interesting)
Sadly, I had numerous problems getting a windows 98 client, with the offical Lexmark driver, to print to a samba (linux) server, wired up to a Lexmark Z52. Talk about the windows printer driver sending samba in to a complete rage.
Never again...now it works after I fiddled with the lexmark driver on the windows machine.
I mean who needs windows printer drivers that talk to you?
Two comments: (Score:2)
b) Um, did you read the subject of my comment? "Lexmark inkjets
Re:lexmark/the "X" series multifunction printers (Score:3, Informative)
After hooking it up to my wife's Windows PC, I also found I couldn't write to it from any other box on a network, even another Windows box, as the driver for it won't install or run correctly unless it finds the printer hanging off a USB port on the box you're installing or printing from.
I stayed with my battle-scarred HP Deskjet 400, which happily prints from Windows or Linux, and across the network via Samba, etc. Meanwhile, my wife loves the X73...although it does cost us a fortune in cartridges...
Re:lexmark and hp (Score:2)
My personal printer at home is a Lexmark Optra E310. I bought it in the US but live in Canada. After a few weeks of use the printer stopped working. I called Lexmark and explained the problem. The nice man at Lexmark told me it would need replacing. He shipped me a new printer with a return slip for the old one. I received my replacement the next day.
With service like that I'll continue to recommend Lexmark.
Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Linux (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Linux support (Score:2, Insightful)
Right..... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Linux support (Score:4, Insightful)
Give me a break!
Or perhaps they're just shrewd businessmen, and would like to sell as many printers as possible by opening it up to more platforms?
Re:Linux (Score:3, Insightful)
Selling a product while refusing to tell the purchaser how to use it counts as slimy in my book.
Lexmark Z33 (Score:2, Funny)
However, the printer is ass. The sheet feeder puts a dent in the paper at the bottom, and the paper goes in at an angle, and it only works one sheet at a time.
Never again will I listen to the wife when it comes to buying a printer. I wanted a black and white laser with a network connector. She was like "but that is expensive when you could get this one"...
Re:Lexmark Z33 (Score:3, Informative)
I haven't had any trouble with the Epson Style Color 777 that I bought a year and a half ago. It works great with Linux. I remember when I got the printer, I checked linuxprinting.org [linuxprinting.org] and found that Lexmarks weren't very well supported at that time.
My Printer of Choice (Score:2, Interesting)
Full duplex. Fast. Ethernet ready.
mmm...
Agreed! (Score:3, Informative)
Great quality printing at a not-too-unreasonable price. My previous printer (HP LJ 4L, which I paid $700 for back in, oh, late 1993/early 1994) ran without a single problem around 15K-20K sheets---hopefully this will last as long or longer.
Re:Agreed! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My Printer of Choice (Score:2, Informative)
i sold hp for a while... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:i sold hp for a while... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:i sold hp for a while... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:i sold hp for a while... (Score:2)
Re:i sold hp for a while (thanks for the info!) (Score:4, Interesting)
Traditionally, I always recommended HP for anyone buying a laser printer, and almost always for a networked inkjet. (I never thought their inkjets matched Epson's ability to print near-photo quality images - but Epson's print drivers can really bog down a network print server.)
Nowdays, I have to really re-think that.
A while back, I had problems with a Deskjet 1600C that died - and was met with endless frustration getting it repaired. (Despite this being originally a $1400+ business-class inkjet with optional paper tray, HP acted like it was disposable - and couldn't understand why we wanted to fix it instead of just buying a newer model.) HP refused to sell the repair parts needed, and insisted that we ship it in for repair.
In another case, we bought several HP Laserjet 6L printers, all of which developed problems jamming when feeding paper. After over a year of putting up with this problem, HP *finally* acknowledged it as a design defect and offered to ship customers a "repair kit". When I got the "repair kit", it turns out it was simply a piece of cardboard with a double-sided block of sticky foam on the end. You were supposed to use the cardboard to shove the sticky foam down inside the printer, so it would stick to a part beneath the vertically stacked pieces of paper. That way, it was again able to "grab" sheets without trying to suck in too many at once and jam up.
