[Mallrat]

My other post wasn't working so well.

If you have Mac OS 10.2.3 and an inkjet or laser printer under 400, could you please tell me how it works, if it works, and if you would recommend it.

There seems to be lots of good printers for the Macs, but I'm not sure if they work well with Mac X due to lack of driver updates.

On my short list right now are the HP Deskjet 5550 and the Brother laser printer HL-1440, but I'm not sure if they actually work well in the X world.


Thanks for your help.

[OreoCookie]

I'd recommend Canon (i550 sounds like a good deal for general purpose stuff, i850 if you want it a bit faster and i950 if you mainly print high quality photos).

Canon has had X drivers since 10.0!

The quality and speed are excellent and the ink is the cheapest among competitors of its class.

As for laser printers, I recommend Kyocera (specifically the Kyocera 1010). It has built-in Postscript, just copy the .ppd into the right directory and you are done.

The quality of both the printer and the print out is excellent. I've had enough HPs and the quality of the pinter seems to decrease every generation (at least the class we are talking about) and consumables are very expensive (HP makes about one tenth of its turn over with consumables!).

What type of printer you need, I don't know. If you mainly print (loads of) text, a laser printer is the way to go. I'd go for one the next time ...

[Kronos]

I myself have been using the Canon i550 and for a general purpose printer I absolutely love the printer. I paid only $129.00 and am very pleased. Also I am running on an iBook 800 with 10.23.

Matt

[OldManMac]

I use an Epson Photo 870 for color work, and a Samsung ML-1210 laser for text work. They both work great. I'm hoping to buy an Epson 2200 Photo this spring, although some of the advanced features (roll paper cutter), don't work in Jaguar.

[schalliol]

I have an HP DeskJet 970cse that I bought during the summer of 2000 ($399) and a JetDirect 300X (~$200). I'm guessing that you could get something similar for $400 now (I wonder if the AE base station could drive it). Of course you could use it without networking too.

I really like this unit in 10.2.3. The drivers previously were bad, but it works great now. What I really love is that the images are very smooth, but sharp at the same time, it doesn't seem to streak like others do, it DUPLEXES (double-sided printing), and it actually can calibrate itself using some sort of optical recognition system (it's awesome, a blue light it emitted and it must be reading in what it printed). Highly recommended!!

[I Bent My Wookiee]

HP's seem to have poor drivers, the Epsons seem to be good, my Epson c80 works great.

[schalliol]

When did you last try the HP drivers? The drivers under 10.2.3 are incredible. They were great in OS 9 too. They just had some issues getting OS X up, but now it's perfect.

[Mallrat]

Originally posted by KarlG:
I use an Epson Photo 870 for color work, and a Samsung ML-1210 laser for text work. They both work great. I'm hoping to buy an Epson 2200 Photo this spring, although some of the advanced features (roll paper cutter), don't work in Jaguar.

Anyone have any luck with the Samsung ML-1430? there website is a totally mess and I can't even find the latest Mac OS X driver on their site.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by schalliol:
When did you last try the HP drivers? The drivers under 10.2.3 are incredible. They were great in OS 9 too. They just had some issues getting OS X up, but now it's perfect.

Last I remember was those thousands of people that had their computers slow to a crawl if they had 10.2.3 and HP drivers installed.

[schalliol]

Well, that's quite odd. I'll gladly recommend the config I have with 10.2.3. Works perfectly A+

[Back up 15 and punt]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
Last I remember was those thousands of people that had their computers slow to a crawl if they had 10.2.3 and HP drivers installed.

You are talking about the drivers for the HP Photosmart printers (7150, 7350,7550), HP Scanjets, and all in ones. And these problems were not inherent in 10.2.1 but they became a problem in 10.2.2. Under 10.2.3 the problems with the Photosmart printers and the all in ones have gone away. The CPU usage problem only remains with the Scanjets.

[schalliol]

Ahh, so the printers are fine then, right?

[solitere]

Originally posted by rushmore:
My other post wasn't working so well.

If you have Mac OS 10.2.3 and an inkjet or laser printer under 400, could you please tell me how it works, if it works, and if you would recommend it.

