Need a new printer

Unless you need something beyond a basic inkjet printer (e.g. flash memory reader to print photos, built-in display to view photos, copier/scanner/fax type functionality, etc.), I would recommend the HP 5650. I saw it at Costco yesterday for $79. I have a PSC2110 which uses the same printer components, and the text quality is, IMO, best-in-class, and the photo printing is very good (although I understand Epson and Canon have an edge in this category).

i would also recommend HP printer, but i'd say go for the 5850 model which has builtin airport capability. it costs a little more, but it's well worth it because it's wireless - i have one and just love it and being able to put it anywhere.

anyway... buy a HP inkjet, you cannot go wrong. the driver support is amazing.

I have an HP PSC 2510 and love it. It costs $350 but it has everything, even Wi-Fi. It also prints pictures just as good as the local photo store would.

I liek the new Epson R200 and R300 series. I purchased an R300 for 159. It will read any media liek CF, etc, directly from the printer. Its easy to use, has separate ink cartridges for cheap repalcement, prints to CD and DVD directly, and does borderless photos rather fats and prints nicely on top of it all.
All in all a good printer. 10.3.4 likes it and I have a large array of options with the drivers.
Its been years since I used HP printers, but 4 years ago, I had multiple bad experience with thier reliablity and quality.

I have been happy with an HP LaserJet 4M Plus that I bought for $140 on eBay about a year ago. It won't print photos, of course, but the text output is great, the cost of operation per page is lower than with an inkjet, and it has a built-in JetDirect card so I can print over my home network from MacOS X, MacOS 9, Linux, BeOS, and Windows. PostScript is cool.

Just thought I'd provide an alternate take on printers that work great with Macs.

Good luck!


Michael

JFreak said:

i would also recommend HP printer, but i'd say go for the 5850 model which has builtin airport capability. it costs a little more, but it's well worth it because it's wireless - i have one and just love it and being able to put it anywhere.

anyway... buy a HP inkjet, you cannot go wrong. the driver support is amazing.

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I'll second the recommendation for the HP 5850... it might be a bit more than you wanted to spend, but if you have more than one computer, the wireless connectivity is a huge help. I have a new 15" 1.5GHz Powerbook, and my wife use the old Pismo Powerbook... we can both work anywhere in the house and print from anywhere too. It's well worth the extra $50 or so for wireless printing.

Third the recommendation to get wireless printing.

My happy AEBS wireless printing story:

I moved to Florida a month ago, and am staying at my fathers' house in Jacksonville while I looked for my own home in Gainesville (which I found, and to which I will happily move in August). Anyway, they have 1 Win98 PC downstairs, and a couple more, one of which I brought with me and the other which has yet to arrive here and get unpacked and all. The downstairs PC is next to the DSL modem; everything else lives far away.

I have an Epson C84 which I used on my AEBS, but it is still in its box, and it seemed silly to set up another printer right next to my father's printer just so I can use it via the AEBS. My father's printer is a Brother MFC-3100C, a multifunction scan/fax/printer. Except for a few PostScript lasers, no Brothers are supported officially under AEBS.

I set it up as a Windows network printer easily, enough, and managed to print off my mac without difficulty this evening. Amusingly it looks like Brother actually released its Panther drivers *today*. 😀 Unfortunately, my father is out of his mind regarding turning his PC on and off. He will use it fifteen minutes and turn it off (completely) again, and will happily do this 7-10 times a day. 😡 When I suggested he leave it on so I can access it via network, he agreed -- sure, leave it on all the time -- but then asked me every twenty minutes if I was done with it and he could turn it off!!! Craziness...

So this isn't going to work. 🙁

Luckily, the Brother has both Parallel and USB. My parents for some strange reason have it running via the Parallel port. So I plugged the other port into the AEBS. Presto! My unsupported printer was in the Printers/Rendezvous menu without *any* work. First thing I printed came out swimmingly. All I had to do was go in and change the name so it said "on RendezVous" so I could remember which one it was, in case I ever need the Win network entry for it. 😱

Anyway, moral == ask around to see if a Mac user has the printer in question and has gotten it to work on an Airport. A lot of unsupported printers work amazingly well. But wireless printing is sooo nice for anyone with wireless networking.