Granted, this work-around did cure our problem - but it's obviously not going to be a permanent fix. HP screwed up and used a rubber material that got hard over time and lost its "tacky" characteristic needed to grab paper. They should have supplied a substitute part for the defective one - not a stick-on-top band-aid fix.
HP's (Score:2)
Re:HP's (Score:3, Informative)
It's here. [sourceforge.net]
Yes Xerox.. (Score:5, Funny)
granted... the printer is $3500.00USD Appx (I have 4 of them... 2 DX's and 2 N's so I got a good deal
First she violently rips a jammed paper out of it... leaving a nice 3"X3" chunk stuck deep inside instead of using the obvious levers for releasing a jammed piece of paper.. then she loads the paper tray with inkjet lables that decided to adhere to the printing drum...after she ran the same label sheet through 5 times trying to get them looking just right and removing a few of the labels..
oh and finally she broke the high capacity paper drawer by "using her foot" to remove the paper guide.... because it wouldnt come off easily (you have to lift a tab first that is labelled in several languages..
so if you are stupid.... dont get a Phaser 850 printer... or if you have stupid workers in your office...
Not necessarily lying (Score:2)
Linux printers. (Score:4, Informative)
I've purchased several printers and scanners from both HP and Epson over the years, and never felt like I was cheated or what have you. They've all worked under Linux without a hitch.
However, if you want absolute Linux compatibility, spring for a postscript printer. They will always work without a hitch, but are a tad spendy.
Re:Linux printers. (Score:2)
Re:Linux printers. (Score:2)
I've also used ghostscript to print to my color Epson 400 inkjet (now retired) without any problems.
I use an Okidata laser (Score:2)
Toner for the Oki is cheap, and I've not replaced it even once. Both print fine from Linux.
The HP Deskjet is slowly dying, which is to be expected given it's age (6 years). Given what I've read about HP's tricks with their low end deskjets (and their firing of Bruce Perens) I would have another one only if GIVEN to me...
I am in the market for a new color printer... Which manufacturer sticks it to you LESS than the others? I'm considering Epson, Lexmark, and Canon (I owned Canon prior to the HP, and was less than impressed with the durability of their printers).
Re:even if given to me... (Score:2)
True... The main reason I've hung on to the old 672 is because I can find refills and 3rd party carts for it at Wal-Mart for $20 or less. And I average one per year.
I know if I got a newer HP this would be FAR more expensive...
Lexmark supports Linux (Score:2, Informative)
modern printers (Score:2, Informative)
support PostScript, they have no internal memory,
they hold a miniscule amount of paper, and they
get jammed often. My family's Lexmark inkjet is
case in point - it holds about 30 sheets, has no
memory, and only uses Lexmark's "jnl" format.
Laser printers are somewhat better, but I've no
expreience with them.
Me? I use an Apple Imagewriter II. Sure, it
doesn't support PS, but that's what ghostscript
is for (does a nice job, too). Never jams, has
unlimited paper supply (the paper is stored
externally), almost never gets jammed, and even
has 2KB memory in it, upgradable to 32KB! Most
printers die after a few years, but this one's
twelve years old and running strong!
Re:modern printers (Score:2)
Re:modern printers (Score:2)
a tank, but it's strictly utility grade output.
You get what you pay for. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not the point... (Score:3, Insightful)
A low price may warrant selling junk, but it doesn't (shouldn't?) permit deceptive marketing practices.
6L (Score:2, Informative)
Re:You get what you pay for. (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know if this was corrected in the 6L, but I won't be buying a gravity feed printer again.
Re:You get what you pay for. (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't even imagine how many thousands of pages it has printed in it's lifetime, but it has gone through at least 10 toner cartridges so it has really been quite a workhorse for me.
Re:You get what you pay for. (Score:2)
Can't find anything about it on HPs website except for the $189 maintenance kit for a printer that has reached an insanely high page count.
Re:You get what you pay for. (Score:2)
Other than that, it was an extremely reliable small deskspace laser printer with extremely good quality. Mine has been in a box for the last couple years, since I didn't have the deskpsace, and because I go a Deskjet 1220 (mmmm.....llx17 color glossies
Re:You get what you pay for. (Score:2, Informative)
That's what I call great support.
Now, checking if the fix exists for the 5L is left as an exercice...