There seems to be lots of good printers for the Macs, but I'm not sure if they work well with Mac X due to lack of driver updates.

On my short list right now are the HP Deskjet 5550 and the Brother laser printer HL-1440, but I'm not sure if they actually work well in the X world.
Thanks for your help.

I«m myself used OS X 10.2 with following printers with no problems:

Epson C80, HP Laserjet 4MP+, 8100 DN, 5100 and larger printers as Xerox Docucolor 40, Docucolor 50, Canon Gp555, Xerox ST255.

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by solitere:
I«m myself used OS X 10.2 with following printers with no problems:

Epson C80, HP Laserjet 4MP+, 8100 DN, 5100 and larger printers as Xerox Docucolor 40, Docucolor 50, Canon Gp555, Xerox ST255.

Well, I use an HP LaserJet 8100DN and a LaserJet 4MX too, but I don't think these printers are options for a private household/small business, absolute overkill. Everything works here.

My recommendation is that if you get a laser printer, it should have Postscript 2/3. That way, all your extensions and stuff works out of the box (different paper trays, consumables, duplexing, etc.).

I'll stick to my choices. My personal printer is a Canon S630. Great printer, printed a lot of pages (if someone knows a way how to check out the page count, please PM me about it), no problems at all. At work, I mainly print with the HP 8100DN, the other one is its predecessor (slow as a dog when it comes to images).

[Back up 15 and punt]

Originally posted by schalliol:
Ahh, so the printers are fine then, right?

I have had some minor problems but in general the answer is yes. The only problem I have run into with my Deskjet 5550 is printing edge to edge 4 by 6 photo's. I end up with 4 by 5.5 instead.

[Mallrat]

Originally posted by Back up 15 and punt:
I have had some minor problems but in general the answer is yes. The only problem I have run into with my Deskjet 5550 is printing edge to edge 4 by 6 photo's. I end up with 4 by 5.5 instead.

The deskjet 5550 is one of the printers I was considering... I want to mainly print just black text... how does it look? it says it has 1200 by 1200 dpi, does it look anything near laser quality?

And I assume besides your edge problem with 4 by 6 the printer works great.

[Back up 15 and punt]

Originally posted by rushmore:
The deskjet 5550 is one of the printers I was considering... I want to mainly print just black text... how does it look? it says it has 1200 by 1200 dpi, does it look anything near laser quality?

And I assume besides your edge problem with 4 by 6 the printer works great.

The text printing is very good. I don't think you will be disappointed.

[Mallrat]

Originally posted by Back up 15 and punt:
The text printing is very good. I don't think you will be disappointed.

Cool.

Well I would prefer a laser printer, but I had an HL-1440 (I gave it to my parents) which is now only 200 bucks, but there were a few things I didn't like about it. The driver was quirky, the lights flashed all the time even when I had 1000 pages left on my toner, and it curled the pages a lot.

I'm trying to spend 300 or less, but the only laser in that price range that I see are the Samsung (which I don't know if they work) and the Brother.

So I figured that maybe I could get by wiht an inkjet for awhile and wait for a good laser printer to come out , or at least wait for companies to actually make OS X drivers for all their printers.

But if anyone has any recoomends on a laser printer under 300 let me know.

thanks.

[Buck_W]

Epson C62 on this end. Works fine, no problems whatsoever

[bradoesch]

Epson Stylus Color 760. Works great in 10.2.3, although it felt like it printed faster in OS 9. All in my head? Maybe. It still works great for me.

[tuamigo]

I'm running 10.2.3 with an epson 740 and a samsung ml-1210.

Like some else said, the inkjet for hi res color and the laser for text.

The epson drivers that came with os x work very well for the 740.

The samsung was really a problem for a long time. I bought it because it was dirt cheap compared with other laser printers. It also had a neat toner save mode. The driver that it came with was for an early version of os x, i don't recall which one.

Anyway, it ran kinda slow. I tried newer drivers from the samsung web page which did not work. It seems they have various drivers but none really do the job. For the longest time I was printing at a rate of 2 pages per minute on my laser printer.

It was awful, but the printer worked and I grew tired of trying to fix it, simply to find i had made the problem worse.

