[GTALUG] surprisingly okay laser printer on special at Canada Computers: Brother DCP-L2550DW

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

TL;DR: lots of minutiae about buying and using Brother printers.

| From: Stewart C. Russell via talk <talk at gtalug.org>

I agree that Brother laser printers seem to work pretty well.  Almost
all the laser printers I've bought have been brothers.

It's hard to tease out information that matters to linux users.

Here's what I think that I know.  Do check before making a purchase.

- Brother does provide linux drivers, but they are binary.  They've
  worked for me for many years, but I don't like binary drivers.  For
  one thing, they only work on x86 and x86-64.

- Some printers have BrotherScript (PostScript emulation) and PCL
  (HP's language).  Some only support PCL.  Both languages are well
  supported by open source drivers.  It might be possible that PPD
  tweaks would be a good idea -- I don't know.

- a few printers (and I don't know how to tell which) require
  proprietary drivers.

- in the all-in-one devices, MFC- models seem to use BrotherScript and
  the DCP ones only support PCL.

- the scanners have no open-source drivers.  The closed-source
  driver that I use seems to work well.  I have made bug reports
  (years ago).  The response wasn't clear.

- the device model name's suffix letters are useful clues:
  D: Duplex printing (i.e. will print double-sided)
  N: ethernet (as well as USB)
  W: WiFi (and often ethernet) (as well as USB)

- the last two digits seem to increase as features (and price)
  increase.

- it's often hard to figure out if the scanner's ADF supports
  double-sided scanning.  My MFC-L2720DW does not.  The marketing
  material rarely mentions this.  I've sometimes seen "yes" in specs
  but rarely seen "no".

- I think that some models have "chipped" toner cartridges, forcing
  you to buy expensive Brother replacements.  Know that before you buy
  the printer.

- multifunction devices tend to have lower capacity toners and thus
  cost more per page.

- over a longer term, you need to replace the "drum" too.  I've never
  been able to reliably distinguish out-of-toner behaviour from
  worn-out drum behaviour.  Don't believe the warning lights -- they
  go off prematurely.

- I tend to buy "refurbished" printers from Brother itself.  The one's
  I've gotten don't seem used at all.  Perhaps they were store returns
  or obsolete models.  When you sign up to the mailing list, you
  probably get a coupon to spend at the site:

	<https://www.brother.ca/en/good-as-new-bmg/c/refurbs-bmg?facetValueFilter=tenant~ProductStatus:active,tenant~ProductStatus:transition>

  (That's an odd URL.)

- I don't know how to tweak a printer descriptor file (PPD) for the
  Brother printers, but it should be possible.  I'm not sure if it
  matters.

|  A little digging turned up this:
| 
| https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=34_1170_454&item_id=119555
| 
| for $140. It's not marked as a special, but other vendors sell it for
| around $240.

Brother currently sells the refurb for $109.99, minus any coupon you
might get for signing up to the mailing list.

<https://www.brother.ca/en/p/RDCPL2550DW>

| It's a full PCL/PostScript (well, BR-Script) network printer with a
| simple ADF scanner on top.

The "Product Overview" says:

	50-sheet capacity duplex automatic document feeder

but the specifications say:

	Duplex Scanning:	No

Stewart: which is correct?

On my MFC, the ADF is on a hinge, and a flatbed scanner lives
underneath it.  Is that true of the DCP-L2550DW?  The specs don't say.

| 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.

I only use the scanner from one computer, by ethernet, with fixed IP
addresses.  I have few troubles with any scanning software, using the
proprietary SANE driver.  There are a few different proprietary
drives, based on the printer model (so my printer's driver might
differ from Stewart's).

I mostly use SimpleScan because it's simple.  There is a (mildly
awkward) choice of using ADF or the flatbed.  The few ways I use it
work fine.  It even has a procedure that makes up for non-duplex ADF:

- scan all front pages from ADF

- scan all back pages from ADF

- press Reorder Pages: Combine sides (Reverse)