Re:You get what you pay for. (Score:4, Insightful)
The IIIP we own, on the other hand, is 10 years old and has been repaired once, for $20.
They don't make 'em like they used to.
Re:You get what you pay for. (Score:2, Interesting)
I have gone through 3 toners since I bought it 4 years ago.. Still going strong.
Time to *start* printing (Score:2)
I tell you what, my Cannon 750 prints damn fast, but the amount of time it takes to get the very first page out is outrageous!!! (I'm talking about a simple plain old page of ascii text, no graphics, no special fonts.)
A full minute!!
I'd bloody well like to see some statistics on that. I rarely print big long documents, but I often print the odd page or two. The *effective* print speed ends up being 1-3 ppm, even though once it gets going it can do 11ppm.
WTF is the printer doing? I don't remember the old BJC 200's taking that long to get started.
Re:Time to *start* printing (Score:2)
HP Deskjet 960C. (Score:2)
Sure it works, and for B&W it works fine. But when I try to print color photos (on photo paper) it just blows. I have to print over the network to it from a Windows machine.
According to HP [hp-at-home.com] this printer will print 15ppm draft B&W and 12ppm draft color. Unfortunatly I have absolutely *no* use for draft mode so what good do these numbers do me? Marketing ploys and mind games. I am thinking for the work I do (B&W mostly) that it is around 5 - 7ppm all text.
I like the printer in that it is about $200 retail, it has both USB and LPTx, and it is relatively quiet compared to my previous printer.
Problems are that it is slow, it runs out of ink WAY too fucking fast (I mean w/my DJ 400c I used 2 B&W cartridges, and 1 color cartridge in 5 years), w/this printer, 2 B&W's and 1 color since December 25th. Note: I printed TONS more shit in 5 years than I have since Dec. 25th.
CUPS makes printing on the Linux machine ok. It's nothing special but it works. I still have to print from Windows if I want color photos to look right. It's slow and it sucks ink.
If you are using it for B&W text mostly, it's affordable, good quality printing (600x600 dpi black, 2400x1200 dpi photo color), and it has an LPTx port for Linux.
YMMV.
The best printer on Earth (that we can afford) (Score:5, Informative)
It does 12ppm, connects directly to 100bt ethernet (so I don't need a slave PC as a print server), and of course it works just fine with Linux (supports PCL6 and PS2).
Black-and-white laser, but *very* good quality (1200x600... At 25-up, I can still read a 10pt font, though I need a magnifying glass to do so) and a high throughput make it thge single best printer I have ever used (not just owned, used... at my previous job, we had a variety of serious high-end HP lasers, y'know, the $15k type) and they all SUCKED in comparison).
Not as cheap as a chinsy little $80 color inkjet, but, 99.9% of the time I care more about printing speed and quality than having color on my printouts. And when I do, I visit Kinkos (If I actually need a color document, you can bet I won't accept the crappy quality of those $80 inkjets).
Incidentally, for quite a lot less (around $150) you can get the HL-1240. It has very similar stats (my parents have one of these, and it impressed me enough to get the 1270N for myself), except no ethernet and half the memory. If you don't mind needing a PC to act as a print server for it, this makes a GREAT deal on an amazing printer.
article benchmarks are disappointing... (Score:2)
If warmup is an issue you don't care (Score:2)
If you care about print speed, then you are using the print enough that it will never enter power saving mode anyway. I print a few pagers a month. I don't even turn my printer on most weeks. When I do it takes a minute to warm up, but I don't care. freeBSD has a preety good print spooler and is willing to wait for the printer. Sure it would be NICE hit print within a few second hold the printout, but in practice you don't need it instantly.
Does reporter ignorance really equal "ploys"? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, I read the article, the bulk of which was that the reporter's 17 ppm printer had a throughput of significantly less than that when printing a trio of single pages.
No kidding. The problem here isn't that the printer manufacturers are trying to pull a fast one on the consumer. The problem here was that the consumer in question was ignorant about what the rating meant.
I bought my first laser printer back in the 1980's. Back then it was only computer geeks buying these toys, and we all knew that when a printer was rated at 6 ppm, that meant that the printer engine itself was rated at 6 ppm. The engine speed didn't account for the time the printer's processor took to render the PS or PCL code into a laser raster. We all knew that in order to get 6 ppm you would have to set the printer to print 6 (or 12 or whatever) copies of the same page. That way the printer's CPU only had to parse the PS/PCL file once and just start spewing forth paper.
