[NeoMac]

I'm looking to buy a MONO-laser printer. I'm SICK of inkjets - what a rip-off!

Brother seems to have a nice low cost solution ($250) AND it supports OSX.

Question:
is 600x600dpi sufficient for text documents that have the occasional grey-scale chart tossed in? (pie charts, histograms - for internal use mostly) Or is 600x600 too grainy for images?

Do you have experience with Brother printers? Would you recommend it?

thanks a bunch

[mgl]

<STRONG>I'm looking to buy a MONO-laser printer. I'm SICK of inkjets - what a rip-off!

Brother seems to have a nice low cost solution ($250) AND it supports OSX.

Question:
is 600x600dpi sufficient for text documents that have the occasional grey-scale chart tossed in? (pie charts, histograms - for internal use mostly) Or is 600x600 too grainy for images?

Do you have experience with Brother printers? Would you recommend it?
</STRONG>

Yes, 600dpi is perfectly adequate. 1200dpi looks significantly better, but 600 is enough for most general personal and office use. If you primarily do graphics, get 1200dpi.

If you're getting a Brother printer, get a 1450 and not a 1440. It has more memory and can actually print at 1200x600. Sorry, I haven't tried one, but I've been looking at them. Or get one of the better ones. The cheap 1440 and 1450 printers have an unusual paper tray that is perfectly designed for collecting dust bunnies. Check out one at an office store and you'll see all sorts of crap back there that will clog your printer.

[Macola]

Originally posted by NeoMac:
<STRONG>
Do you have experience with Brother printers? Would you recommend it?

thanks a bunch </STRONG>

I have a Brother HL-1240 that works pretty well (also had an old HL655, and a MFC). The OS 9 drivers were pretty buggy, but so far I've had no problems in OS X. I like the printer and it does an excellent job with text. I only wish I could have spent more and got one with Ethernet, as my model does not accept a NIC.

[GK]

HP

I just bought a samsung ml1210 laser printer for $180 @compusa.

It works just fine with os 9 and my imac, not sure about os 10.

It also came with two toner catridges in the box.

It's has a 66mhz processor and 8 megs of memory.


It is probably the best lazer printer in it's price range (because it's the only one).

[mgl]

Originally posted by &lt;tuamigo&gt;:
<STRONG>I just bought a samsung ml1210 laser printer for $180 @compusa.

It works just fine with os 9 and my imac, not sure about os 10.

It also came with two toner catridges in the box.

It's has a 66mhz processor and 8 megs of memory.

It is probably the best lazer printer in it's price range (because it's the only one).</STRONG>

How is the quality? If you print a big 50% gray box covering the whole page, do you see any discernible bands? Just curious.

[tuamigo]

Hey there,

I created a large grey square with a drawing program and printed it out at 600 dpi using the toner saver mode on. I was also curious to see if there would be any banding.

Yes, sad to say there was some banding. I had not previously noticed this fact. It seems that when printing a solid grey box you tend to get some slight banding and you can also see that the area in the center of the sheet is slightly darker. With that said this printer prints out crisp black text. I think this banding would more of an issue if you intend on printing out many grayscale images. If that is the case maybe you should not even look at lazer printers. From my research, I found that lazer printers are recommened for users who expect to print out mostly text.

Again though, at this price point you get a pretty decent printer.

I hope this helps.

Any other questions? Fire away.

p.s.

There have been many positive reviews on this printer, although most come from a PC point of view. I honestly don't understand why it was not included in the latest printer reviews done by Macworld. You can read up on it at Amazon, cnet, and zdnet.

One of the many reasons I bought the printer was that on it's box was advertised support for Window, Macs, and LInux!

[ 02-04-2002: Message edited by: tuamigo ]

[ 02-04-2002: Message edited by: tuamigo ]

[rjc3]

While I can't answer your specific questions about printing graphics, my folks have a hl-1040 (or maybe it is a 1240, I can't remember) and it has been rock-solid. You need to set the quality to the highest setting (600dpi) to get great quality, but other than that, it has really been a workhorse for them. I would definately consider Brother for a cheap laser.