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printer consumer report (and ISP consumer report - thanks)
Hi,
Another request for a consumer report (feel free to flame if this is
somehow off-topic - I'll shut up).
In case you don't know, Office Depot and Bezek Ben-Leumi offer
printers at what seem to be great prices. "Great prices" takes into
account the $60+VAT you would pay Bezek BL for a year of internet
access that you won't use (if you use it, so much the better). So this
caused me to think about buying a printer.
I have never owned or configured a printer, so I'd like some tips
before I plunge in and buy one. I think that the models on the
promotion offer include Canon BJC-6100, Epson 660 Color, HP DeskJet
815, possibly others. None of the above is specifically mentioned in
the Hardware Compatibility HOWTO. Searching the net for the exact
model names together with Linux was not fruitful, either. I did try.
The admins who cursed each and every printer in existence more than
once! Which will give me the least headache and good performance at
the same time?
I expect that my printing needs will be mostly ascii and postscript
printing (e.g. latex->dvips, or pdf2ps, or a2ps), or Alt-P in
Netscape. In the latter case, if there is a (not necessarily nude)
photo in the web page, it would be nice to be able to print it,
too. Plots produced by ACE/gr, gnuplot, other graph packages are also
important, but I think those are just postscript or encapsulated
postscript. Maybe I'll find the time to sit down and make my computer
accept faxes, which I'll want to print, but that will boil down to
postscript anyway, I guess. I do not expect to print a lot daily, but
there will be pretty long documents here and there.
I understand that some printers (HP? others?) don't speak postscript
directly, and magicfilter/ghostscript tinkering is required to make
them work. How big a hassle is it? Enough of a hassle that HP should
be dropped in favor of a competitor? IIRC, the color HP printer we
have at the office gave Geoff (comments?) quite a bit of trouble. Will
any of the mentioned printers work reliably out of the box?
Reliability and maintenance: Do the beasts break down often? How long
do the toner cartridges last? How costly the supplies (ink, paper)
are?
Can anyone compare the models? Epson 660 is particularly cheap: NIS
115 + the Bezek BL "tax". Any reason why it is a few hundred shekels
cheaper than, say, Canon?
Thanks in advance,
--
Oleg Goldshmidt | BLOOMBERG L.P. (BFM) | oleg@NOSPAM.bfr.co.il
"... We work by wit, and not by witchcraft;
And wit depends on dilatory time." - W. Shakespeare.
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