Back then, when most home use dot-matrix printers were printing at about 100 cps (roughly 1.1 ppm if my math is right), this seemed like a fair and equitable way to rate laser printers.
So it's not that the printer manufacturers are trying evil ploys to up their PPM ratings. It's simply that times have changed, and that consumers no longer bother to educate themselves before making a purchase.
At least that's how I see it. It's a free Internet--you can disagree if you want.
Re:Does reporter ignorance really equal "ploys"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Printer manufacturers print the PPM in big, bold letters on the box. They use it as a main selling point, same as with DPI. Yes, there are several cavaets that the buyer must be aware of. However, it is deceptive marketing.
Same goes for tape drive manufacturers who quote 2:1 compression figures in 2" high letters; monitor manufacturers who make the "viewable" size much smaller than the regular size.
Well, the monitor people are getting better. A couple years ago you couldn't find "viewable size" anywhere on the box. And LCDs are "true" size -- not that inch-behind-the-bezel size.
Yes, it is up to the buyer to educate themselves. However, printer manufacturers are very much like car dealers in that they SHOUT the one number, while whisper all the "gotchas". Deceptive.
Re:Does reporter ignorance really equal "ploys"? (Score:3, Informative)
If memory serves me, this was due to a law passing and not due to the kindness in the hearts of CRT manufacturers. I could be wrong, but I seem to remember the "viewable size" being a big enough issue a few years back that a law was passed requiring the actual display size to be printed on the outside of the box.
Re:Does reporter ignorance really equal "ploys"? (Score:2)
No wonder people have such crappy experiences with computers. They way they are sold, the companies go with the numbers that seem to fool the customers the best, the geeks yell "wise up" at people who don't have the opportunity to spend time learning about computers, and the point of sale folks and the companies with the best marketing strategies take the money and run.
Caveat Emptor is understandable in small amounts, but when the numbers companies use to assert competative advantage become meaningless, this isn't "buyer beware", its "buyer distrust". If you want to live in that world, go ahead. I don't, nor do I wish to subject my friends and family to a world where they need to become the super-geek I am in order to make smart purchases. When it comes to how technology is marketed, its little wonder non-computer people are so scared to spend their money without the advice of a computer nerd on hand.
Re:Does reporter ignorance really equal "ploys"? (Score:2)
Then I realized that we don't know that, because the reporter never published his method.
I am a firm believer in the scientific method. It's been proven, and has stood the test of time. The method should be applied to all testing, even in the computer world. And the method should always be published with the result data. As is the case with this reporter, we don't know this information, and therefore his test is not reproducable.
I guess I don't necessarily believe this writer's data. I do, however, agree with his market analysis of the printer market. Printer makers make the money off of the print cartridges -- but this is not anything new, and I don't see any problem with that sort of market plan. This type of market plan is very common -- in the game console market, in some current games (any MMORPG game), even with some hardware (like ZIP drives, JAZ drives, etc). Is there any reason to have a problem with such a market? It is fairly profitable...and I have no problem with that.
I have learned to conserve my printing over the years. I don't print useless stuff anymore. I'm sure that many people do the same.
Does specialist ignorance equals "not ploy"? (Score:2)
But this is not even the main point. Their consumers are not specialists anymore. They are selling to the average consumer who has absolutely no obligation of interpreting what they mean to say.
If a manufacturer printed "Average number of matches: 50" on the side of its matchboxes and consistently delivered boxes with 10 matches (and now and then send out a big box with 2000 matches to make the "average") it would go to jail real fast. There is no excuse for using unreal or confusing specs as a selling point. The continuing use of such data to sell printers is just bad faith.
Re:Does reporter ignorance really equal "ploys"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's say that you need a letter hand-delivered to somebody 10 miles away. And there are no roads to drive on. You gotta get a guy to run there with the letter.
If I come up to you and say "Hey, I can run 20 miles an hour, let me deliver the letter for you," you would say "that's great! You're hired."
