[ale] Epson ET-4550 Printer Drivers on Linux?

Jim Kinney jim.kinney at gmail.com
Wed Jan 25 08:55:02 EST 2017


I would recommend the Brother color laser all in one. I got nearly 8 years
out of my (not all in one) color laser printer and I was slamming several
thousand pages per year (sometimes per month) through it. Do NOT put third
party toner in them. Suck it up and only buy new cartridges from a
reputable source.

The only other printer I can recommend for reliability is HP. I have 10 and
15 year old HP LaserJets that JustWork. I finally retired one only because
the parallel port network adapter failed and I could do without it. That
was my check printer. The other still works with minimal fuss. Paper jams
in HP kit is highly related to humidity and loading process. The rollers
get covered in fibers over the years and still keep working even though the
roller is hard as a rock. An occasional (annually) vacuum of crud from
around the paper path keeps it working.

The only reason for using inkjet is for printing onto non-paper items, CD's
and such, and for oversize formats and specialty art. Laser is far more
reliable and far less expensive in the long run.



On Jan 25, 2017 8:01 AM, "Neal Rhodes" <neal at mnopltd.com> wrote:

> Thanks.  Well, my situation - officially my wife and I have retired from
> our consulting business.   Practically we will continue to handle dribbles
> of client issues for several years and do a few hours of work.   And we
> have to do taxes.
>
> We now have a collection of 6 printers in the house, including 1
> all-in-one, NONE of which work at present.  (all have mysterious hardware
> issues.)  To replace the color toner cartridges in the Dell 3100-cn and the
> drum which it just decided needed replacing is about $380.  And then it
> might, or might not, actually print.
>
> We figure on needing to print perhaps 300-500 pages a year for the next 5
> years.   Thus a single all-in-one which does good color printing seems to
> make the most sense.   With the new larger ink capacity in the below units
> they both seem like they would provide 5-10 years of ink.   The Brother is
> half the cost of the Epson and provides 1/4 of the ink.    We don't much
> care about speed.
>
> Buying another laser seems like an unnecessary expense at this point.
>
> On Wed, 2017-01-25 at 01:11 -0500, Solomon Peachy wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 24, 2017 at 09:20:33PM -0500, Neal Rhodes wrote:
> > We are looking at either an Epson ET-4550 eco-tank printer or a Brother
> > MFC-J5830DW .
> >
> > My recollection is that the Brother drivers installed in Centos 6
> > without drama.   It looks like the Epson has a generic driver for
> > linux.
>
> Brother lasers are drama-free.  They Just Work.  Epsons are a little
> more complicated though.
>
> I'd not consider an inkjet and a laser to be in the same class; what do
> you intend to use this printer for?
>
>  - Solomon
>
>
>
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