THEN, I found a website that suggested drivers for linux. I lost the website link, but here is the name of the file i installed: samsung-gdi-foomatic-1.0.ppc.dmg. (try to do a google search)

The samsung laser printer runs great. It now prints at spec speeds.

I totally recommend this printer know that alternate drivers are available. STAY AWAY from samsung drivers until since they are still beta.

[Back up 15 and punt]

Originally posted by rushmore:
Cool.

Well I would prefer a laser printer, but I had an HL-1440 (I gave it to my parents) which is now only 200 bucks, but there were a few things I didn't like about it. The driver was quirky, the lights flashed all the time even when I had 1000 pages left on my toner, and it curled the pages a lot.

I'm trying to spend 300 or less, but the only laser in that price range that I see are the Samsung (which I don't know if they work) and the Brother.

So I figured that maybe I could get by wiht an inkjet for awhile and wait for a good laser printer to come out , or at least wait for companies to actually make OS X drivers for all their printers.

But if anyone has any recoomends on a laser printer under 300 let me know.

thanks.

If you want to use an Deskjet for black and white printing then I would recommend that you use a printer that has higher capacity cartridges. If you are considering an HP then I will recommend you look at the 6122 or 6127. Both of these printers use a black cartridges that is rated at 950 pages. Their cost is $200 and $250 respectively. Both printers come with cartridges and a duplexer. The real difference between the two is the 6127 comes with a network connection.

[Mallrat]

THEN, I found a website that suggested drivers for linux. I lost the website link, but here is the name of the file i installed: samsung-gdi-foomatic-1.0.ppc.dmg. (try to do a google search)

The samsung laser printer runs great. It now prints at spec speeds.

I totally recommend this printer know that alternate drivers are available. STAY AWAY from samsung drivers until since they are still beta. [/B][/QUOTE]


I thought linux was an alternate OS. But they also make alternative drivers for printers?

I went to the website and it looks comprehensive... is there any reason not to use their drivers? I mean they have a driver for the Brother HL-1440 which might make it work better than the offical Brother driver. And if that is so, I will probably go with that printer since it is only 200 bucks at Staples.

[schalliol]

BTW, in relation to high capacity cart's, the HP 970 seems like it has a bottomless supply of ink down there, it's really quite amazing, I think I've only changed both like one time since I got it a couple+ years ago.

[Mallrat]

Well I'm still trying to weigh by options... the Epson injkets are very tempting because they are so cheap. Canon, I love their other equipment but I never bought a printer from them, but most people hear seem to love them.

But I really want a laser printer, but there are only a few in my price range.

I asked before, maybe people mentioned the Samsung ML-1210 as a good laser printer, but that has been replaced by the ML-1430.

Does anyone have this printer and does it work in Mac OS X?

I guess linux drivers work better than many of the companies drivers for Samsung. And I know linux has a driver for the ML-1430, but does it really work? I've never tried to download alternate drivers before.

Thanks for all the great help and opinions so far.

[G4ME]

good old 740 that i had since my 6115CD, for a 50 dollar printer 3-4 years ago she's a beauty, plus ink is so goddamn cheap, 7 bucks for color

[drjoe]

Well the post seems to ask 'what printers are you using in OS X 10.2.3', not what prtinter would you buy. So here goes and please don't laugh at me:

For ordinary text printing: Apple LaserWriter IIg.

For graphic stuff and draft text: HP 660c via Appletalk, AsantePrint and hpijs

For multipart invoices: Imagewriter LQ via Appletalk, AsantePrint and foomatic drivers

For everything else: Lexmark X83. a bit slow but used mostly as a scanner nowadays.

I know,. I know, a lot from ancient times, but it works. And it even works is 10.2.4.

[schalliol]

Hey, all technology should be so reliable! Great!

[Ron Goodman]

Epson 1280 inkjet and an HP 2200d laser printer. The HP 1200 series is only about $360 if you want a cheaper laser printer.

[PTCooki]

I'm using an Epson SC900. It works fine. No problems.

iMac 1GHZ, 17" flat panel, 512 MB Ram, Superdrive.

[jamez bond]

I am using an Epson C82 with 10.2.4 here. No problems. Plugged into my AE basestation.
Great with separate ink-cartridges.

