[TriLUG] Good budget priced inkjet for Linux?

[Chris Hedemark]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


On Monday, April 14, 2003, at 09:12 AM, Michael Thompson wrote:

> +1 on choosing Epson or HP.  Epson has higher print quality (if
> supported in the driver) than the HP inkjets, probably something to do
> with why the print head is permanent, but HP allows you to replace your
> print head with each ink refill...

I've had a bunch of Epsons over the years.  The first was an FX-80, 
which still works by the way after about 20 years.  Eventually I broke 
down and got the original Epson Stylus Color and when that broke I got 
an Epson Stylus Color 777.  The 777 still works if I use USB but the 
parallel port on it was busted after 6 months.  The last two Epson 
printers I got were crap.  I was willing to write one off as a bad 
experience but two in a row is a big red flag to me that Epson ain't 
the quality manufacturer that it used to be.

Also important is that Epson printers don't do Postscript, so you never 
quite get the full quality or functionality out of them that you'd get 
from a Postscript printer with a proper PPD file running under CUPS.

The PCL-only variants of the HP line are also a problem for Linux 
users.  Yes, there are some klugey ways to get them working and they 
will print but you have to do strange things like pipe the job through 
ghostscript or something first to get from Postscript to the printer's 
native tongue.  It's best if you can just print directly from 
application to printer without translating in between.  So where 
possible, narrow your selection down to Postscript printers.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (Darwin)

iEYEARECAAYFAj6bD14ACgkQYPuF4Zq9lvaRrwCgp9TL5XuAzDeCFz4gzCl80QWm
9woAoO61HWHt89h1Q6oEHv10fPa3qMfF
=r0K/
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----