[Resolved] Laser printer with friendliest Win / Linux drivers?

[frontier204]

Hi all,

Another for me - having to replace working hardware because the manufacturer decided to completely deprecate it... My Lexmark X9575 inkjet all-in-one is not supported on Windows 7 so my hack install crashes 100% of the time when printing and 50% of the time while scanning. Also it looks like the cartridges are becoming less available, as Costco stopped selling packs of it and reputable remanufactured cartridges are hard to find. I plan to replace the X9575 with a laser printer when it runs out of ink (which should be soon given how much I crank out for masters studies).

Can you recommend any brands or specific Laser printers I should look for that have GOOD Linux and Windows drivers, and equally as important, doesn't expect me to download >500MB of bloatware along with the driver? (**cough** HP)

My other requirements (aside from drivers) are listed below in order of importance:

• Budget: $300 before taxes
• Wired network capability
• Automatic Duplex Printing
• Size: less than 45cm wide (don't care of other dimensions)
• It can be monochrome - printing text and basic diagrams only
• It doesn't have to scan - I still have another competent scanner (with software that doesn't crash and delete all your previous scans) in the house
• Usage: 100 pages / month (so "personal" printers will work)

I'm open to other print technologies as I'm sitting at the upper end of inkjet and lower end of laser in volume of pages.

Thanks!

Aside:
To those telling me to get an e-book reader / tablet for the research papers, I know printing papers I'll read 2-5 times before discarding may sound wasteful, but I wonder how much waste I'll generate if I have to discard if I have to replace deprecated e-book readers each time a new format comes out? Then there's tablets which will probably go out of style even faster and cost more than a laser printer + paper + 1 toner refill...

[moocow]

A quick look at a HP 2025dn show plenty of download less than 20mb. I still don't trust anyone else but HP for laser printers and I see they have Linux, Win, and OSX drivers.

[lxmrk]

Hi,

Click on the link to download the current versions of lexmark x9575 driver.

Good Works.

[bonanza2000]

I have had good luck with HP B&W Laser printers and not such great luck with their inkjets. also have a color Laserjet and it is a pain in the butt. Can't recommend that one.

On the lasers, the HP 2035 would probably work for you if you can accept manual duplexing. Otherwise you have to go with 3015 for autoduplex and then your budget is blown.

I have a Brother Laser MFC-9700 which I like and has never given a bit of trouble but I don't have any other experience with Brother products other than that. That said, this brother printer HL-2270DW gives you what you want for $150 - duplexing and network

Brother International - Printers - HL-2270DW

[frontier204]

@lxmrk: Those drivers are just horrible on Windows 7, unless they got updated in the last month (which I highly doubt since the printer was EOL'd)

@bonanza2000

Thanks for the notes, although I already got an HP OfficeJet Pro 8500A, which is holding up so far. The Windows software package is almost to the point where I'd call them bloatware but they're a lot less intrusive than the HP / Lexmark of 3 years ago. So far it hasn't had any problems with my use at about 75 pages a month - including use of auto duplex more than half the time. I would say that if you want higher volume from it, down time between print jobs would surely be a killer to your productivity. However it's fine for my research of printing one paper out and reading it as the other ones are printing.
They must have over-manufactured that particular model because a different flavour of HP 8500 is on sale for "50% off" at any given time.

[pitz]

Practically anything that supports Postscript natively will work very well across the spectrum of Linux, MacOS, and MS-Windows (and even the tablet platforms that derive their printing code from Linux). As for network printing, you want to look for lpr capability, which is a fairly standard way for a printer to talk to a network.

Problems with printer drivers usually begin when there's a huge proprietary software stack (which is usually implemented in lieu of putting more RAM or a better CPU into the printer).

This might help you if you're looking at HP printers:

HP PostScript printer list - The FreeBSD Forums