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SecretSquirrel
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New printer...

Fri Feb 02, 2018 8:38 am

I finally had to retire my work horse HP LaserJet 2100M. It hit the point where it was jamming just about every other print job. Oh yeah, my wife is a school teacher. We print a fair amount. This printer was from a time when HP still made printers that were high quality tanks. It was 17 1/2 years old and I could probably have done an overhaul on it, and still might, but it did tend to show it's age from time to time -- mainly when printing anything with graphics.

So why am I posting this in the Linux forum? I don't have a Windows system in the house. My home workstation is Linux and my and my wife's laptops are MacBooks. So, a printer that works reasonably well in Linux was important. As was network connectivity, since we have two desktops and three laptops in the house at any given point. I also wanted some thing that would last, though I don't expect to get another 17 years. The final criteria was that toner cartridges not cost as much as the printer.

I ended up going with a Brother MFCL5700DW -- black and white, multifunction. I also looked at the HP LaserJet Pro M402dn and HP LaserJet Pro 426fdn multifunction. The brother won out on toner cost and the fact that it has a true 1200x1200dpi print resolution. Brother specifically lists Linux in the drivers section on the info page for this printer on their website. To be fair, the two HP printers are both supported in Linux via HPLIP which is actually open source. The Brother drivers we easy enough to install and everything seems to work, even network scanning via SANE.

All in all, I'm happy with the printer. It's not small, and it's not quiet, but it works well and is fast, and importantly, my wife smiled the first time she printed and didn't have to dig jammed paper out of the printer.

--SS
 
Chuckaluphagus
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Re: New printer...

Fri Feb 02, 2018 10:28 am

I also was looking for a new printer recently, to replace an old Dell that had been getting increasingly wonkier. We don't have the printing needs that you do, so I got something lower end, a Brother HL-L2340DW. The drivers from Brother worked without any trouble, and it's doing well as a network printer in the corner of the office. Also, replacement toner cartridges will be far cheaper than the ones for the old Dell.

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