General > General Technical Chat
What's a good printer for minimal usage ?
westfw:
--- Quote ---what kills it the most time is Microsoft and the next version of Windows.
--- End quote ---
Yeah; I picked up two free HP PCL4 laser printers (with extra cartridges) off of FreeCycle (I guess from some sort of small office whose owner was retiring), but only one had the needed USB to mini-centronics parallel port cord (which would be relatively difficult and expensive to replace), and setting up drivers for W10 was ... less than trivial (and could stop working with any update, I guess.)
Surely someone has written Raspberry Pi (or equivalent) printer emulation SW? (Looks like a networked postscipt printer, runs GhostScript, outputs to any number of ancient printers that "modern" Operating Systems don't want to support.)
alm:
--- Quote from: westfw on February 04, 2023, 12:34:52 am ---Surely someone has written Raspberry Pi (or equivalent) printer emulation SW? (Looks like a networked postscipt printer, runs GhostScript, outputs to any number of ancient printers that "modern" Operating Systems don't want to support.)
--- End quote ---
Sure, the standard Linux printing system Cups does this pretty much by default if the printer is configured.
themadhippy:
drivers? no idea what voodoo brother or linux uses but i aint installed any drivers,just pointed the printer at the network and job done
westfw:
--- Quote ---just pointed the printer at the network
--- End quote ---
Not going to work with pre-networked printers, now is it?
paulca:
--- Quote from: pcprogrammer on February 02, 2023, 07:58:43 am ---If you only print once in a while it is best to buy a laser printer.
--- End quote ---
I concur. Inkjets don't typically like being sat up, usually you have bad prints and need to expend half a cartridge running the cleaning cycle. The cartridges have actual hardware obsolescence (claiming the ink has a shelf life). So after a year, maybe 2, "computer says no".
Cheap lasers are available.
A second factor to remember with printers, is setup, config and drivers. Finding the cables, drivers etc. For this reason, if you can afford the extra £80-100 buy a networked printer. These are designed for offices and usually install automatically in the background on any PC on the network. I don't think I ever had to setup my Brother, I configured it's Wifi and it just appeared fully ready to go. The only time it has ever failed to fire up (from deep sleep) and print within 3 minutes was the times the cat has pushed the front panel release... it's a thing she likes to do.
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