What is a good printer/all-in-one?

Tue Mar 25 12:48:02 PDT 2008

Lars Eighner wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Mar 2008, Isaac Mushinsky wrote:
>
>> Yes, I saw that. But FreeBSD is not linux, and using multiple drivers 
>> for
>> the same device is more of a problem for us. HPLIP, on the other hand,
>> requires bare ugen, not loading ulpt or uscanner or perhaps even 
>> umass, a
>> very unnatural and cumbersome thing for me (I want umass, and I also
>> sometimes use a Nikon photo film scanner, which work via sane).
>
> You can use umass devices with HPLIP, but you must load umass after the
> printer has attached as a ugen device.  Then you can attach and detach 
> umass
> devices as much as you please.  You seem to imply there is a conflict
> between uscanner devices, but I don't see what that conflict might be. 
> Uscanner will not grab the scanner function of a multifunction printer 
> with
> hplip.  It doesn't appear there is a conflict of executable names either.
>
There is absolutely no all-in-one device which will work out of box with 
FreeBSD.

 HP devices as you noticed require kernel recompilation and have that 
undocumented umass driver removal and load. They are probably best bet 
but they are expensive (I am talking laser as I would stay away from 
ink-jets by all means).

The second group of devices which should work out of box Epson CX 
all-in-one class devices (which
are ink jet so I would stay a way from them anyway) are not listed in
uscanner driver so they will not work out of box without  manually 
adding your devices into the driver and then recompiling despite the 
fact that epson and epson2 backends support them.

Future of Epson scanners is bleak on FreeBSD as Epson has released 
proprietary drivers for Linux. I believe
any effort for writing sane-backends  for Epson scanners has terminated.

I personally like Brother all-in-one monochromatic devices for home use 
which are probably $150-200 cheaper than
equivalent HP devices. I have seen good all-on-one for $120-150 on line.
Brother has scanner drivers for them brscan and brscan2 but those 
drivers have hidden
binary blob libraries which depend on Linux kernel. They can not be 
compiled on FreeBSD. I talked to their
technical support in Japan and they were the one to tell me to give up 
and disclosed quite a few information about
them.

Samsung has very cheap color laser jet printer which often require Splix 
driver (ported for FreeBSD but version 2.0
which is written from ground up is
expected soon). I have no idea about their scanners but you can get 
refurbished color laser jet form Samsung for $100 if you are lucky. They 
are probably way to go if you need color printing too.

I personally would get an honest printer which in the worst case 
scenario speaks PCL possibly with  flat  bad copier
and get  used  scanner  for  $10  which is  explicitly listed  on  
hardware  notes of FreeBSD.

If you are doing lots of scanning I would even considering deploying 
Linux unless uscanner, ugen, and few other
drivers which are  at the moment incapable of getting Vendor and Product 
ID get better.

Cheers,
Predrag

>>
>> Thus I am looking for a network device, or if USB, then it should 
>> appear as
>> separate uscanner/ulpt/umass.
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 1:08 PM, herbert langhans 
>> <herbert.raimund at gmx.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Isaac,
>>> this is a good start:
>>> http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting
>>>
>>> In the 'printer' section you find a ranking and evaluation how the
>>> printers do on unixoid systems.
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>> herbs
>>>
>>> mount -t wbush /dev/whitehouse /dev/nul
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:12:52 -0400
>>> "Isaac Mushinsky" <itz at mushinsky.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> > My 10-year-old deskjet being out of ink and probably not worth a
>>> replacement
>>>> cartridge (it works, but makes some mechanical noise lately), I am
>>>> considering a reasonable replacement, preferably with scanning/copy
>>>> possibilities.
>>>>
>>>> I tried to get Photosmart C4280, but while I was trying a faulty
>>> printcap on
>>>> it, it lost its mind permanently (says 'incompatible print 
>>>> cartridges',
>>> and
>>>> does not respond to the button combinations that HP support thinks
>>> should
>>>> reset it). Besides, you can either attach it as ulpt or uscanner 
>>>> device,
>>> or
>>>> play with hplip drivers as a generic device, but it seems too
>>>> confusing. It was a waste of time and money for me and I am going to
>>> return
>>>> it.
>>>>
>>>> Requirements:
>>>> 1. Reasonable physical size (should not be much larger than the old
>>>> deskjet).
>>>> 2. Either network/lpd or USB, scanner should be well supported by 
>>>> sane.
>>> If
>>>> used via USB, it should be a compound device (i.e. printer, scanner 
>>>> and,
>>> if
>>>> there, the umass device should appear as separate devices to avoid
>>>> kld-loading and unloading modules). I heard Epsons show up as compound
>>>> devices? any HP laserjets?
>>>> 3. Reasonable maintenance cost (maybe a laser printer, I do not 
>>>> care for
>>>> color printing that much).
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