printer recommendations

I need a new printer. I am looking for a <$200USD unit with high resolution (pref 1200X1200, ) and with ease of use with LinuxCUPS.
using suse 12.2, kde 4.9.2.

Just wondering what the members of the community would recommend from what is on today’s market. Is H-P still one of the best brands for Linux use? Any thing to stay away from?

I think so. Brother printers tend to be very well supported as well.

Are you after an inkjet, or laser technology? Scanning ability? Multi-tray? More info might help others to make more specific recommendations.

Any thing to stay away from?

In general, best to check with the relevant manufacturer website for Linux drivers prior to purchase. IMHO, I’d avoid Canon for this reason (although some consumer-grade models are supported).

Ah, yes a few derails would help. A laser jet, no scanner, single tray for personal use.did

I did say I wanted 1200X1200 resolution. Inotice most of the H-P printers show 1200X600 for max res. But I
believe they use resolution enhancement to achieve and effective res up to 2400X2400., so is the stated max
(hardware) res that important?

Also, are any of the color lasers in this price range, or slightly outside any good?

On 2013-07-10 05:06, deano ferrari wrote:

> Are you after an inkjet, or laser technology? Scanning ability?
> Multi-tray? More info might help others to make more specific
> recommendations.

Colour / black and white?

>
>> Any thing to stay away from?
> In general, best to check with the relevant manufacturer website for
> Linux drivers prior to purchase. IMHO, I’d avoid Canon for this reason
> (although some consumer-grade models are supported).

Me too, no Canons.

For me it is an absolute “must have”, that the printer is directly and
fully supported by the community, not by the manufacturer. I mean, that
the manufacturer also supports it is very good, but if it is only the
manufacturer and not the community, I will not buy.

Why?

It means it needs a driver from them. If they get tired or want you buy
a new model, they stop doing the driver, and you can not update Linux.

You are sold.


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

On 2013-07-10 13:16, BobTheBull wrote:
>
> Ah, yes a few derails would help. A laser jet, no scanner, single tray
> for personal use.did
>
> I did say I wanted 1200X1200 resolution. Inotice most of the H-P
> printers show 1200X600 for max res. But I
> believe they use resolution enhancement to achieve and effective res up
> to 2400X2400., so is the stated max
> (hardware) res that important?

When I bought my HP color laser printer, the maximum resolution was 600
DPI, I’m not sure it has improved much. It is nominally 600, but it
looks better, because apparently they can graduate the intensity of each
colour pixel, instead of switching adjoining pixels on/off to emulate
intensity; thus the effective resolution is higher.

Mine is an “HP Color LaserJet CP1515n”, and the price when I bought it
(2008) was in the 230€ range (plus taxes). It is a good network printer,
but:

  • It is made of plastic, not metal. Not as sturdy as the classical
    laserjet.

  • when it thinks that the cartridge is spent, it stops. You can
    override it, but things start going slightly bad with time: after a year
    or two of override, the colours would not align and I had to replace the
    four cartridges: they were nearly spent, specially the black, but they
    still printed acceptably well for my needs, except the alignment.

  • in override mode, it does not count the pages printed.

You see, I bought the thing in 2008, and I replaced the original colour
cartridges about two months ago…

Mine is a network printer. The USB only model is cheaper. And a model
with less memory is also cheaper, but… I would not buy that.


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

I’ve stuck with Samsung for some time. Linux drivers in the box they come in and decent docs. They more or less connect themselves up with cups etc however the printer is connected. It’s a graphical install.

I had a problem on Suse once and contacted their support. New driver issued in under 1 week.

600x600 dpi on a colour laser will even produce decent photo’s given the correct paper. One other aspect of the paper for that is that it has to be thin otherwise they jam. The anti curl has to be turned off too which means photo’s need flattening as they come of the machine.

John

On 2013-07-10 21:16, John 82 wrote:

> 600x600 dpi on a colour laser will even produce decent photo’s given
> the correct paper. One other aspect of the paper for that is that it has
> to be thin otherwise they jam. The anti curl has to be turned off too
> which means photo’s need flattening as they come of the machine.

I never had to bother about that with my HP. I use plain paper for my
photos, they come out wonderful. At most, I specify the weight of the
paper. I suppose that if I used photo paper they’d be even better.


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

A quick look at prices in the UK suggests that all the colour lasers within your price range are 600×600. The thing which tends to add to the cost is wi-fi which you don’t mention.

