Where's everyone gone? It's been very quiet here for the past few
days. Or has something gone wrong with my E-Mail (I'm seeing my own
messages though).
I'm still wondering about printers for our SoHo system, I'm not so
sure that the Brother all-in-one is the right way to go now. What we
have at present is:-
Old Brother thermal paper fax machine
HP840C inkjet
Epson 1650 photo scanner
HP1150 laser printer
I'd really like to take less space for all these facilities which was
why I was looking at the Brother, it would replace the fax machine and
the HP840C and give standalone copying as well.
To bring Linux into the equation whatever printer(s) I get have to
work for Linux as well as for Win2k. Currently the HP840C and 1150
are on a print server and there are reasonable Linux drivers for both
these printers.
It gets more complicated with newer printers though as many only have
USB and that means I'd probably have to have them connected to the
Linux box and make them available using Samba. Some printers have
built in networking (like the Brothers) and that adds a further
grey area in that I don't know if the networking they provide is
compatible with Linux.
One thing I'd really like is a duplex (i.e. double sided) printer
which would replace the HP1150 as the workhorse printer. Many of the
latest generation of colour lasers have reasonably cheap duplex
add-ons (or have it built in) so this could well be one way to go,
though it doesn't save any space. Again does anyone know if any of
the cheap colour laser printers work well with Linux? (e.g. Samsung
CLP500/CLP550, Epson C900, C1100, Minolta 2300).
--
Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk)
"Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."