Color home printer

[AdamZ]

Just got a new laptop. When I got it I was offered a discount on a printer with the purchase of the laptop. I told the guy I have a older Dell 922 3in1 hooked up to my desktop and I could print wireless fom the new laptop.

He told me that the older printers probably won't work with Windows 7 and I should consider a new printer.

Is he yanking my chain?

If not any recommendations for a good color home printer? I'd use it primarily for printing but would be nice to have copy/Scan/ and perhaps fax capabilities although I've not used the fax capability on the 922.

I'd don't want a super deal on the printer only to spend a fortune on the ink. Anyone know anything about the Kodak printer? Its billed as saving you money on ink.

 

[RJM62]

The 922 is compatible... sort of.

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/peripherals/f/3528/p/19332767/19698357.aspx

I'm not a big fan of consumer-grade AIO devices. If I had to buy one, I'd probably go with one of the mid-range HP models. Unless I intended to print photos, I'd go with Laser. They're cheaper in the long run and have fewer problems, in my experience.

Then again, I get employee discounts on HP stuff, so...

One brand to avoid is Brother. They rape you on the ink, and on the one I have (MFC 490-CW), it won't print, even in monochrome, if one of the color cartridges is low. And because it's constantly "cleaning" itself, one or another cartridge is always low. The printer exists for the purpose of bleeding you dry with ink purchases. I call it the "Luca Brasi Model."

No experience with Kodak printers, but everything else I've owned of theirs I was happy with.

-Rich

 

[TMetzinger]

I LOVE my Lexmark Color Laser. C544DN does everything I need for a home business.

I have a Canon MF4100 all-in-one BW laser too and it's been great for the scanning I need to do.

 

[wsuffa]

I've got an 8 year old Samsung color laser that still works pretty well, but the imaging unit is coming up for replacement. It's cheaper to buy new.....

I'm running it on a small print server on the network - works well.

 

[alaskaflyer]

AirPrint-enabled printers

HP Envy e-All-in-One series (D410a)
HP Photosmart Plus e-AiO (B210a)
HP Photosmart Premium e-AiO (C310a)
HP Photosmart Premium Fax e-AiO (C410a)
HP Photosmart e-AiO (D110)
HP Photosmart eStation (C510)
HP LaserJet Pro M1536dnf Multifunction Printer
HP LaserJet Pro CM1415fn Color Multifunction Printer
HP LaserJet Pro CM1415fnw Color Multifunction Printer
HP LaserJet Pro CP1525n Color Printer
HP LaserJet Pro CP1525nw Color Printer
HP Officejet 6500A e-AiO
HP Officejet 6500A Plus e-AiO
HP Officejet 7500A Wide Format e-AiO
HP Officejet Pro 8500A e-AiO
HP Officejet Pro 8500A Plus e-AiO

 

[SkyHog]

Almost any printer will work with any OS, but not always to full capacity (fancy drivers, monitoring ink levels, etc.).

At least, that's been my experience so far.

 

[gismo]

My "old" printers (HP LaserJet 1012b and Epson CX9400Fax) work with Win7 but the driver for the HP has some problems and HP isn't planning on fixing it. Supposedly there's a different driver (for a different HP printer) that would work better but I haven't been able to get that to function at all. The fact that my printers are on my local network complicates things, I think all would be fine if the printers were plugged directly to the laptop.

Just got a new laptop. When I got it I was offered a discount on a printer with the purchase of the laptop. I told the guy I have a older Dell 922 3in1 hooked up to my desktop and I could print wireless fom the new laptop.

He told me that the older printers probably won't work with Windows 7 and I should consider a new printer.

Is he yanking my chain?

If not any recommendations for a good color home printer? I'd use it primarily for printing but would be nice to have copy/Scan/ and perhaps fax capabilities although I've not used the fax capability on the 922.

I'd don't want a super deal on the printer only to spend a fortune on the ink. Anyone know anything about the Kodak printer? Its billed as saving you money on ink.

