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<p><font size="+1">It's rather sad that Linux users are back to
scratching around to find compatible printers. For a few years,
almost everything just worked. Now we're deeply into the
Gillette model of sales: make money on consumables, but sell the
main hardware cheap. It's not helped that the Apple-owned CUPS
printing system — though completely open — is absurdly complex
and makes diagnosing print problems very hard.<br>
</font></p>
<p><font size="+1">Our old Brother network laser printer having
become mysteriously slow (first page times in the 10s of
minutes) and producing horrible output, it was time for a new
one. A little digging turned up this:</font></p>
<p><font size="+1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=34_1170_454&item_id=119555">https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=34_1170_454&item_id=119555</a></font></p>
<p><font size="+1">for $140. It's not marked as a special, but other
vendors sell it for around $240.</font></p>
<p><font size="+1">It's a full PCL/PostScript (well, BR-Script)
network printer with a simple ADF scanner on top. Since it's an
IPP printer, it can usually be auto-discovered on the network.
With the right generic driver (cups-ipp-utils on Debian) it'll
print properly on any architecture of Linux: my Raspberry Pis
are perfectly happy with it. It's IPv6 aware too, if that
matters to you.<br>
</font></p>
<p><font size="+1">The product page gives you access to "full
featured" Linux drivers, including one for the scanner:</font></p>
<p><font size="+1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://support.brother.com/g/b/producttop.aspx?c=ca&lang=en&prod=dcpl2550dw_us">https://support.brother.com/g/b/producttop.aspx?c=ca&lang=en&prod=dcpl2550dw_us</a></font></p>
<p><font size="+1">Unfortunately, these drivers are x86 only (and
one's not even x86_64).</font></p>
<p><font size="+1">The scanner driver is *utterly* dismal. While I
was quite pleased it could scan directly (via a brscan system
service) over wireless to my computer, all it could do is dump
the first page as a very low resolution Legal-sized B&W scan
to a PNM file in ~/brscan. Worse still, the file and folder were
owned by root. Everything but the first page in the ADF is
ignored (but ejected from the ADF, dammit). Thankfully, the
processes are managed through shell scripts stored in /opt.
These scripts are appalling badly written. There's a script for
each of the scanner's Scan to Image/Document/Email/OCR
functions, but most of them don't work as shipped. The OCR one
has a whole section of might-have-worked-once code commented out
and doesn't seem to generate any output at all.</font></p>
<p><font size="+1">Despite their flimsy feel, Brother printers are
fairly robust. Nait Singh* warns that some of the newer
(cheaper) Brother printers use different control engines even in
the same printer model, and that very new Brother printers have
'chipped' printer cartridges that need a little work to
circumvent. Nait's been refurbishing, refilling and selling
printers for years and is quite careful to suggest the lowest
TCO printer to buyers. He still recommends Brother laser
printers over anything else. HP he describes as dead to him:
their support, quality and compatibility has plummeted.</font></p>
<p><font size="+1">Yes, this printer gets a "surprisingly okay"
rating from me, as printers these days mostly seem to have
difficulty doing what they should.</font></p>
<p><font size="+1">cheers,</font></p>
<p><font size="+1"> Stewart</font></p>
<p><font size="+1">*: Nait owns Cartridge Ink Plus at Kennedy &
Progress (</font><font size="+1">1-7 Progress Ave, Scarborough,
ON, M1P 5A3 — <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.cartridgeinkplus.com">https://www.cartridgeinkplus.com</a>). The store might
appear a little eccentric, but Nait just wants you to have a
reliable printer at a good price. He didn't seem remotely
bothered that I'd buy a printer for less from Canada Computers
rather than spend more at his place.</font></p>
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