On 2013-07-10 23:56, john hudson wrote:

> As Nemeth et al. (2011) comment, ‘inkjet printers are cheap if you
> don’t print anything;’ so whether you would be better off with a laser
> will depend on how much you print.

And they are expensive even if you print little, because either the
heads dry up because you don’t use them often enough, or the cartridges
get spent with the head cleaning each time you power up for printing
even a single page. There is a sweet point between printing a little and
printing too much, but I don’t know where it is.


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

Thanks for all the input guys. No more inkjets for me. The ink cost is prohibitive in the long run no matter whay you print. You can reink but that is a pita and always gives diminishing returns. Their only place is for specialized applications like real photo printers or plotters.

Have always had good results with HP printers in Windows (RIP) and Linux. Thanks to hplib they all seemto install with noproblem and just work, so I am inclined to go that way. the native res of color lasers inthis range is indeed 600x600, but HP uses something called ImageREt 3600 (there are higher values for higher priced printers) on all these. This is not the same as FastRes, but seems to give very good results.

Considering track record I will probably go withHP again. Tip-check out the cost and lifetime of the toners before you buy.

The cost of toner cartridges tends to vary according to their capacity. Worth looking at that aspect as well but it can mean a much larger outlay when they empty for the cheapest cost per print. My previous samsung was a cpl500, the new one a CLX-3185FW uses smaller cartridges so costs more to run. The refill cost is a little less. Most printers are also supplied with 1/2 full cartridges when bought as well so it may be worth buying a full replacement set if there is a decent offer on.

I run a calibrated monitor for photography. One of the reasons I went for an all in one was so that I could calibrate the printer as well. So far I haven’t found that necessary. Pretty impressive but maybe most of them are like that now.

Photo resolution is a much miss understood subject. Some honest web calculators for max print image size give an option for viewing distance that are further away than 10ins. It can be surprising just how many pixels can be needed for large prints. Printer resolution is more interesting really. It can and is argued that the printer resolution needs to be divided by the number of colours that are printed by it. So a 600dpi 4 colour printer results in 150 dpi. That is still more than a pc screen. Viewing distance still come into it though so 150 dpi is likely to be fine from 20in. In real terms eye age often makes the view from 10in irrelevant. In practice these metrics don’t seem to entirely hold up anyway. What does happen is that final viewing size can reduce the level of detail that can be seen and dpi comes into that as well. I have a macro photo of a spider. Lots of detail is lost if the entire image is viewed on a PC screen. A 600dpi laser print on A4 shows all of it. That’s a pretty extreme example.

In my view if some one wants say an A3 print the best option is to take the shot to a really professional printers and get them to do it. Other wise 600dpi laser is fine for the majority of things. rotfl! not that I print anything very often so buying a high end photo printer just wouldn’t be worth while.

Interesting to see the mention of HP. When I last looked around the HP linux drivers didn’t offer anywhere near the same capabilities of their windows drivers. Samsung’s are very close. Long time ago. Has HP changed in that respect? They and the open source ones were rather crude and needed a lot of setting up especially if colour is involved. The web interface on my Samsung even tells me when things need changing but apart from toner cartridges and the waste toner containers I generally just say it’s time to buy another. Haven’t found out what happens to the waste on the new one yet. Aught to check.

John

On 2013-07-11 14:56, John 82 wrote:
>
> Printer resolution is more
> interesting really. It can and is argued that the printer resolution
> needs to be divided by the number of colours that are printed by it. So
> a 600dpi 4 colour printer results in 150 dpi.

Huh?

My reasoning would be the contrary; if you have 4 dots, one for each
colour, on each pixel, then the resolution is multiplied by four. Thus
for a 600 DPI you get an effective resolution of 2400 DPI.

> Interesting to see the mention of HP. When I last looked around the HP
> linux drivers didn’t offer anywhere near the same capabilities of their
> windows drivers. Samsung’s are very close. Long time ago. Has HP changed
> in that respect? They and the open source ones were rather crude and
> needed a lot of setting up especially if colour is involved.

HP developers provide open-source drivers for their printers. It is
basically the same group of devs, but working outside of the company;
with the company blessing but no warranty.

I don’t do professional photography, so I do not know how good their
colour matching is. I only know that they look very good to me.


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

OK, some searching I have found a Brother HL-3170 color printer for $279; this is a new model. The main attraction to this one for me is automatic duplex printing (besides price). This is a brand new model.