 

[bbchien]

AirPrint-enabled printers

HP Envy e-All-in-One series (D410a)
HP Photosmart Plus e-AiO (B210a)
HP Photosmart Premium e-AiO (C310a)
HP Photosmart Premium Fax e-AiO (C410a)
HP Photosmart e-AiO (D110)
HP Photosmart eStation (C510)
HP LaserJet Pro M1536dnf Multifunction Printer
HP LaserJet Pro CM1415fn Color Multifunction Printer
HP LaserJet Pro CM1415fnw Color Multifunction Printer
HP LaserJet Pro CP1525n Color Printer
HP LaserJet Pro CP1525nw Color Printer
HP Officejet 6500A e-AiO
HP Officejet 6500A Plus e-AiO
HP Officejet 7500A Wide Format e-AiO
HP Officejet Pro 8500A e-AiO
HP Officejet Pro 8500A Plus e-AiO

Have you been to any of the apple sites? Users of IPAD are VERY unhappy trying these, unless their base station is a macbook.....

 

[denverpilot]

I've got an 8 year old Samsung color laser that still works pretty well, but the imaging unit is coming up for replacement. It's cheaper to buy new.....

I'm running it on a small print server on the network - works well.

Same here. A Samsung Color Laser that cost approximately $100 new for "bulky" print jobs, and the HP Officejet Wireless 6500 for scanning, small prints, and copies. Ink for the HP borders on "outrageous" though.

Haven't looked to see if either is Win7 compatible though... No Windows in the house that isn't virtualized on a Mac.

Samsung is hooked to the Time Capsule, HP has WiFi built in.

 

[RJM62]

This thread got me thinking about my HP CLJ 3600n, which has performed so dependably and complaint-free over the years that I never really gave it that much thought before. So here's a well-deserved tribute.

My HP CLJ 3600n:

> Has outlasted several computers.

It was put into service in 2007 and is the second-oldest piece of hardware on the network that's still in regular service. (The oldest is the PC in the guest bedroom.)

> Came with full toner cartridges that I'm still using after ~6,000 pages.

The cartridges are a little more than half-full at present, so their life so far has been almost double HP's rating. (Most of the documents I print don't use much toner, but the kids do a lot of toner-intensive printing when they're here.)

> Has superior paper handling and has never jammed. Never.

> Works with Windows, Mac, Linux, and probably any other machine I'll ever point at it.

> Prints photos passably enough for wall hanging purposes and other casual purposes, and about as well as any other laser printer I've come across.

Photo printing is not a strong point of laser printers in general. When I need high-quality photo printing, I either print them on the Brother MFC 490-CW (assuming it hasn't "cleaned" itself empty), or sneakernet the files to the Rite-Aid two blocks away, where they have a Kodak kiosk.

-Rich

 

[SCCutler]

1. Ditto to Rich's kudos to the HP Lasejet 3600N; I have one at office, used heavily - works great with refilled cartridges, and after 4 years, just (finally)( had to replace a part - the fuser n- but it was reasonable in 3rd-party market.

2. I have a Samsung color laser multifunction; works very well, scan, fax, print. 1.5 years or so, still no where near used up on any toner carts.

3. Avoid Brother - they're junk, drivers flaky, ink pigs.

 

[gkainz]

all the Brother-bashing I have a Brother HL-1660e sitting in my home office that has performed like a workhorse for years. Runs standard toner cartridges (yeah, I know the OP specified color printers) but I just can't bring myself to replace it. The only problem I have with it now is it's not network enabled. Apparently they did manufacture a network card for it, but I've been unable to find one on the odd times I get a wild hair and search.

I had a D-Link Ethernet Print Server that I attempted to use, but it doesn't work with this printer (D-Link support said "if it's not on our list of supported printers, you're on your own. So sorry").

The old pc I had running as a print server finally rolled over and died, so time to do something ... but man, I hate ditching stuff that still works ...

 

[denverpilot]

The old pc I had running as a print server finally rolled over and died, so time to do something ... but man, I hate ditching stuff that still works ...

Greg, I have about a billion old computers lying around. Way too old/slow to do anything "useful" with, because of modern software bloat, but loaded with Linux they could be your Print Server.

I don't know if I have any copies of Winderz around, but of course, they could be loaded with that too, if you have access to Winderz stuff.

Want me to look in the pile for one that doesn't have a noisy power supply fan?

I'll be "around" this weekend. 79M is in the shop for Annual...

Did manage to get two flights in last weekend, one day currency, one night currency after the avionics and fuel bladder replacement trips to the shop(s) in Feb/Early Mar... Big hole in the logbook this year caused by MX, Late Jan to Late Mar.

