[SLL] Color laser printer for Linux?

[Glenn Stone]

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 10:14:43AM -0800, John Locke wrote:
>Jay Scherrer wrote:
>>I have found that HP has been very friendly with Linux and CUPs 
>>drivers. I have successfully set up my HP - office jet pro L7650 Which 
>>handles: Fax, Two sided full color printing, Network, usb, Scanning, 
>>with scan to network  (Samba) or memory devices directly plugged in. 
>>Cost was less then $350 at Sam's Club. However this is not a laser but 
>>a ink jet model.
>HP makes an open source utility for managing their printers/scanners, so 
>I'd say it's a pretty safe bet. Install the hplip package from your 
>community repository of choice, and you'll get everything you need, 
>including a GUI for setting up and managing the device. The printer ends 
>up installed in CUPS, the scanner is visible in sane, everything just 
>works. On my Ubuntu desktop, I even get a little notification in my tray 
>when the ink gets low.

Poked around at OfficeBigBox day before yesterday, and then brought my
results home.  The upshot is that Dapper's rev of hplip is too old to drive
the current generation of HP printers; if I want one of these little hotshots
I'm going to have to upgrade.  Other than that, I can get a pretty
fully-featured all-in-one inkjet (HP OJ 5610) for $109.  Inks are $20 for
black hi-cap and $18 for color (which doesn't cover nearly as many pages).  

I looked at Epson, which openprinting.org says has better printer drivers,
but the all-in-ones they had were separate flatbed scanners rather than
having an ADF.... phooey.  

Brother has a pair of little monochrome laser printers (HL-2040 and
HL-2070N) in the same price range; they seem to need a little hackery to
work right but otherwise once set up should do fine, and even the "N" (for
network) model is under $100.  OTOH, buy two toners for this little guy and
you've bought the printer again.... and you don't get any of the other fun
features, like scanning or faxing.  

So I suppose my next step is going to be either to switcheroo my hard drives
again and drop Gutsy over that old copy of Sarge I had laying around
(because no way am I going to step-by-step claw my way up through Edgy and
Fiesty just to get to Gutsy when Hardy is just around the corner)... or be
patient and wait for Hardy in two months (which I doubt).  

-- Glenn