[Kestral]

Ok, I've gone through 4 inkjet printers in the past year and a half. I'm sick of them. They're cheap because they're horribly built, the ink is more expensive than Dom Pergnon:

"Ink for home printers is now seven times more expensive than vintage champagne."
http://www.thisislondon.com/til/jsp/...itemId=5590282

I only need black and white so I've decided to spend a little more initially and get something a little better in terms of durability and also cheaper per page in the long run.

So I was wondering, what's an decent inexpensive laser printer for a Powerbook 12" running Mac OS X? The Samsungs seem to be well priced but are they compatible or any good? Would really appreciate some recommendations.

[X-Ray]

You might want to check this out at dealmac.com:
Samsung ML-1710 laser printer for $134 shipped after rebate 1:56 pm
OfficeDepot.com offers the Samsung ML-1710 laser printer for $199.23 with free shipping. A $15 off coupon and a $50 mail-in rebate knock the net price to $134.23. That's $16 off our last mention and the lowest total price we know to be available. The compact ML-1710 features up to 17 ppm, 600x600 dpi, 8MB internal memory, and USB connectivity. Offer ends July 26, 2003
I have a 1200 series Samsung and it has worked flawlessly in OS 9, OS X and Win XP. Some people have had problems in OS X with drivers but I never have.

[OldManMac]

I'll second the recommendation on Samsung lasers. I bought an ML-1210 a year ago, and I print out over a ream a month of paper, and it has worked flawlessly. I had some minor driver issues with the first OS X, but those have long been fixed.

[Kestral]

Hi X-Ray, thanks for the reply. I tried to find the 1710 at my local dealer and the one they recommended was the 1430. I was curious to know, any idea whether you can hook up a Samsung printer USB into an Airport Extreme base station to print wirelessly? No Samsung printers are on the list.

[Immortal K-Mart Employee]

You sound like a former Epson user to me.

[Kestral]

Originally posted by Immortal K-Mart Employee:
You sound like a former Epson user to me.

Yup, 3 Epsons and 1 Lexmark, how did you guess?

BTW, thanks KarlG for your reply as well!

So anyone know whether the Samsungs can hook up to an Airport Extreme via USB to allow wireless printing?

[OreoCookie]

A cheap laser printer to replace a cheap inkjet doesn't sound like a solution. I would suggest spending a bit more than the minimum, otherwise you are stuck with horrible built-quality, too.

My suggestion is the Kyocera-Mita FS1010: 14 ppm (DinA4, I don't know about letter), very cheap toner, long-lasting parts (drum lasts 100,000 pages, Postscript 2, etc. I would definitely go for a non-dumb printer, i. e. one that has its own logic to raster the pages.

[DrBoar]

I bought the Samsung 1210. It works very well for intended purpose, that is print text and uncomplicated graphics.

It will not do 50 MB TIFFs or get networked apart from USB share for that you need a more expensive printer with expandable memory and ethernet

[Bob Barlen]

I recently bought the Samsung ML-1450, and it's a fantastic printer. It's got a 550 sheet paper tray, so you can load an entire ream at once - very handy. It comes with 4MB RAM, which is low, but the expansion slot takes a regular 72 pin SIMM, so you can just use an old one (or buy one for $5) and bump up the memory. I've now got 36MB, and it runs great. It gets 6000 sheets out of a toner cartridge, which is great.

I paid $375 Canadian for it, so the US prices will certainly be cheaper.

The 1450 is the same printer, if you don't care about RAM expansion or large capacity paper, and it's around $300 CDN.

Can any Samsung users comment on the OSX drivers? I'm not running it right now, so I don't know what they're like.

[drissa]

"You sound like a former Epson user to me."

Please allow me to add my name to this list. I became a former Epson user about two hours ago when I, very literally, put my foot through the 830 that has refused to do anything properly since I bought it 6 months ago.

It will appear in a skip, conveniently placed down my road, later this evening.

I arrived on this thread after a search for laser recommendations and have plans for the Samsung too. Let's hope this one, er, prints.

[jb8748]

I have been very happy with my Lexmark E310. It is USB and can do Postscript. I also found out that the 'memory modules' are just 72pin simms! Found a use for that 4Mb that cost me �150 all those years ago!

I think they are up to E323 or something now but the printers look similar. YMMV.

When I bought the E310 it was the same as the Samsung but with the Postscript support - ie no drivers required.

I've done nothing to it in 4 years. No problems and no new toner, yet...

James

[Weezer]

I have a brother HL-1440 that works like a champ.

[tooki]

Originally posted by Kestral:
Yup, 3 Epsons and 1 Lexmark, how did you guess?

No wonder you hate inkjets!

You could try a Canon inkjet. All the Canon models (except the portables) $100 and up use really cheap ink, and are fast. They also use user-replaceable printheads, so if they clog, it's not the end of the world. (Then again, the removable printheads are also easy to clean.)



If you can afford it, buy a LaserJet 2x00 or 4x00 series with ethernet. LaserJets are true workhorses, except for the 1x00 series.

Or buy a used LaserWriter. For well under $200, you can get a printer with under 10% of its rated lifetime, with ethernet, multiple paper trays, dirt-cheap page costs, etc. I've been eyeing the 12/640 PS myself.

tooki

[-Q-]

I've had a LaserWriter 630 with ethernet for about 3 years now. It's most certainly a workhorse. You can usually find them used for a good price and the seem to run forever. The only problem I've encountered is that printing PDFs seems to take forever. Otherwise, I love the printer.

