A Plea For Help (Mac related, but PC relevant)

[RyanL]

I got my first Mac about a month ago. I don't have a printer that's supported on the Mac. We've been getting along by transferring our documents to our old PC and printing them from there. The printer has run out of ink. I could buy an ink cartiridge, but I don't want to. This printer was an el-cheapo model when I bought it 5 years ago, and it hasn't improved with age.

I'm going to buy a new printer that is Mac-compatible. Tonight. I'll hit the review sites and try to make sense of things, but I would greatly appreciate it if someone could give me a personal recommendation. I don't have a set price limit, but I'm obviously looking for something consumer-level, not professional. The ability to print in color is not terribly important to me, as I'll be printing mostly documents. I'm considering going laser, since the ink cartidge business strikes me as a ridiculous racket.

Thanks!
Ryan

 

[Femerus the Gnecro]

Assuming that you're running OS X, virtually any USB printer you find will be Mac compatible right out of the box. OS X has a ridiculous amount of printer drivers built in that allow it to automatically identify specific printers and configure the system to use them without much work on your part.

I suggest getting a nice Epson if you're going inkjet... get a nice USB printer with color (it's cheap, and you *will* love it) and you can use it for your Mac *and* your PC.

If you go Laser, I'd suggest getting a nice semi-professional Hewlett Packard. They make some lovely small-office type laser printers that do fantastic work, and last forever. They are MUCH more expensive, however.

My 2c,

Femerus

 

[Dimwhit]

Assuming that you're running OS X, virtually any USB printer you find will be Mac compatible right out of the box. OS X has a ridiculous amount of printer drivers built in that allow it to automatically identify specific printers and configure the system to use them without much work on your part.

I suggest getting a nice Epson if you're going inkjet... get a nice USB printer with color (it's cheap, and you *will* love it) and you can use it for your Mac *and* your PC.

If you go Laser, I'd suggest getting a nice semi-professional Hewlett Packard. They make some lovely small-office type laser printers that do fantastic work, and last forever. They are MUCH more expensive, however.

My 2c,

Femerus

If you don't need color, I strongly recommend a laser printer. They're more expensive, but the cartridge will last forever and text is much sharper than it is with injet.

If you want to be able to print color, including photos, I use a nice HP at work. Prints great pictures. But the cartidges are very expensive. But Epson is also a good injet.

 

[Mirth]

I currently use a Canon S330 that I bought for $50 and came with color & black ink cartridges. Essentially, the printer came free with the ink. I had an Epson for years with my old Beige G3/266 desktop, but it was SCSI and now my mom has it and my beige g3. I made the mistake of buying a Lexmark first and it crapped out within a week. So stay away from Lexmark, but Epson and Canon are great.

Jay

 

[MarauderX]

I currently use a Canon S330 that I bought for $50 and came with color & black ink cartridges. Essentially, the printer came free with the ink. I had an Epson for years with my old Beige G3/266 desktop, but it was SCSI and now my mom has it and my beige g3. I made the mistake of buying a Lexmark first and it crapped out within a week. So stay away from Lexmark, but Epson and Canon are great.

Jay

Too bad on the Lexmark, mine has lasted about 4 years now with no problems, and the thing cost me $30 then. Cartridges are about the same price as it is, to which I would give the advice of getting a laser printer. I steer clear of HP products as a rule as my last office had no less than 3 separate pieces of their hardware crap out and HP refused to follow up and/or fix any of them.

 

[RC Hagy]

We have an HP LaserJet 1200 (ethernet). The Wife says it was close to $300.

Works real nice, peppy and prints clear. HP is pretty good with drivers and
what not on the Mac side of things. It is our second HP because the first was
great.

I am in no way affiliated with HP... unless it gets us a third one at a discount.




Hagy
Vermont


Oh, the 1200 series is USB also... I believe.

 

[Dimwhit]

We have an HP LaserJet 1200 (ethernet). The Wife says it was close to $300.

Works real nice, peppy and prints clear. HP is pretty good with drivers and
what not on the Mac side of things. It is our second HP because the first was
great.

I am in no way affiliated with HP... unless it gets us a third one at a discount.




Hagy
Vermont


Oh, the 1200 series is USB also... I believe.

I am in every way affiliated with HP. If you're looking for a company with great customer service, don't go with them. Though from what I understand, that is severly lacking all over.

I know there are great photo printers, but the HP I use is really good.

I have a Brother laser printer at home. It's a nice little printer. The HPs are also good.

I may bash HP, but their strong point has always been the printers. Wouldn't buy an HP computer to save my life, but that's another story...

 

[RC Hagy]

I am in every way affiliated with HP. If you're looking for a company with great customer service, don't go with them. Though from what I understand, that is severly lacking all over.

Show me any company with good customer service and I will show you a
company which could rule the world... and have people almost happy
about it.





Hagy

 

[Aeolius]

If you don't need color, I strongly recommend a laser printer.

Even if you do need color, the HP Laserjet 1500L is $749. Mine performs like a champ, even with it being used as a shared printer for all the Macs on my wireless network.

 

[RyanL]

Thanks for the replies.

After discussing the situation with my fiancee, she decided that support for color printing would be useful to her. Since color lasers are a bit pricey, we decided to go with an inexpensive inkjet. It wasn't the solution I had hoped for, but it wasn't a major investment either, so...

We went with the Epson Stylus C84. It speedy, and the quality looks fine. My only complaint so far is that the drivers provided by Epson for MacOS X appear to only support a direct connection to the printer via USB. That's not what I want, since I have a laptop and will ultimately be going wireless. Luckily, the CUPS driver for the C82 model appears to work just fine with the C84, and I'm succesfully printing over the network with the printer connected to a print server. If there's something I'm doing wrong with the printer setup, please feel free to educate me.

Thanks Again,
Ryan