Judging from the comments here, it appears that for robustness,
economical, carefree use etc. one should go with lasers, and
with one that has separate drum and toner to save on drum replacement
costs because a drum lasts much longer.
Definitely for me, if you don't need color, laser is far superior.
I used to think like that on the (separate) toner & drum/devloper cartridge
but drums go bad with aging anyway, and start ghosting, often long before
the drum is really bad or worn out. I've seen corona wires break for no
reason, rendering the whole drum assembly useless. Then there's developer
which wastes a lot of toner when you replace. The separate packaging for
each is additional cost so that, in the end, with modern laser engines, I
think the integrated cartridge is best.
Obviously, Linux compatibility
is a must. But is postscript necessary? ps printers generally have
been much more expensive. Error-free paper handling is of course a
requirement. No hassles, no fumbling: just lazy, easy plug-n-play.
Colour is not a requirement.
More recommendations?
My personal preference is for postscript - I wouldn't buy a laser printer
without it and have, in the past, added the option... no where near as
expensive as it used to be and the "emulations" are as good as Adobe's
licensed stuff now IME.
I hate the printers with the vertical loose sheet feed and output hopper
(looks like the stuff is growing out of it
) - I prefer a slide-in input
drawer, but a tray is OK if it's covered... and output tray on the top of
the case. Optional straight through path, with say a fold-out output tray
is nice if there's any chance you might want to print to heavy stock paper.
I don't have a lot of experience with different makes - I've been
reasonably happy with Lexmark lasers for home and the office for a while
now, so have not looked at alternatives recently. Considering the abuse
they get in the office, from the err, maladrioits, the fact that we never
get paper jams speaks well for me. The only thng that pisses me off about
Lexmark is the extortionate price on add-ons like network cards ($300.
extra for a $15. card), paper drawers and memory (~$500. for a $40. DIMM).
The printer memory DIMMs are now *finally* becoming (semi-)standardized so
Crucial usually has a DIMM which fits the common printers... something to
check when looking at printers. I recently got a Lexmark T420D for the
office and Lexmark wanted ~$500. for a 64MB DIMM - I got one from Crucial
for $32... which didn't work.:-( Lexmark's usually excellent support could
only say "if it's not a Lexmark part, blah, blah, blah". Crucial, of
course were excellent and replaced it with one which works fine.
Interesting point on that Crucial DIMM: the part which didn't work had
Samsung memory chips and Crucial noted this when I phoned their support:
"hmm, you have a 'K-part'... with the Samsung chips. We'll send you one
with Micron chips".
Rgds, George Macdonald
"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??
