[P1] Requesting advice choosing a printer, etc

[Charles Pearce]

On Jan 29, 2004, at 10:01 AM, Christian Dupuis wrote:
> If he wants to be efficient with his business, a small sheet-fed fax, a
> small HP or Lexmark laser printer and a nice, small compact desk to
> accommodate it all will let him work faster and better. And if you look
> at a clean, used laser, it won't even cost much.

After the hassle of trying to make an Epson 5700i laser work with OS-X, 
I did some on-line research and ended up buying a Brother HL1440 laser, 
which I highly recommend.  Mind you, this is a stand-alone printer. I 
have a separate scanner (MicroTek) and I don't fax from home, so I can 
recommend only a printer. But, I am well pleased with the Brother. It 
will take both letter and legal-size paper. The printing is crisp and 
dark, the speed is decent (15ppm, I think) and it is very quiet. It 
goes into sleep mode after a little bit and for all intents and 
purposes looks like it is off. However, even remote printing from my 
daughters' eMacs, or my iBook, connected wirelessly through my desktop 
G4 to this shared printer wakes it up. With the Epson, the girls used 
to have to print and then run down two flights to see if it came 
out--which it usually didn't.  Now they just trust that it will be in 
the tray when they get there. I found a price of $179 (USD) for the 
Brother HL1440 to be fairly common on-line at various places and at 
Staples.

Additionally, I have been warned off of multifunction devices on the 
grounds that if one function goes bad, then you lose all three. If you 
have stand-alone, and one goes bad, you simply replace that "module" 
and keep going. Decent scanners aren't very expensive and the cost of 
the separate printer and scanner would be about the same (if not less) 
than the multifunction devices I've seen. I've also only seen ink-jet 
printers in the multifunction devices and the cost of the consumables 
can add up quickly. Laser toner cartridges ARE more generally more 
expensive, but cost less on a per-page basis.

Charles Pearce <charlesp at ksu.edu>