Linux Printing: Still Awful After All These Years

[phiscock-g851W1bGYuGnS0EtXVNi6w at public.gmane.org]

> On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 06:04:29PM -0400, John Myshrall wrote:
>> I personally like the Samsung units. I took a ML2010 and a Netgear PS
>> 121 printserver and made a networked printer. total cost $ 120.00 but
>> that was 2 years ago. It is only for home office use and well kids home
>> work though.
>>
>> Len I'm curious about what your take is on them.
>
> They appear like junk to me.  <snip>

My experience with Samsung printers has been quite positive. I have a
ML-2250 monochrome laser printer and a friend has a similar colour
version. The print quality is fine and the cartridge that came with the
thing lasted what seemed to be *for ever*, something like 2 years under
light use. I just replaced the toner cartridge for about $120. Paper
feeding is reliable, it almost never jams. The colour quality is fine for
our purpose, which is commercial brochures.

Just after I bought this one it quit and Samsung replaced it immediately
and without fuss. So there is support in Toronto.

As Lennart says, the Linux drivers are hopeless but it works fine when
spoofed as a laserjet.

I can see that there is some attraction in having postscript built in, but
for this printer it's an expensive option. Having the postscript driver in
software does allow updates. And at the speed of modern PCs there's not
much incentive to offload the processing.

So there are pros and cons to these printers, but I wouldn't call them junk.
The vertically feeding HP laser that I had before this, that was the
subject of a class-action suit because its paper handling was so terrible,
now *that* was junk. I keep seeing them in the trash on garbage day.

Peter

-- 
Peter Hiscocks
Syscomp Electronic Design Limited, Toronto
http://www.syscompdesign.com
USB Oscilloscope and Waveform Generator
647-839-0325

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