[clug] Printers for Linux

[Michael Carden]

On Sun, 8 Feb 2004 01:44 am, Pearl Louis wrote:

> I'm looking at buying a printer.  I'm a student and therefore want to go el
> cheapo :)

You haven't mentioned your requirements for the printer. The basic choice 
would be 'text only' or 'photo.' Then you can dig deeper to consider things 
like paper size (do you need A3?) or the need to print on multipart forms 
(dot matrix rules!) etc etc.

One resource you may consider is the http://www.linuxprinting.org/ web site. 
The presentation of the information on the site is at times quirky and their 
forums appear to be hosted on a Commodore 64, but there is information to be 
had.

When making the same decision last year, I chose an Epson Stylus Photo 830. In 
general, Epson printers enjoy good open source support and I was particularly 
looking for a photo printer. I paid something just over $300 at the time, but 
I note from catalogues that they're a lot cheaper now. For example, the folks 
in Civic at http://www.scannerplace.com.au/ij_epson.htm are advertising it 
for $259 on their web site.

The 830 uses 6-colour printing for very nice photo quality and runs a separate 
black cartridge so if you use it mostly for text, there's no need to change 
the colour when the black runs out. I mostly use mine for photos though and 
I've been through a couple of $35 colour cartridges in the last 12 months.

I don't use it much for text because I have picked up an old HP laserjet 
series 4 that only needed a new drum/developer/toner cartridge to be good as 
new and its text quality far exceeds that of the inkjet.

One key aspect of getting printers going on a Linux system... If you're going 
to use CUPS, get hold of the most recent version. I had no end of pain with 
an older version of CUPS and spent many, many frustrated hours not getting it 
to work until I unearthed in the http://www.linuxprinting.org/ forums an 
obscure reference to bugs in the version I was using. I'm using 1.1.19 now 
(and it's great) though I note that http://www.cups.org/software.php has 
1.1.20 available.

Cheers,
MC


-- 
http://michaelcarden.net