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Frank Hansen · Nov 16, 2008, 10:30 AM

Help!
I have been looking around at different laser printers and there are so many my head is spinning, I don't care about wifi all I need is a good USB Color/Monochrome laser-jet printer that will work on both Mac & windows XP Pro and not cost me an arm & a leg, dose anyone have any suggestions from past experience what's worth considering.

OreoCookie · Nov 17, 2008, 08:17 AM

Do you really need color or not?
How many pages do you print?

Simon · Nov 17, 2008, 08:29 AM

If you can be w/o color the HP LaserJet P100x series works very well with OS X. There is an official Leopard driver. The printers are dirt cheap ($99), but they're fast and quality is fine. Toner cartridges aren't cheap, but they last very long (~3000 pages IIRC). Mac support is very good. However, don't expect anything fancy. It's USB, no PS, no color, no duplex. It does work fine with AirPort though.

Frank Hansen · Nov 17, 2008, 12:36 PM

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

Do you really need color or not?
How many pages do you print?

Yes I need color I don't print a lot but sometimes I need to print something like a page from ebay to show to a perspective buyer and I need good graphics when I do.

OreoCookie · Nov 17, 2008, 01:22 PM

Then get a decent inkjet from Canon, e. g. the iP 4600. They have separate ink tanks and good IQ. Stay away from HP, their drivers are hideous.

Frank Hansen · Nov 17, 2008, 01:33 PM

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

Then get a decent inkjet from Canon, e. g. the iP 4600. They have separate ink tanks and good IQ. Stay away from HP, their drivers are hideous.

I am finished with Ink-jets the inks dry to fast but thanks for the suggestion

mduell · Nov 17, 2008, 01:53 PM

HP Color LaserJet 3600N is about $350 and it comes with ethernet.

Frank Hansen · Nov 17, 2008, 02:49 PM

Originally Posted by mduell

HP Color LaserJet 3600N is about $350 and it comes with ethernet.

Thanks
I will take a look and let you know what I think.

Frank Hansen · Nov 17, 2008, 03:27 PM

The HP 3600N looks very good duty cycle great up to 50000 PPM, Ink is a little bit high but the page yield makes up for it.
Question dose it work well with leopard.
HP was on the top of my list I just could not decide what model to go with I will add this to my list of printers to check out.
Thanks

mduell · Nov 17, 2008, 06:53 PM

People report in the Apple forums that it works fine via ethernet or USB.

OreoCookie · 03:30 AM

Oh, I didn't know you wanted to spend that much. I suggest you have a look at Oki color lasers. They are all single pass printers, so they are faster than the cheap color lasers (which are four times faster printing bw than printing color). The small model, the C3400n has a network interconnect and supports Windows and MacOS. If you would like Postscript, you need to have a look at its bigger brother, the C3600n. The C3400n is available for $260 at amazon.com. Add $90 if you want the Postscript model.

Spheric Harlot · Nov 18, 2008, 06:27 AM

Oki drivers are...weird.

OreoCookie · Nov 18, 2008, 06:48 AM

Weirder than HP drivers? (Which I've come to hate.)
Especially if you are using a Postscript printer, there is not much in terms of a driver. Although I have only used Oki printers that had postscript, I've never noticed anything out of the ordinary.

Spheric Harlot · Nov 18, 2008, 12:15 PM

HP drivers are bloated, horrible messes that will let you configure EVERYTHING except the really relevant bits - like making iPhoto the DEFAULT app for opening scanned images. Instead, they throw in everything and the kitchen sink, and make a great, "easy-to-use" touchscreen interface that they stick on the printer to do all those things that you just bought a computer for.

Oki is kind of digital occasionally - on-again, off-again.

Although I hear they've got better recently, and for some reason, their network printing has always worked better than USB connections.

Still had a case recently where an Oki would print from everywhere *except* within iPhoto - though the other connected printer worked just fine.

OreoCookie · Nov 18, 2008, 12:57 PM

Hmmm.
Kinda like our OfficeJet K550 drivers. The printer itself is fine, nice machine. It still ticks me off that HP apparently doesn't want to stick to Apple's guidelines and put duplex printing into Layout, nope, they have to put it to a separate item in the pop-up menu with just one option

(This is particularly annoying as most printers I deal with know how to duplex. Only with the HP, I cannot use my duplex preset

)

Ted L. Nancy · Nov 21, 2008, 06:44 AM

HP=bad bad.

Brother. HL-4040CN. You can easily find it for under $300.

DCJ001 · Nov 21, 2008, 03:31 PM

Originally Posted by Frank Hansen

Help!
I have been looking around at different laser printers and there are so many my head is spinning, I don't care about wifi all I need is a good USB Color/Monochrome laser-jet printer that will work on both Mac & windows XP Pro and not cost me an arm & a leg, dose anyone have any suggestions from past experience what's worth considering.

http://www.macworld.com/article/1369...tml?lsrc=top_2

Big Mac · Nov 21, 2008, 05:28 PM

I'm a fan of Lexmark on the laser side and Canon on the inkjet side.

Frank Hansen · Nov 22, 2008, 11:04 AM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

I'm a fan of Lexmark on the laser side and Canon on the inkjet side.

Any particular models in lexmark that you can suggest I look at in the color laser jets, I need something that will give me good color for presentations.