What I neglected to tell you was that I can only run twenty miles per hour for about 15 seconds. And that's if I'm running down a steep hill. For the 10 mile jog to the delivery point, I can really only average maybe 2 miles per hour.
Was it up to you to know what I meant when I said I could hit 20 mph? I wasn't lying, I was just not telling you what you wanted to know.
If I'm buying a printer and I see the words "20 pages per minute" on the box, I expect to queue up 80 pages of documents in Word, come back four minutes later, and see the 80th page spitting out. If it can't do that, then they're not living up to their claim.
Linux and Printer Compatability (Score:2)
You made have to tweak the PPD file some, but thats half the fun
Printer Vendor Ploys . . . (Score:5, Funny)
I'll say! Those vendors really know how to sell a piece of shiznet. I have an HP 845c that prints every single copy upside-down. In order to right them again I have to use the company photocopier.
Anybody have a patch for the CUPS driver that can fix this?
Perfectly Accurate (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Perfectly Accurate (Score:2)
But in some cases, even that isn't accurate.
I've got an HP 1120C at the office here.
Rated for 5.5 pages per minute.
I've actually timed it at 8 minutes per page.
Even dumping out blank pages barely hits the 7 pages per minute that it is supposed to do in black draft.
Re:Perfectly Accurate (Score:2)
For the consumer level, there is no reason to rank "blank sheets pushed through printer per-minute". That's the ONE thing NO ONE will ever do. Why not make a "page" size Arial/Times New Roman. Size 12 font. Double spaced, full page.
Re:Perfectly Accurate (Score:4, Insightful)
Because then the numbers will be less, and that's not good.
My Canon BJC-2100 (Score:2, Insightful)
Oddly, I bought a second to replace the first because I had invested in a large quantity of ink cartridges during a sale. It turned out to be cheaper to buy a second Canon and use up the ink rather than shift to a new printer. Once this ink is gone, though, I'll never buy another Canon.
HP Personal & Small Business LaserJets. (Score:5, Informative)
And if you're wondering what OS it works under, well, you're in luck. It is fully PostScript compatible, and works under Windows, MacOS, and Linux. I've used it under all 3 with perfect results. HP gets a big thumb up from me with this printer.
Re:HP Personal & Small Business LaserJets. (Score:2)
All about the marketing ploys (Score:3, Funny)
"Up to twelve inches long, depending on usage."
Re:All about the marketing ploys (Score:2)
"a blazing 12.5 inches long, and finishes any job in 34 seconds."
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Samsung (Score:2, Informative)
We use HP 4050 and 4100's (Score:5, Interesting)
Ignoring paper costs, the HP can deliver an image at about .7 cents/sheet as compared to 1.2 for the Lexmark. Though .5 cents doesn't sound like a lot, it adds up when you're cranking 20K copies each week.
Print speeds are as advertised, I get 17 ppm from the 4050's and 24 ppm from the 4100. I looked at some very high end printers because I didn't want to wait forever while the paper churns through. The 40 ppm, and better, printers came in above $10,000. So instead, I bought 3 HP's and wrote a little bit of code that spreads the load out over the 3 machines. Saved $7,000 and had fun while I was at it.
Unfortunately, there has been a downside. All of this ran on Windows 98 with not too many problems. I had to write a prompt into my code to remind me to disable power saving sleep mode whilst printing and it helped if I rebooted before firing off the printer job. I was fairly happy with the setup but thought I could do better if I migrated to Win 2000. (Stuck in Windows for other reasons.) At any rate, Win 2000, Excel, and HP do not seem to get along. One of those three pieces seems to drop a bit every so often and away goes a print job. Away, as in, I've got to watch the printout carefully to catch random imaging problems. I don't know if it's Microsoft trying to coerce me to upgrade from Excel 97, which didn't help, or HP not fully testing Windows 2000 with the 4050's. Right now, you don't want to be around me when I struggle with the mess the problem engenders. Ain't a pretty sight. Fortunately, the bug has migrated from Heisenbug status to reproducible so it's just a matter of time before it's fixed.
Re:We use HP 4050 and 4100's (Score:2)
Re:We use HP 4050 and 4100's (Score:2, Insightful)
Enjoy,
Brother Lasers are Excellent (Score:2, Informative)
After that I resolved to only use PostScript laser printers and my current one is a Brother HL-1650 with an internal printer server installed (with Ethernet jack)
It is black and white but, lies up to Brother's claims very well.
