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For a home printer I love my Konica Minolta MC1600W. Cost <$150 on Amazon, "ink" lasts forever, and replacement toner kit is cheaper than many Inkjet replacemen

by ssmoot 12y ago

For a home printer I love my Konica Minolta MC1600W. Cost <$150 on Amazon, "ink" lasts forever, and replacement toner kit is cheaper than many Inkjet replacements. Plus it's quick, and produces great everything. Probably wouldn't satisfy a professional photographer, but for me it's a lot better than any Inkjet I've ever owned. Especially since it's used so infrequently. With Inkjets the print-heads would frequently go bad between usages. That could easily push my "few pages to print every few months" use-case into dollar-per-page territory. The only downside is it doesn't have air-print, never will, KM has discontinued it, and at some point in the future I won't be able to buy replacement toner cartridges. But I'm OK with that since it's already lasted longer and saved me more money than any previous printer I've owned. If I did have to replace it, I'd definitely get another Color Laser. The Brother HL3170CDW comes in at $100 more, you can get all four colors in high-yield replacement cartridges for about $100, and it includes AirPrint.

fibonachos 12y ago
My understanding is that AirPrint is basically a linux CUPS server. A quick Google search turned up several write-ups on using a Raspberry Pi to add wireless & AirPrint capabilities to older printers. I know there are also some retail routers & print servers that do the same since I was researching this for my parents about a year ago, but they were on the expensive side.
- wiredfool 12y ago
  Yep, I've got a cups server on my linux box to support the laptops in the house, and the ipad recognized it just fine. Nice bit of accidental compatibility there.
  - rcarmo 12y ago
    It's not that accidental. CUPS is developed by Apple.
- ssmoot 12y ago
  If I could buy something pre-packaged for $50 I might do it. Being able to roll the printer stand into a corner and leave it there would be nice. Right now I use a $10 app that'll emulate AirPrint on the Mac. Seems to work fine, but I'm tethered to the attached Mac then.

by ssmoot 12y ago

fibonachos 12y ago

My understanding is that AirPrint is basically a linux CUPS server. A quick Google search turned up several write-ups on using a Raspberry Pi to add wireless & AirPrint capabilities to older printers. I know there are also some retail routers & print servers that do the same since I was researching this for my parents about a year ago, but they were on the expensive side.

wiredfool 12y ago
Yep, I've got a cups server on my linux box to support the laptops in the house, and the ipad recognized it just fine. Nice bit of accidental compatibility there.
- rcarmo 12y ago
  It's not that accidental. CUPS is developed by Apple.
ssmoot 12y ago
If I could buy something pre-packaged for $50 I might do it. Being able to roll the printer stand into a corner and leave it there would be nice. Right now I use a $10 app that'll emulate AirPrint on the Mac. Seems to work fine, but I'm tethered to the attached Mac then.