office multi-function printer recommendations

[G Rundlett]

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 3:32 PM, Tom Buskey <tom at buskey.name> wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 2:45 PM, Benjamin Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 1:55 PM, Greg Rundlett (freephile)
>> <greg at freephile.com> wrote:
>> > I'm searching for a color printer/scanner/copier/fax ...
>>
>>  They all suck.
>>
>>
> They suck less if you have one OS to support (and it's not MacOSX or a Unix
> variant).
>
> I've had better luck with Adobe postscript printers.    Unix and Macintosh
> assume postscript and generic drivers work.  Anything else is iffy unless
> ghostscript does a good job converting.
>
> The Samsung color laser I have at home isn't postscript and has issues.
> Ghostscript does a better job on a Brother with brscript, a postscript
> clone.  I had an HP Laserjet 8100DN that claimed Adobe Postscript and failed
> to print PDFs.  HP actually shipped a clone in that model.
>
> I've had decent luck with Textronix Phasers in the past- and they're now
> Xerox.
>
> I print to a 5655 at work and it works well from Windows, Solaris, Linux as
> a postscript printer.
>
> At work we have some Xerox WorkCenter printers.  We have a VM running
> Windows as the print server for everything.  No direct printing.
>
> We have a higher end system (Firey?) that doesn't work for end users.  The
> print room doesn't like it either, but they can babysit it better.
>
> Scanning goes to a PDF on a file server and that works well.
>
> We don't use the FAX.
>
> Accounting?  If you're trying to do charge back, you'll probably spend more
> on that then you get back.
>
> If you're trying to charge students, they have more time & creativity then
> money and will be able to out think you :-)
>
> Have a print server do the accounting with all the printers on a private
> network that isn't accessable to users.  Then you don't care about the
> printer doing accounting.  Or even if it can.
>

I have to do this for multiple small offices, so the idea of a CUPS server
would be great if all the offices were tied into a private network.  That is
something I'm looking into creating with MPLS  I'd welcome
success/warnings/stories on that too.  http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/MPLS

Greg Rundlett


>
> It's hard to get a networked printer to deny connections:
>    cat file.ps | nc -v printer 9100
> goes around the print server to the jetdirect port for example.
>
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