4 ms·

Now, if it didn't suck so bad with usb printers, it would be amazing.

by qalmakka 9y ago

Aaargh20318 9y ago
USB printers are still a thing ? Even the €79 color laser printer I got the other day has ethernet.
- rwmj 9y ago
  Even better, the £99 printer I got had wifi. So near and yet so far because it required an Android app to configure the wifi password, despite the printer having a 2.5" display and a simple keyboard. But apart from the Android app the printer just worked out of the box with CUPS and SANE.
  - mathw 9y ago
    What! That's utterly bizarre. How did anybody ever think that might be a good idea? Actually the whole of printing is still a pain, my printer (on wifi, because it has wifi but no ethernet despite being plenty big enough for an ethernet port and thus having no reasonable excuse not to have one) randomly decides not to exist, or Windows decides it's perpetually stuck, or that a job has not finished, or the Linux box stops being able to get any kind of coherent reply from it, or my Android phone starts printing everything all fuzzy. The latter might be the phone's fault, I haven't quite figured that one out yet. I daren't get another one because I can't trust that any other printer will behave, but this is a Hewlett-Packard. You would think HP would have figured out how to make a printer that actually WORKS by now. They were a lot easier when they just plugged into the parallel port. Okay so you spent a couple of hours trying to get the right drivers in place, but once you did it generally just worked and kept on working. The latter seems to be something they're incapable of delivering these days.
    - kpil 9y ago
      I blamed Google cloud print for a while, but the printer's own Android driver also prints in 50 dpi or something, so it might be Android's fault. Or possibly the PDF tool. I can't see why someone thinks it's a good idea to drop the resolution when printing from a phone, but maybe it's because phones running Android 2.2 might run out of memory.
    - slavik81 9y ago
      I have a Brother WiFi laser printer and I love it. Sure, the first time I set it up, I needed to enter the WiFi password using arrow keys to select each letter, but it took a few minutes once and then it was done forever. The printer just works with every computer on the network (including phones), and I can stick it in a corner out of the way because the only thing it needs is power.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    > the £99 printer I got had wifi And now that KRACK is here, you can only wonder who gets a carbon copy.
- nothrabannosir 9y ago
  I’ve seen many cases first hand where a non technical user was able to buy a new printer, plug it into usb, wait 10 seconds and literally print their document without any further setup. Don’t believe I can say the same for Ethernet. Let alone WiFi, God help us.
  - Aaargh20318 9y ago
    If you can plug in an Ethernet cable, that's all that's needed. It automatically appears in your print dialog (at least on OS X). For wifi all you need is to enter the wifi password.
  - krylon 9y ago
    I do not print stuff very often, but in my experience CUPS has been way easier to get along with than Windows' printing subsystem. Not to speak of LPR (which does have the advantage of not having to set up anything printer-specific on the client, but it is a pain to set up on the server).
  - emidln 9y ago
    The last two printers I bought (sub $100 each) had WiFi and just required being unpackaged and plugged in before Linux found and used them over the network. This was probably via CUPS, but as a user I clicked on something like "Print" -> "Add a Printer" -> "Network" -> "Scan" and then hit "Next" a couple times. I use gnome3 and either Fedora or Ubuntu. Basic printing without driver preinstall has been solved for a decade at least.
- mijoharas 9y ago
  The £25 one I got the other year didn't...

Now, if it didn't suck so bad with usb printers, it would be amazing.

Aaargh20318 9y ago

USB printers are still a thing ? Even the €79 color laser printer I got the other day has ethernet.

rwmj 9y ago
Even better, the £99 printer I got had wifi. So near and yet so far because it required an Android app to configure the wifi password, despite the printer having a 2.5" display and a simple keyboard. But apart from the Android app the printer just worked out of the box with CUPS and SANE.
- mathw 9y ago
  What! That's utterly bizarre. How did anybody ever think that might be a good idea? Actually the whole of printing is still a pain, my printer (on wifi, because it has wifi but no ethernet despite being plenty big enough for an ethernet port and thus having no reasonable excuse not to have one) randomly decides not to exist, or Windows decides it's perpetually stuck, or that a job has not finished, or the Linux box stops being able to get any kind of coherent reply from it, or my Android phone starts printing everything all fuzzy. The latter might be the phone's fault, I haven't quite figured that one out yet. I daren't get another one because I can't trust that any other printer will behave, but this is a Hewlett-Packard. You would think HP would have figured out how to make a printer that actually WORKS by now. They were a lot easier when they just plugged into the parallel port. Okay so you spent a couple of hours trying to get the right drivers in place, but once you did it generally just worked and kept on working. The latter seems to be something they're incapable of delivering these days.
  - kpil 9y ago
    I blamed Google cloud print for a while, but the printer's own Android driver also prints in 50 dpi or something, so it might be Android's fault. Or possibly the PDF tool. I can't see why someone thinks it's a good idea to drop the resolution when printing from a phone, but maybe it's because phones running Android 2.2 might run out of memory.
  - slavik81 9y ago
    I have a Brother WiFi laser printer and I love it. Sure, the first time I set it up, I needed to enter the WiFi password using arrow keys to select each letter, but it took a few minutes once and then it was done forever. The printer just works with every computer on the network (including phones), and I can stick it in a corner out of the way because the only thing it needs is power.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  > the £99 printer I got had wifi And now that KRACK is here, you can only wonder who gets a carbon copy.
nothrabannosir 9y ago
I’ve seen many cases first hand where a non technical user was able to buy a new printer, plug it into usb, wait 10 seconds and literally print their document without any further setup. Don’t believe I can say the same for Ethernet. Let alone WiFi, God help us.
- Aaargh20318 9y ago
  If you can plug in an Ethernet cable, that's all that's needed. It automatically appears in your print dialog (at least on OS X). For wifi all you need is to enter the wifi password.
- krylon 9y ago
  I do not print stuff very often, but in my experience CUPS has been way easier to get along with than Windows' printing subsystem. Not to speak of LPR (which does have the advantage of not having to set up anything printer-specific on the client, but it is a pain to set up on the server).
- emidln 9y ago
  The last two printers I bought (sub $100 each) had WiFi and just required being unpackaged and plugged in before Linux found and used them over the network. This was probably via CUPS, but as a user I clicked on something like "Print" -> "Add a Printer" -> "Network" -> "Scan" and then hit "Next" a couple times. I use gnome3 and either Fedora or Ubuntu. Basic printing without driver preinstall has been solved for a decade at least.
mijoharas 9y ago
The £25 one I got the other year didn't...