[CentOS] Need tip on an inexpensive printer for college student using CentOS 5.5

[ken]

On 08/17/2010 12:51 AM cornel panceac wrote:
> 
>     I heard somewhare that *all* Lexmark printers are well supported
>     under linux
> 
>     Regards,
> 
>     Rajagopal
> 
> 
> i've only seen one (big laserjet color , c760 probably, postscript) 
> lexmark printer working in linux.
> 
> otoh, if a printer works in fedora does not meen it will work in centos.
> actually, at one point in time, after replacing fedora core 6 with
> centos 5, i've found out the lowend hp inkjet printer no longer works,
> so i had to replace it with fedora 9 (since it was faster than messing
> with hp* rpms that had yet to be build at that time.)

For about five years now I've been using an Epson Stylus Photo 820.  It
cost me $75 new back then and it's worked with CUPS from Day #1.  And
the "Photo" part of the name isn't BS.  I've printed numerous 8x10"
(bzw. 20.3x25.4 cm) photos and won photo contests with them, so there's
no moaning over the quality of the print-outs.  CUPS allows me to print
in a variety of modes all the way down to a barely legible draft.  It
connects via USB, so when I wanted to print, I'd just turn it on and
plug it into the laptop... then unplug it when I was done.  It isn't a
network printer, but just a few months ago I reconfigured it so that
it's connected with a standard (pretty much legacy now) printer cable to
an old dedicated print server I had laying around since the '90s (a
little Lantronix EPS-2 100) and now it's on the network...  so I don't
have to plug in the USB anymore... if I'm on the network, it's already
connected.  (Yayah!)  This printer's main downer is the cost of the
cartridges: there's two, a black and a three-color, and they cost about
35US each.  They don't last that long either.  But for someone like me,
who doesn't do paper much, that's okay.

To find out if a printer works on Linux, see
<http://linuxmanagers.blogspot.com/>.

hth.