[KLUG Members] Printer recommendation?

[Bryan-TheBS-Smith]

Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> I don't think there are any.

I have a DeskJet 870Cse that is supposed to take an

> Agree, these are very nice printers.  I'd recommend buying a refurb laser to
> anyone shopping for a laser printer,  the deals are great.  Bought my IBM 4019
> this way,  although that was a LONG time ago now.

Yes, the Lexmark Optra E-series are much faster and better.  The
regularly win awards over all other lasers for <$500 and can easily
match up against one in the $500-1,000 range.  They do both PCL5e/6
as well as Postscript 2, with the latter being the native/preferred
engine.

> Always add memory to postscript printers.  I've also experienced jobs that puke
> using the PCL driver but work properly with Postscript.

Which is what Ziff-Davis finds regularly.  But even the Postscript
engine in Windows is not as good as in Linux.  I reguarly have to
print large documents, especially PDFs, for Windows users on my
Linux box.

> But never on an HP printer, and isn't PCL HP's lingua franca.
> Could be ancedotal and pure coincidence.

PCL is licensed, just like Postscript, but it doesn't have nearly
the number of native application that can manipulate it.  To HP, PCL
is just a printer language used by the printer.  To Adobe,
Postscript is a rendering language for use by everything.

> Some of the print filters provided with Redhat are sub-par however.

Of course.  But don't blame the OSS community for that, blame the
vendors.  It wouldn't be too much trouble for printer vendors to add
them IMHO.

But that problem goes away if you just buy a native Postscript
printer, or an add-on ROM to one.  

> It is important to note that the print filters are a completely
> seperate package than the spooling software.  HP has made available
> "native" support for it's deskjet line that people have created
> RPMS that drop into RH7.1,  the RPMs from HP only do 6.2 and 7.0.

I haven't checked them out.  I need to for my HP DeskJet 870Cse.  My
IBM Network Printer 17 has a $89 Postscript upgrade and Lexmark
Optra E310 does it natively.

> GIMP print's ghostscript is also better than RH's.

Agreed.

-- TheBS

-- 
Bryan "TheBS" Smith    mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org    chat:thebs413
Engineer   AbsoluteValue Systems, Inc.  http://www.linux-wlan.org
President    SmithConcepts, Inc.     http://www.SmithConcepts.com