My advice is that if you are buying an inject you are buying lot of ink all the time (have yet to replace the toner cartridge in the HL-1650 and I've had it since last March)
Me, I hate inkjets.
Now, if you print to Linux using it it should work even though you will need a PPD (it is PostScript Level 3) to use the Duplex unit without using the printer control panel or the web admin tools.
IBM Network 24 printers run at rated speed (Score:3, Informative)
Samsung (Score:3, Interesting)
Came with an extra toner cartridge, works with my XP Home, Win 2K Pro, and Mandrake 8.2 boxes extremely well. It's fast for graphics and text once it warms up (takes only a couple seconds even for that) and it's relatively cheap.
USB and Parallel compatible. Black only, though.
My own test (Score:2)
It's rated at 17 pages per minute. I printed out 15 pages of plain black text, with the "print draft" setting in Word set, and the printer set to monochrome printing, all the quality settings all the way down.
It printed the 15 pages in 1:47, which is 8.4 pages per minute. About 15 seconds of that 1:47 was a couple of breaks it took to clean the print head. Even considering that, that's 9.7ppm. Still rather short of their 17ppm claim.
I'd like to know how they got 17ppm.
Brother, oh brother... (Score:2, Funny)
There's one creepy thing about the printer: the noise it makes.
When it's powered up, it makes perfectly normal noises. When I print something, it makes perfectly normal noises. During printing, it prints and makes pretty dull noises. After printing, it makes perfectly normal noises. After powering down, it blinks lights and makes perfectly normal noises for a while and powers down.
You know, I'm well used to the fact that laser printers are quiet, dot matrix printers are NOISY, and bubblejets have distinct sounds. I have a HP Deskjet 600 here and it operates very predictably. I can listen to it. I can hear at which phase the printing is going. It makes different noises on different phases of printing. But that Brother thing... I never could tell what it was doing. It was *zweep*-*zweep*ing back and forth for no logical or illogical reason. It just made noises for the sake of making noises. I doubt I will ever learn to understand that printer.
Manufacturers are not the only ones at fault (Score:2)
What about the magazines that "Review" these printers? I mean it's pretty obvious that magazines like PC World, Home Computer Luser and all the other magazines that target clueless users, are basically just glorified advertising catalogs. But try researching a new printer.
I recently tried to find some reviews on photo printers and found that whatever reviews available are highly biased, largely unscientific, based on old models and generally useless. This article [zdnet.com] links to some other reivews which are horribly old:
Canon S820D [zdnet.com] February 2002
Epson Stylus Photo 785EPX [zdnet.com] July 2001
Epson Stylus Photo 2000P [zdnet.com] February 2002
HP PhotoSmart 1315 [zdnet.com] November 2001
Kodak Personal Picture Maker 200 by Lexmark [zdnet.com] January 2001
If you can make your way through those articles you'll see that there is no common baseline for comparison. A fault in one printer may be talked about extensively, but in another printer it's mentioned casually. The Canon 820D has been recently replaced with the 830D (about 1-2 weeks ago) and there is no mention of it. Compared to the offerings out there the units reviewed are few.
I wish more "reputable" hardware review sites would take the time to review printers. I still haven't been able to decide between the Canon 830D, the Epson 960 stylus photo and the Epson 2200 stylus photo mainly because I don't have enough information.
As it is now it seems like printer reviews are conspicuously absent or out of date. It's almost as if the printer manufacturers are supressing reviews so that people will "gamble" on printers due to their low price and how good those "specs" on the box are.
Anyone happen to know anything about the Canon 830D, Epson Stylus Photo 960 and the Epson Stylus Photo 2200?
What does "Linux support" mean? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Stick with HP printers (Score:2)
If HP made automobiles (Score:3, Informative)
Inkjet printers are one of the worst IT scams in the business. Ink should be a commodity, like fuel. We shouldn't have to be locked in to the tyranny of overpriced printer cartridges with built in heads and the like.