Just had to share. I'm happy it all works so well! 🙂

mkrishnan said:

Third the recommendation to get wireless printing.

My happy AEBS wireless printing story... wireless printing is sooo nice for anyone with wireless networking.

Just had to share. I'm happy it all works so well! 🙂

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I had the same experience with my PSC 2110.

When I bought my PowerBook, I almost bought a new printer (using the $99 rebate so the printer would have been virtually free) to get wireless printing. Instead, I figured I would try to fool OS X into thinking the 2110 was actually a 5550 or whatever AEBS supported. Turned out it wasn't necessary. I plugged in the PSC 2110 into my AEBS, it recognized it as a 2110, installed the drivers (didn't have to download anything) and it has worked fine since. It even has the right icon!

It isn't suppose to work, but it does. I couldn't imagine giving up wireless printing now.

Crikey said:

I have been happy with an HP LaserJet 4M Plus that I bought for $140 on eBay about a year ago. It won't print photos, of course, but the text output is great, the cost of operation per page is lower than with an inkjet, and it has a built-in JetDirect card so I can print over my home network from MacOS X, MacOS 9, Linux, BeOS, and Windows. PostScript is cool.

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Just out of curiousity, are there any specific pointers to how to shop for used lasers? I've seen so many laser printers with bad mechanics that jam constantly...is it just buyer beware or are there specific things to look for, or specific models that are most reliable? I guess if it were the latter, the HP LaserJet 4/5 series would be high on the list anyway....

If I had my druthers for a new printer, it'd def. be a laser with networking and duplex. To be honest I don't use the photo printing that much and I could really use the text oriented features....

If you don't need color, I am considering the Brother 1440 Laser printer. This will save a lot of money on ink jet refills. I really don't need color all the time. It is also capable to do wireless. I have a HP color for my wife so if I need color I can use her's. This printer was rated very high by CNET. JR electronics has it for $140.00.

I like HP or epson... I had many bad experiances with canon...there not known for there printers....Would you buy an LCD from gateway/dell....... 😛

I have just had to cancel my order for a HP printer, as it was USB 2.0, and my eMac is only USB 1. SO dumb, so i hastily bought a Canon i250 bubblejet (i'm on a budget, guys). The whole USB 2 thing is pissy

After reading this thread, I have got to wishing I had purchased a wireless HP printer (with the $100 rebate from earlier this month). Instead, I opted for the 5150 due to the high ratings it has recieved. For curiosity's sake, is there a way I can rig up a wireless printing environment (within a dorm room, so I'm hardly considering any Airport components). Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Whigga Spitta said:

After reading this thread, I have got to wishing I had purchased a wireless HP printer (with the $100 rebate from earlier this month). Instead, I opted for the 5150 due to the high ratings it has recieved. For curiosity's sake, is there a way I can rig up a wireless printing environment (within a dorm room, so I'm hardly considering any Airport components). Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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Hmmm... 🙁

When you say you're hardly considering AP, is it bc of price? There is a Linksys USB 802.11b printer gateway, but it costs $120 (and is b, not g), so wireless printing was one of the main reasons I justified the AEBS (would def get the Express now) price. Also I'm pretty sure that the Linksys (WP11) is not able to make ad-hoc connections to your computer; I believe there must be a wireless router to assign it an IP address.

If HP does not make a BT adapter for this printer (and I don't know of one), there might be some 3rd party device such as this:

http://www.anycom.com/us/products/printmodule300.html

But I don't have any experience with these....

Also in this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/76925/

We're discussing BT printing. I guess canon offers an adapter too, but don't know if it works with HP's. (I bring it up cuz I just realized these were two different threads.😱)