I'm looking for a color printer/scanner/copier, suitable for printing a few pages every few weeks. My current device is connected by USB to a Mac that serves as a CUPS host and runs the scanner software, and that's just fine. I look at most of the modern features being offered and rate them somewhere between "meh" and "get off my lawn" (Alexa voice-enabled printing? Seriously?) but might be willing to grant access to the local Wi-Fi.
Do you have any opinions on Linux-friendly, non-abusive devices?
Unrelated to the "Linux-friendly, non-abusive" matter (which other members here will no doubt deal with), my immediate thought is, it CANNOT be an inkjet device. With your infrequent printing schedule, such a device would give you endless troubles and expenses with dried-out, often unresurrectable, inkjet cartridges or nozzles. If colour is not needed, then it should be a laser device. Those are fine with infrequent printing, though with such low print volumes, you'd still have the issue that even toner does deteriorate after a few years of sitting in a cartridge.
Back to inkjet devices: You could print a handful of useless "maintenance" pages every 5 days or so to keep the cartridges and nozzles in good condition, which would result in way more "maintenance" pages than real pages being printed over time, with a much higher cost per real page than normal.
The dot-matrix printers of the distant past didn't have the above issues. :) :)
Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331
On Sat, 31 Oct 2020 at 18:00, Glen Ditchfield GJDitchfield@acm.org wrote:
I'm looking for a color printer/scanner/copier, suitable for printing a few pages every few weeks. My current device is connected by USB to a Mac that serves as a CUPS host and runs the scanner software, and that's just fine. I look at most of the modern features being offered and rate them somewhere between "meh" and "get off my lawn" (Alexa voice-enabled printing? Seriously?) but might be willing to grant access to the local Wi-Fi.
Do you have any opinions on Linux-friendly, non-abusive devices?
Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
Good news, Hartmut! Most "business" inkjets now have built-in technology to prevent the ink or the printheads from drying out. This comes at the expense of a tiny (really, it is tiny) amount of ink being used automatically every few days.
I've had reasonably good luck with both Brother and Epson inkjets in recent memory, and in particular on Brother network interfaces you can disable whatever protocols you don't want. I've used the Brother MFC-J* series, and the Epson Workforce series.
Both have Linux drivers that kind of suck but do work. The Epsons at least use ESC/P which is sorta standard, or at least widely supported in CUPS.
Brother also makes what looks like a nice PCL color laser, but I've no direct experience with it. That would probably(?) be a better choice for traditional Linux/UNIX use.
All of these support IPP, in theory, so printer drivers are supposed to be a problem of the past. Ahem.
-Adam
On October 31, 2020 6:22:47 p.m. CDT, Hartmut W Sager hwsager@marityme.net wrote:
Unrelated to the "Linux-friendly, non-abusive" matter (which other members here will no doubt deal with), my immediate thought is, it CANNOT be an inkjet device. With your infrequent printing schedule, such a device would give you endless troubles and expenses with dried-out, often unresurrectable, inkjet cartridges or nozzles. If colour is not needed, then it should be a laser device. Those are fine with infrequent printing, though with such low print volumes, you'd still have the issue that even toner does deteriorate after a few years of sitting in a cartridge.
Back to inkjet devices: You could print a handful of useless "maintenance" pages every 5 days or so to keep the cartridges and nozzles in good condition, which would result in way more "maintenance" pages than real pages being printed over time, with a much higher cost per real page than normal.
The dot-matrix printers of the distant past didn't have the above issues. :) :)
Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331
On Sat, 31 Oct 2020 at 18:00, Glen Ditchfield GJDitchfield@acm.org wrote:
I'm looking for a color printer/scanner/copier, suitable for printing a few pages every few weeks. My current device is connected by USB to a Mac that serves as a CUPS host and runs the scanner software, and that's just fine. I look at most of the modern features being offered and rate them somewhere between "meh" and "get off my lawn" (Alexa voice-enabled printing? Seriously?) but might be willing to grant access to the local Wi-Fi.
Do you have any opinions on Linux-friendly, non-abusive devices?
Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
On Saturday October 31, 2020 5:58:56 P.M. CST Glen Ditchfield wrote:
Do you have any opinions on Linux-friendly, non-abusive devices?
Speaking of which ... https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/12/hp_free_printing/
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Adam Thompson -
Glen Ditchfield -
Hartmut W Sager