[Cincinnatus]

I've been using a HP LaserJet 1200se, with PostScript Level 2 emulation, for over a year now, and haven't had any problems to speak of. I upgraded the memory from the base 8 to 40 (via standard SO-DIMM) - this allowed the printers to handle documents with larger graphics and/or numerous fonts. The printer will choke on large graphics files, but thats what our working inkjets (Epson 740 and 2000P) are for. I also bought an IOGear USB-Ethernet print server for ~60 USD, so this little ~400 USD printer is now networked (actually its networked to a MacOS X server, which acts as a spooler, and is shared to the others Macs via Printer Sharing). Even better, toner only costs ~80 USD, and lasts far longer (8,000+ pages) than ink.

I belive that the 1200 was replaced by the 1300 - which is basically the same printer with some enhancements.

/Cincinnatus

[RealMac]

I've used my Epson Stylus Color 880 since around the beginning of 2001, without any major problems. I do wonder about when it's time to put more ink in though. It always gives me that warning prematurely.

I had a 700 before that that I think is dead. I really stopped using it because it didn't have osx driver support. I had a parallel to usb adaptor cable on it.

Just surprises me that you can literally go through so many printers in that period of time. Then again I only print say 5 times a week on average.

[Weezer]

Here's a good deal:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....5&type=product

Samsung ML-1710, $200-$30 Instant Rebate-$70 Mail-in rebate= $100 total

[climber]

I have been using the new HP color laserJet 1500. Great color laser printer at a great price.

[MacTheKnife]

I have a LaserJet 4050TN loaded with 120MB RAM. It will not print certain Quark/EPS files, even with "Portability" on. (Prolly, because it doesn't recognize printer RAM above 33MB -- DOH!)

I also own an Epson Stylus Photo 1280 with a PostScript driver, which prints difficult pages, but is slow for draft printouts -- not to mention more expensive than Dom Perignon!

So, which of the above-mentioned printers works reliably with QuirkXpress (4.1 and 5.1) and PostScript files?

[euro]

This is great info! I'm also in the market for a simple, inexpensive laser printer, but I'd like to be able to hook it up to my network. Are any of the suggestions discussed so far ethernet enabled? or are there other solutions like printservers that could work?

Thanks,
Euro

[alpha rays max]

Originally posted by Weezer:
I have a brother HL-1440 that works like a champ.

Me too. Been a great printer.

[DrBoar]

I have a Samsung 1210 that I use the USB share to share over the network. As long as it is only Mac no problem but the USB share is not cross platform so for that a real network printer like the Samsung 1451n that however, is about twise the price

[reynard]

I just purchased the Samsung 1710 from Best Buy. Its down to $99 with the $70 mail-in rebate.

However, there seem to be some limitations with the driver. The included CD only has driver for OS9, and it seems to be complete for that OS.

I downloaded the driver for OSX.2 from Samsung and it did show up in the print list. But the print options are minimal. For example:
�No darkness adjustment
�No grayscale vs. black and white choice
�no watermark option
�and a big one, inability to select manual document feeder. (No envelopes, etc.)

Again, all these options are available in OS9. I just got it this evening. Little time to trouble shoot. Im a novice user anyway so any help I could get on this matter would be greatly apprecitated. I suppose I could sell it on EBay if I cant get all the options I want.

[kcourt]

Originally posted by DrBoar:
I have a Samsung 1210 that I use the USB share to share over the network. As long as it is only Mac no problem but the USB share is not cross platform so for that a real network printer like the Samsung 1451n that however, is about twise the price

I also own the ML-1210. I have OS 9 and it works fine. What do I need to do when I get my G5 with the OS X, hopefully the Panther?

[reynard]

I just got off Samsung tech support (again) regarding the ML-1710.

After some false starts they finally discovered that only the most BASIC functions are supported with the OSX driver. No manual document feed, no darkness levels, no choosing between grayscale and black/white, and no watermark (OK, I can live without the watermark).

I dont even know if it can print transparencies...I just thought of that. I wonder if that option needs to be selected or if I can just put the transparency in the tray. Hmmm.

So, its a great price--$100--but very limited.
I might take it back. Damn. Whats disturbing to me, a novice, is that in shopping for another laser printer how do I even find out what is supported before buying it? Samsung did not know the first time. THey thought I had downloaded the wrong driver.

This driver situation is more evidence that Apple needs to work on market share; companies arent going to support OSX just to be nice to us.

I must say that the tech people did answer the phone right away and were very polite. And they said there may be an update on the driver. Some day. Maybe.

[MacTheKnife]

OK, I fixed my problemo with Quark and HP4050TN by using the plain old PCL6 driver, doh!

Shopping eBay and Craigslist I saw quite a few nice-looking LaserWriter Select 360s going for about $125, but now that I hear about these Samsung prices, I think buying used is prolly not a good idea.

Still, no one has answered the wireless part yet, so I'll jump in. If you have an HP print server you can network any regular printer (non-Ethernet enabled) to any wireless gateway. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[littlegreenspud]

I have a LaserWriter II bought for �11.50, hooked it up to my Asant� Ethertalk. Installed Gimp Print and espgs-7-1.05.5-0.ppc (to allow postscript level one in Jaguar).

It sits on the ethernet network and serves all my macs.

Though it is a bit slow!