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by rushmore:
Well I'm still trying to weigh by options... the Epson injkets are very tempting because they are so cheap. Canon, I love their other equipment but I never bought a printer from them, but most people hear seem to love them.

But I really want a laser printer, but there are only a few in my price range.

I asked before, maybe people mentioned the Samsung ML-1210 as a good laser printer, but that has been replaced by the ML-1430.

Does anyone have this printer and does it work in Mac OS X?

I guess linux drivers work better than many of the companies drivers for Samsung. And I know linux has a driver for the ML-1430, but does it really work? I've never tried to download alternate drivers before.

Thanks for all the great help and opinions so far.

As I posted above, get a Kyocera-Mita 1010 then, prints 6000 pages per cartridge, 14 ppm, Postscript 2. And it's in your pricerange about the same as HP LaserJet 1200, etc.

[ngrundy]

I'm using a Canon S450. ditched HP gear for quite a few reasons such as curved paper path, expensive inks, all in one colour cartridge.

the canon has drivers built into OSX, runs like a charm, is straight paper path, the inks don't cost a fortune and they come in individual containers. Also it was cheeper than a comparable HP at the time.

[Back up 15 and punt]

Originally posted by ngrundy:
I'm using a Canon S450. ditched HP gear for quite a few reasons such as curved paper path, expensive inks, all in one colour cartridge.

the canon has drivers built into OSX, runs like a charm, is straight paper path, the inks don't cost a fortune and they come in individual containers. Also it was cheeper than a comparable HP at the time.

Try reading consumer reports on printers. They rate the picture quality of Cannon higher than either HP or Epson but there cost per page was significantly higher. So much for cheaper cartridges. These rating also occured before HP and Epson came out with their current line of printers which have significantly higher resolutions. Cannon's paper path may be a straighter one but it still feeds primarily from the top position. HP, at one time, used this same method in some its older all in one lasers. They stopped using it because of eventual feeding problems.

[Podolsky]

Wireless printing with Epson C80WN works fine from 2 powerbooks, 1 eMac and one Wintel laptop. The C80 is fast and output is good, not great, but good.

[jamez bond]

how do you make your wintel laptop print wireless??

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by Back up 15 and punt:
Try reading consumer reports on printers. They rate the picture quality of Cannon higher than either HP or Epson but there cost per page was significantly higher. So much for cheaper cartridges. These rating also occured before HP and Epson came out with their current line of printers which have significantly higher resolutions. Cannon's paper path may be a straighter one but it still feeds primarily from the top position. HP, at one time, used this same method in some its older all in one lasers. They stopped using it because of eventual feeding problems.

Well, my Canon is much cheaper as far as consumables are concerned. My parents have a G85 (basically a DeskJet 970 with a scanner, ADF, and a fax) and have spent more than 1,200 $ in cartridges! Reason: the color tank includes all three colors at once and even if you enable ?greyscale' in the option, it still will print with color to be able to printer grey at a higher resolution. Effect: even though you thought you have disabled color cartridge consumption, you haven't. This is not the case with my Canon. One black cartridge (original from Canon!) costs about 15 ? here whereas the same thing from HP costs 45 ? (that lasts 700 instead of Canon's 500 pages).

Color isn't more expensive, too. If one color runs out, you have to replace all of them if you have an HP (another 45 ?). I you have a later Canon model, then you need to buy three tanks separately (@ 13 ? apiece = 39 ? in total). Yellow runs about twice as fast as magenta in my parent's company (their logo contains blue and yellow). With the HP, you have to replace the whole color tank. And Canon's color tanks are larger and you can see right through them as they are transparent (e. g. Epson implants a chip into their cartridges that simply counts the pages; after printing this number of pages, the chip says the cartridge is empty and you need to replace it even though it might not be empty).

One one thing that hasn't been mentioned yet: Canon uses the same kind of color tanks for several generations of their printers. My girlfriend's S450 uses the same ones as I do with my S630 or her parents with her MFC600.

