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printers questiona

G

giovanni

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 1, 2002
214
0
manhattan
Hi,
couple of things. First, I have an old personal laserwriter and I wonder whether there is any chance of using it with Jaguar. Also, I want to purchase a new, good, laser printer: where do you guys check for this type of product ? sites, discussion forums ? any suggestions as to how to go about selecting a good printer ?

thx much,
giovanni
 
Re: printers questiona

Originally posted by giovanni
Hi,
couple of things. First, I have an old personal laserwriter and I wonder whether there is any chance of using it with Jaguar. Also, I want to purchase a new, good, laser printer: where do you guys check for this type of product ? sites, discussion forums ? any suggestions as to how to go about selecting a good printer ?

thx much,
giovanni
Click to expand...

Why a laser printer? Is it shared on a network or something?
 
Hmmm, not sure why. My impression is that non laser printers like inkjet are not nearly as good and a true pain in the behind with those cartridges that have to be changed way too often and end up being very expensive - more importantly, not practical.

This is really not for me, but my sister who needs good quality and speed and she prints quite a bit (she is a law professor, so lots of papers/articles....). Again I might be wrong, but I have a bad opinion of inkjet printers. Anyway, given my ignorance, I am open to suggestions !

thx,
gio
 
for completeness... no it is not shared on a network. Again, to put it another way I see laser printer as more "serious", reliable products......just an impression though
 
The newer HPs DeskJets print amazingly fast something like 12-15Pages/Minute for text. Also there text is very crisp nearly laser quality. Right now you can get a top of the line HP DeskJet for $150 it's really a hard thing to pass up when you consider you can print photos on it also.

The price of cartridges is also coming down. I was looking around this weekend and 3 black ink cartridges are now less then $60 a pack. They last quite a long time also. There is nothing messy about them either. Simply open the cover the carrier moves to a certain point indicating which cartridge to replace and you pop it out and pop in the new one, no mess.
 
i've gone through so many printers....

my conclusions:

1. inkjet bad
2. hp good
3. canon, brother* bad
4. laser good

the only printers i've had last more than a year are HP laserjets.

caveat: i have an epson laserjet now that works okay. isn't a year old yet.

* the brother one was broken out of the box
 
Re: i've gone through so many printers....

Originally posted by zimv20
my conclusions:

1. inkjet bad
2. hp good
3. canon, brother* bad
4. laser good

the only printers i've had last more than a year are HP laserjets.

caveat: i have an epson laserjet now that works okay. isn't a year old yet.

* the brother one was broken out of the box
Click to expand...

How were you using these printers?

I know of several HPs Inkjets that have been in heavy use for 5 to 6 years without problems. In very dirty environments. The only thing that happens sometimes is that the cartridge head gets so dirty that you can't clean it and you have to replace it.
 
Re: Re: i've gone through so many printers....

Originally posted by MacBandit


How were you using these printers?
Click to expand...

in my home. i had two canon inkjets, the first borrowed and it gave out after a week. the second, new, gave out after about two months. then there was an epson inkjet, came free w/ a new mac, lasted about a month.

i'm just printing. nothing insane, low volume.

oh, and the brother all-in-one. mail-ordered it, plugged it in, wouldn't print a test page, sent it back.

had two hp laserjets. one stayed at work, the other (w/ only a parallel xface, hooked up to my [ick] home PC from work) i gave to my mom.

i've got bad luck w/ printers. of course, the one i have now -- epson 5700i, epson doesn't have osx drivers for. so when i need to print i export to pdf, launch os9 acrobat, and print through classic.

and yes, i tried gimp print. didn't work like the documentation showed.
 
Re: Re: Re: i've gone through so many printers....

Originally posted by zimv20


in my home. i had two canon inkjets, the first borrowed and it gave out after a week. the second, new, gave out after about two months. then there was an epson inkjet, came free w/ a new mac, lasted about a month.

i'm just printing. nothing insane, low volume.

oh, and the brother all-in-one. mail-ordered it, plugged it in, wouldn't print a test page, sent it back.

had two hp laserjets. one stayed at work, the other (w/ only a parallel xface, hooked up to my [ick] home PC from work) i gave to my mom.

i've got bad luck w/ printers. of course, the one i have now -- epson 5700i, epson doesn't have osx drivers for. so when i need to print i export to pdf, launch os9 acrobat, and print through classic.

and yes, i tried gimp print. didn't work like the documentation showed.
Click to expand...


I have heard of similar problems with inkjets but never with an HP. I don't like there computers but they build a hell of an inkjet. With the best output in it's class.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: i've gone through so many printers....

Originally posted by MacBandit



I have heard of similar problems with inkjets but never with an HP.
Click to expand...

yeah, that's what i'm saying: go w/ the HP.

though, to be fair and scientific, i've never tried an HP inkjet.

i just tried gimp print again. though i configured my epson in Print Center, when i try to print all i get is the red error light on the printer. ugh.
 
ok, so it looks like it will have to be HP for sure and either a deskjet (say $150) or a laserjet (the 1200 model is $399). Now my sister prints only word documents (I don't even know whether she ever printed a web page or something like that), but she did say that if she had a photo capable printer she might use it to print pictures. My fear is that these "cheap" photo printers will give you may be decent photos (if you get the right paper, have time to figure out how to get such decent output, in my super limited experience a pain in the behind) but possibly compomise the good and consistent quality of a plain text document. For the photos, I think it is so much easier to go to an internet shop, upload and get pretty much perfect output.
In any event, I guess I have to make up my mind with my recommendation. Thanks a lot for your help !

Oh, another question, this one for me. Is there a printer that I can use wirelessly with airport ?

ciao,
giovanni
 
Originally posted by giovanni
ok, so it looks like it will have to be HP for sure and either a deskjet (say $150) or a laserjet (the 1200 model is $399). Now my sister prints only word documents (I don't even know whether she ever printed a web page or something like that), but she did say that if she had a photo capable printer she might use it to print pictures. My fear is that these "cheap" photo printers will give you may be decent photos (if you get the right paper, have time to figure out how to get such decent output, in my super limited experience a pain in the behind) but possibly compomise the good and consistent quality of a plain text document. For the photos, I think it is so much easier to go to an internet shop, upload and get pretty much perfect output.
In any event, I guess I have to make up my mind with my recommendation. Thanks a lot for your help !

Oh, another question, this one for me. Is there a printer that I can use wirelessly with airport ?

ciao,
giovanni
Click to expand...

The HP inkjet that I have been referring to is capable of true photo quality prints. The inks are rated at 80 years. If you have a high enough quality photo and print it on HP photo paper the image is so good that without a magnifying glass you would not know it was printer rather then a photo.

This by the way is all very easy to do all you need is a package of photo paper and a good image and click the printer settings for photo quality and it does it.

I must say that I've had my HP970 for 3years and this printer turns out quality near enough to photos that most people without knowing will think they are photos. The new HPs have double the dpi that this one has.
 
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