[CentOS] College student printer for CentOS 5.4 x86_64?

[MHR]

On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 4:48 AM, Phil Savoie <psavoie1783 at rogers.com> wrote:
> David McGuffey wrote:
>>
>> What would the community recommend? His needs are simple...mostly B&W
>> papers.  On rare occasions he needs to print a paper with color
>> photos/graphs embedded. Not looking to spend a lot, just enough to
>> satisfy the requirement.
>>
>
> Hi Dave,
>
> I have 2 lasers one BW and the other colour.  The BW printer is a
> Brother 5250DN  (N for network) and a samsung CLP-310 also network
> capable.  The samsung comes with linux drivers on a CD.  Both are ery
> affordable and work well with linux.
>

I use a Brother HL2140 - it runs between $40 and $120, depending on
where you get it, and the toner cartridges are around $35 or less
each.  It works just fine with CentOS (I'd bet any Brother printer
does) under CUPS, but you might have to do a little google searching
to find the right driver.  It's a USB-only printer, which has its
advantages and disadvantages.

Caveat: the toner cartridge is only good for about 3000 copies, and
it's kind of small, unlike a lot of others.  However, the whole
printer is simplicity itself, the toner and drum cartridges are
trivial to replace, and it has a per-sheet feeder for special paper
needs.

I strongly recommend doing a lot of searching for each purchase of
toner and drum cartridges because they vary widely in price, though
not a whole lot in quality, and they are constantly changing (applies
to all printer supplies).

I used to have a Minolta laser printer that was a fair bit more
expensive on the toner and drums, but they also lasted a lot longer
(6000 sheets per toner, 20,000+ per drum).  One day, I couldn't get it
to stop printing gray all over every page, so I found the Brother.

I would avoid Samsung printers (now) because most of the people I've
heard from about them indicate that the inexpensive ones are
inexpensive for a reason (i.e., cheap crap), unlike Brother.  Any HP
would be fine - they have great Linux support.  I would also avoid
Canon (inkjets) like the plague - the color is great, but they break
down frequently, if you can find a Linux driver for them.  My wife has
a Canon on her Windows PC, and it is the fifth or sixth of a series of
"free" printers we got over a period of a few years, all due to
warranty replacements (the others all failed), plus their newer
printers have custom ink cartridges that are expensive and getting
smaller.  Don't know about Canon lasers, although Canon has been
extremely Linux-unfriendly with their printers (love their cameras).

I would also avoid anything by Lexmark - I've never had any good
results with them, and I've never heard of any, either.  Don't even
know if you can use them with Linux....

I'd stick with Brother or HP.

Okay, that's a lot, probably too much.

Good luck!

mhr