[Back up 15 and punt]

Originally posted by OreoCookie:
Well, my Canon is much cheaper as far as consumables are concerned. My parents have a G85 (basically a DeskJet 970 with a scanner, ADF, and a fax) and have spent more than 1,200 $ in cartridges! Reason: the color tank includes all three colors at once and even if you enable ?greyscale' in the option, it still will print with color to be able to printer grey at a higher resolution. Effect: even though you thought you have disabled color cartridge consumption, you haven't. This is not the case with my Canon. One black cartridge (original from Canon!) costs about 15 ? here whereas the same thing from HP costs 45 ? (that lasts 700 instead of Canon's 500 pages).

Color isn't more expensive, too. If one color runs out, you have to replace all of them if you have an HP (another 45 ?). I you have a later Canon model, then you need to buy three tanks separately (@ 13 ? apiece = 39 ? in total). Yellow runs about twice as fast as magenta in my parent's company (their logo contains blue and yellow). With the HP, you have to replace the whole color tank. And Canon's color tanks are larger and you can see right through them as they are transparent (e. g. Epson implants a chip into their cartridges that simply counts the pages; after printing this number of pages, the chip says the cartridge is empty and you need to replace it even though it might not be empty).

One one thing that hasn't been mentioned yet: Canon uses the same kind of color tanks for several generations of their printers. My girlfriend's S450 uses the same ones as I do with my S630 or her parents with her MFC600.

It depends on were you live. In the US I pay only $30 for cartridge 45 and $35 for cartridge 78. Don't forget you can buy two different sizes of the color cartridge. The larger has twice the ink and you'll save about $15 over buying two. I can also buy in bulk from Costco and the cartridge cost is even less and now Best Buy will match Costco prices.

As far as replacing the colors. In all of my experience I have never found that I am wasting that much ink, if one of the colors in running out. Consumer reports found that at most you loose about five percent or less. I would recommend to you and your parents to print if draft mode. You will save a lot of ink. Grey scale doesn't necessarily save you anything.

[schalliol]

Wow, that is amazing that you spent so much money in ink on your 970. I don't print that much but probably 30 sheets a week on average for my 970 and I really don't remember the last time I changed cartridges, but I am sure that I only have to replace one of the two every 6 months or so with the other following by a couple. As a result, I spend very little on ink. Make sure to get the high capacity cart's and buy them somewhere cheap. You also might want to consider getting the cheap-o kind you see advertised. My experience is that they seem to work as well (Iowa Ink), but you might have different results.

I sometimes print on draft and find that the quality is really decent for text and web pages, but for seamless printing it's probably good to go with "Normal".

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by Back up 15 and punt:
It depends on were you live. In the US I pay only $30 for cartridge 45 and $35 for cartridge 78. Don't forget you can buy two different sizes of the color cartridge. The larger has twice the ink and you'll save about $15 over buying two. I can also buy in bulk from Costco and the cartridge cost is even less and now Best Buy will match Costco prices.

As far as replacing the colors. In all of my experience I have never found that I am wasting that much ink, if one of the colors in running out. Consumer reports found that at most you loose about five percent or less. I would recommend to you and your parents to print if draft mode. You will save a lot of ink. Grey scale doesn't necessarily save you anything.

They now use my S630 for printing. But they still copy stuff and that's where most of the ink goes. This thing is a rip-off.

I've had five HP printers in total. But I will never go HP again.

[tuamigo]

attn: rushmore

Go with the samsung; save some money and toner with the toner saver feature. All you need is gimp print. As i posted before, these drivers work great with my 1210. Plus, it seems they are constantly being updated. I just updated to the newest version: gimp-print-4.2.5-0.ppc.dmg.

I actually just saw a post of some users, Mac OS X 10.2.4 Special Report , having issues with thier samsung printers, however it is not the case here. I have the same set up as them without problems. Gimp print has specific instructions you must follow when you want to add new printers. If it is not done correctly you might run into problems.

I actually have my samsung connected to a dlink print router which in turn is connected to a dlink wireless router. I use gimp print along with the ip printing feature of os x to send files over my local network. This is great because now I can print from my pc win2000 notebook or my imac running os x 10.2.4.

Finally, just head over to :

http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/

just to make sure the samsung you are thinking of getting is on the compatible list. I would not be surprised if the 1210 and the newer model work with the same driver.