Argh. Here's hoping Annual goes well, and we're back in the air in a week or so with no squawks and the MX surprises stop for a while!

Meanwhile the stuff worked on already this year worked pretty well... the autopilot is entertaining to watch, since with the Robertson STOL and the AP servos, the ailerons on 79M are "stiff"... so it'd happily spend its time in "Direction Hold" going back and forth from a 2-min turn to the left to a 2-min turn to the right, as it's bank-based, and couldn't overpower the stiffness in the ailerons at anything less than that. LOL! Funny to watch.

It'd keep you upright while you hunted for something on the floor I guess. Never expected much out of it, but it was a cheap fix to replace the Turn Coordinator to see what it would do...

Anyway, back to print servers... let me know if you want me to find something in "the pile"... I'm about to recycle most of it, and already got rid of a number of machines.

 

[gkainz]

Thanks, Nate. I've got an old desktop running SuSE sitting here that I was using for some Oracle testing that I could re-purpose and/or dual purpose ... just a matter of taking/making the time to do it.

I saw your FB posts on the new and improved 79M ... nice! 03Q just went into annual yesterday - I have to get up to BJC and lend a hand where possible (looks like cleaning the belly is next item - oh, well - somebody's got to do it)

Greg

 

[zaitcev]

all the Brother-bashing I have a Brother HL-1660e sitting in my home office that has performed like a workhorse for years. Runs standard toner cartridges (yeah, I know the OP specified color printers) but I just can't bring myself to replace it.

Brother sometimes spews a nugget in the turd, depending where they steal the printer core (AFAIK they stopped making the machinery many years ago and just OEM from Taiwanese nonnames). I have HL-2170W that provided a stellar service for a few years now, supports IPP pretty well, reasonably fast for cheap junk, takes TN-330 cartridges, fully compatible with PCL5e, so any of WinXP, Win7, Fedora Linux 12, 13, 14, RHEL 5 & 6 work out of the box with it. I use it without a spooler box, just plopped it on the network. But again, no color.
-- Pete

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

I am trying out a 39$ HP color printer/copier/scanner from WM.
Essentially disposable, but maybe I will be surprised.
97cent shipping and it came via fedex in 4 days.

 

[RJM62]

all the Brother-bashing I have a Brother HL-1660e sitting in my home office that has performed like a workhorse for years.

<snip>

My Brother MFC 490-CW works pretty well, too, in all of its functions. The problem is that it would make Luca Brasi proud, the way it extorted users to buy ink for it. Until recently, literally every time I wanted to use it, I had to replace one or another of the ink cartridges. ALL printing was disabled if ANY of the cartridges were "low." Selecting grayscale did nothing.

Worse yet, the machine's incessant self-cleaning insured that the cartridges would always be low.

I think enough people complained about this (or possibly threatened a class-action suit) that Brother "fixed the bug" with a firmware update. I put "fixed the bug" in quotes because I believe that the inability to print in grayscale until any low color cartridges were replaced was not a bug, but by design.

In any case, in late January I got an email from Brother out of the clear blue sky, informing me that an important firmware update was available. I installed it. There were several junk faxes in the print queue because the yellow cartridge was low (meaning that nothing would print), and I was awaiting an order of (third-party) ink cartridges (I refuse to buy them from Brother, for obvious reasons).

As soon as I installed the update and the machine restarted, a window popped up telling me that the yellow cartridge was low, and asking me if I wanted to print in grayscale. I said yes, and the junk faxes started printing.

I also haven't noticed the machine "cleaning itself" since I did the firmware update and installed the last batch of cartridges, whereas it used to do so every day (sometimes multiple times in a day), resulting in at least one ink cartridge being "low" literally every time I had to use the blasted thing to print something.

The machine is now several years old, and I really can't imagine Brother just now figuring out that there was a firmware "bug" that was causing the machine to act like a mafioso running a protection racket. In addition, the firmware update history doesn't even mention either problem (the inability to print in grayscale, or the cleaning ritual that was worthy of an OCD diagnosis), much less claim to correct them.

Yet I know that this was a problem for years, and have verified it with many, many other users.

So my hunch is that either (1) enough people complained that Brother realized that they were alienating their customers, or ( B ), that someone threatened them with a lawsuit, so they fixed the problems without actually acknowledging that they ever existed in the first place.

-Rich