Re:What about paper type? (Score:2)
Re:What about paper type? (Score:2)
Re:What about paper type? (Score:3, Interesting)
The trick here is that they want you to buy HP printer supplies, but reality is Hammermill and Weyerhauser have perfectly good inkjet paper that is just as bright and dense.
So whenever is says HP quality paper, think "bright and dense". That's all it takes.
Re:What about paper type? (Score:2)
"We're looking for people who are bright enough to use Windows, yet dense enough to use Windows. Everybody got that?"
Re:What about paper type? (Score:2)
HP does not make paper. They do however spec paper, and have the cheapest paper mill THAT MEETS SPEC make it. All other manufactures do the same. So the trick isn't just trying with HP paper, it is trying with all brands of paper, on all settings to see what works. Epson might have a slightly different spec for their paper that you happen to prefer in your printer.
Note that the right paper is critical for ink jet printers, while lasers can deal with a large range of papers. However the right paper and quality is often different. There is quality of how the paper handles ink, and quality of the paper itself (watermarks).
What you want to print makes a big difference too. When printing photos that you want to display, use the expensive photo paper in a ink jet, it will look great. Plain text on the same paper won't look enough better to justify the cost. Plain text that matters will look enough better on a laser that you should seriously consider spending extra cash. If you print text often you will save money by buying a laser, since you not only get better text, but it is also cheaper to print with a laser.
In short experiment, not just with the setting, but also with the paper. I doupt that it prints worse when you select normal paper, so much as it puts a different amount of ink on the page. It probably prints better on normal paper in normal mode than hp mode, while on hp paper it prints better in hp mode. With some other brand name paper you will have to compare.
Re:Not all geeks run Linux... (Score:2, Insightful)
And printers, specificly a troublesome one made by Xerox, is why RMS developed the GPL.
Re:Not all geeks run Linux... (Score:2)
Re:Not all geeks run Linux... (Score:2)
The next biggest problem is probably spooling, sending their printouts to the wrong print queue, or a disabled or just slow queue.
Unix definatly has some challenges, for example the lack of a universal driver standard, but these are configuration issues, not user issues.
The problem with Epson inkjets... (Score:2)
If the heads clog up on an HP or Lexmark, you buy new cartridges. If the heads clog up on a Canon, you buy new heads. If the heads clog up on an Epson, you end up sending the printer away for service. How convenient of them to do that.
(At home, I currently use a Lexmark Optra Color 40 and a Brother HL-630. The inkjet supports PostScript, while the laser printer supports PCL 3. I've used both with Linux with no problems...use Ghostscript with the Brother printer, send stuff straight to the Lexmark. Lexmark supplies are a little on the high side, but the HL-630 is one of the cheapest-to-operate printers on the planet...the drum and toner are separate, so a new 3000-page toner cartridge only costs about $30. I've not even bothered checking the refill price.)
Re:The problem with Epson inkjets... (Score:2)
Re:Samsung ML-1210 (Score:2)
And, since the printer has both a USB port and a paralell port, I was able to hook up both my linux and windoze/linux box to it. (I just won't try to print to it from both machines at the same time.)
Re:Samsung ML-1210 (Score:2)
UK
Re:Samsung ML-4500 (Score:2)
Oh, and it actually does about 10ppm after it has warmed up, and because of the memory in it, never slows down from this. Fantastic thing.
Re:HP and "starter cartrages. (Score:2)
I also looked at the refill kits. Epson and HP had expensive refill kits and you bought new print heads with them when you bought an official refill. Canon not only had every color in a seperate tank (greta for me because I use a lot of highlight color, it won't drain all tanks equally) but you could buy official refills of just the tanks, changing the print head only when it needs it. And the Canon refills were a third the price of those for other printers. (I'm guessing because of the ease, and because there's no monitor chip you need to replace or reset.)
So, not to sound like a Canon advert, but I bought an S750 and have been very happy with it. Especially because I've bought something that I know isn't going to get more expensive when I try to maintain it. The funny thing is that I'm too lazy to refill my own, but just having the option is enough. That way is official supplies ever got real expensive I'd have an out.
Re:Resolution, ppm, Durability (Score:3, Funny)
If you were going to have them clean the heads in the bath tub you should have 1) told them NOT to get in the tub first, and 2) make sure the printer was unplugged first!
It's funny. Laugh.