They show two linux drivers: lpr and cupswrapper: I would assume I want cupswrapper. Any chance driver is already in repos?
Could there be any problems with the auto duplex feature with linuux drivers, or any other features? If this thing works with all features in linux it looks like a great deal and Brother does also seem to have a good track record in linux.

You can check if the the driver is in the in yast2 printer.
If not you can go to the brother driver download site and follow the instructions on how to install their driver

OK, after muycy searching I found a Brother HL-3170CDW color for usd279. The main extra for me is automatic duplexing.

They show tow linux drivcers; LPR and cupswrapper. I assume I would prefer cupswrapper, although they do not explain the differences. Is it possible the driver is in the suse repos? What are the chances I could run into problems with the auto duplex or other features?

Brother also seems to have good trsck record in linux and if this works as advertised in linux would be a real deal for me.
BTW, how do I find about non mfg support and drivers for a given printer?

Thanks for any help you can contribute.

OOPS! sorry about the duplicate replu. I’m having a menior soment.

The idea is to get the coloured dots below the limits of the eye’s resolution Carlos so that they merge visually and give the intended colour.

There are all sorts of ideas on this subject about as 1/2 hour with google and print resolution and then max print size will show. Some of the max print size aspects from so many pixels on a sensor are sometimes a bit misleading. There is also the resolution of a PC screen which is how many view their pictures anyway. If a printer can exceed that for most purposes it will be ok providing a 10 year old doesn’t view it from 5in etc. It’s a bit like painting really. Up close many might not look so good.

Tried to find a decent web page for you but failed. Some point out that the dots are individually coloured and not transparent so can’t be mixed. One then goes on to arguing that a 10x8in needs lower res than a 4x6in having pointed out that the res needed is down to the eye not being able to see the dots so they merge into a single colour!! Lots of these page also mention earlier dye sublimation printers. These did mix 3 colours into a single dot so if they were stated as being 300 dpi they really were. In this respect the ideal laser would be 1200x1200 dpi true. I haven’t been near inkjets for ages so maybe they do mix colours into single dots now but I very much doubt it at the res that they quote.

John

Use the manufacturer drivers. You’ll need the lpr and cupswrapper drivers. The latter depends on the former, and so the lpr driver gets installed first.

Brother also seems to have good trsck record in linux and if this works as advertised in linux would be a real deal for me.
BTW, how do I find about non mfg support and drivers for a given printer?

Thanks for any help you can contribute.

Check here:

Printer List | OpenPrinting - The Linux Foundation

Gutenprint Supported Printers

The new model is unlikely to yet have open source print drivers. Don’t worry about it though, Brother has a good history with keeping working Linux drivers available for older models. I’ve never had a problem with Brother printers and CUPS drivers.

BobTheBull wrote:

>
> OK, some searching I have found a Brother HL-3170 color printer
for
> $279; this is a new model. The main attraction to this one for me
is
> automatic duplex printing (besides price). This is a brand new
model.
>
> They show two linux drivers: lpr and cupswrapper: I would assume I
> want cupswrapper. Any chance driver is already in repos?
> Could there be any problems with the auto duplex feature with
linuux
> drivers, or any other features? If this thing works with all
features
> in linux it looks like a great deal and Brother does also seem to
have
> a good track record in linux.
>
Check the Brothers documents. I have a Brothers printer but not
tried the Duplex printing which the printer is capable of. I know
some of their drivers do not support duplex. Mine is not a Laser,
its MFC (MFC-J6710DW). Have used it on openSUSE 12.1, 12.2 and 12.3
with no problems using the downloaded Brothers Drivers, just make
sure you get the right ones. Scanning and copying work also. Have
not tried the FAX.

openSUSE 12.3(Linux 3.9.8-1.gf3348a8-desktop)|KDE 4.10.4
“release 569”|Intel core2duo 2.5 MHZ,|8GB DDR3|GeForce
8400GS(NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-319.23)

On 2013-07-11 17:16, John 82 wrote:
>
> The idea is to get the coloured dots below the limits of the eye’s
> resolution Carlos so that they merge visually and give the intended
> colour.

In that case, the resolution is neither divided by four, nor multiplied
by four: it stays at what it is nominally, ie 600 DPI. And by “dot” I
understand a grouping of four dots, one for each colour (same definition
as for displays, each pixel has 3 colour dots).


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)