[ale] I HATE printers!

[Jim Kinney]

Hmm. Common factor is the netgear print server. I have a hard time
seeing it foul up a print job. I expect it would either work fine or
just fail and do nothing.

That Brother laser is actually a good deal. Samsung also makes a
decent laser printer. Brother (and Samsung) lasers have toner separate
from drum so 3-5 toner changes before a drum change. And then the drum
is expensive. I have a Brother HL-4070CDW. Duplex, color, wireless
with 10/100 nic as well. Speaks Bscript which is an unlicensed
Postscript 3. My only gripe is printing labels that are not a letter
size sheet from the multi-purpose tray. It has a centering paper guide
instead of a left or right guide and OpenOffice.org just can't deal
with that.

I would try direct plug in on the HP and Epson and bypass that print
server. I have had good success with Hawking print servers (really low
cost but a parallel port model required a windows machine to
configure. A newer USB style did not as dhcp was default and the MAC
was listed).

Lastly - I concur with your general sentiment of printing. It should
not be this hard.

On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 4:25 PM, tom <tfreeman at intel.digichem.net> wrote:
>
> I'm not quite sure whether this is mostly a need to vent frustration, or
> to report challenges and seek remedies. I am reaching the point where I
> could resort to violence...
>
> My big need for a printer at the moment is to print rough drafts and copy
> ready drafts for a class I'm teaching. Its a whole lot more better to show
> up on campus ready for copying than fighting the whole Linux/Windows
> software horse droppings. I'm having a major challenge doing so.
>
> I was using a HP D1430 on a Netgear (model ?) printer server on the
> network. I started having difficulties with the black ink cartredges back
> in December. They would start printing black, and start fading after about
> a half page or so. I think I had 6 or 7 cartridges do me that way, from
> the first print job forward. That is expensive...
>
> I obtained an Epson Workforce 30 last week, getting fed up with HP. There
> was an option to get a Brother Laser, but something about the store not
> keeping toner on hand and the toner being more expensive than the printer
> just rubs me grossly wrong. That approach may be brilliant marketing, but
> it is simply wrong use of resources.
>
> Back to Epson
>
> I'm printing from OpenOffice.org through CUPS to the Netgear blob hence to
> the Epson, using F10 Linux as the base system, all up to date as of last
> night. Test pages work print just fine, and I've gotten one or two decent
> print jobs. One or two decent print jobs out of 15 or so attempts isn't a
> good sign however. I can either get pure garbage characters with random
> page feeds, or be missing the bottom half of the page. Nice black stuff on
> the paper tho - not that fading pinkish stuff from the HP.
>
> At this point I'm just frustrated, and moderately pissed off. This
> shouldn't be rocket science...
>
> Thanks for the use of your bandwidth. I've got to drag somebody off to
> dinner now.
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>



-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III