Printer

[Andrew L. Gould]

On Tuesday 28 December 2004 02:14 pm, Garance A Drosihn wrote:
> At 9:34 AM -0500 12/28/04, Louis LeBlanc wrote:
> >On 12/27/04 09:46 PM, Parv sat at the `puter and typed:
> >>  Lest somebody gets the wrong idea that all Lexmark printers
> >> behave as descried above, my Optra E310 laser printer --
> >> US$[23]00, 199[89] -- is still going strong.  It worked/works in
> >> Windows 9[58], Me, XP. It of course just works, like a PS printer,
> >> in FreeBSD 3.x, 4.x, and sure would in 5.x.
> >
> >Some few from that time period (very few, if I remember the weeks of
> >research I wasted on my particular model) used standard protocols
> > and could be easily made to work with any OS.  The majority of
> > Lexmark printers up to around 2002 (I think) used a proprietary
> > protocol, and they guarded it like it was Microsoft code.  I don't
> > think they even released MacOS drivers.  I believe most of their
> > printers now use standard drivers, but that's still no guarantee
> > they'll work with *nix systems.  Some are explicitly supported
> > through the various methods, but unless it was, I wouldn't even
> > bother, myself.
>
> Sigh.  We have a few hundred Lexmark printers here at RPI, covering
> a variety of models.  We have been buying them since Lexmark was
> created as a separate company (a spin-off of IBM).  They have all
> worked fine, printing from a variety of systems using standard
> protocols.  In our case, we tend to buy Lexmarks for black-and-white
> laser printing.  We have a few of their color printers too, but we
> have not been happy with the printing-results.  Which is to say, they
> do *work*, but in general we weren't too happy with the color output,
> compared to the output we get from Tektronix (now Xerox) Phaser
> printers.
>
> We print over two million pages a year on our various Lexmark
> printers.  They seem to do just fine for us.
>
> >  > Mind that i am interested mainly in sharp and clear black/white
> >  > text currently.
> >
> >Which would probably be a deciding factor in changing printers.  My
> >guess is you'll get another year or two with good maintennance.  I
> >vaguely remember reading somewhere that those standard protocol
> >printers were decent quality, but the proprietary protocol models
> >were mediocre at best.  That might have been a factor in their
> >abandoning it.
> >
> >I'm glad your experience with Lexmark has been better than mine.
> >Myself, I'm pretty brand-loyal.  When something works well for me, I
> >stick with it.  When a brand burns me, I avoid it like the plague
> >unless circumstance forces me to take another chance.
>
> My experience is that Lexmark is really best at the higher-end
                                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I generally hear nothing but good things about Lexmark printers for 
business; and very few, if any, good comments about Lexmark retail 
(home use) printers.

I used to have a great Okidata OL600e.  I bought it used "as-is" for $50 
and it lived 5 years without any problems.  After breaking it during a 
move, I replaced it with a cheap Epson C82 that work flawlessly through 
the warranty period.  2 months later, the printhead died.  We then bit 
the financial bullet and bought a new Okidata B4350 (black and white) 
laser printer with the postscript option.  It works great; and the 
postscript option makes configuration painless.  Okidata has printers 
with internal print servers; but I opted for a cheaper, external print 
server that can serve multiple printers.

If you research Brother laser printers, you'll find that they get great 
reviews during the first 6-8 months.  After that period, most reviewers 
complain about having to replace the drum, which is expensive.  If 
you're looking at Brother printers you should add the price of a new 
drum into the purchasing price for decision making purposes.

Good luck,

Andrew Gould