Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2010 20:20:04 +1000 From: Da Rock <freebsd-questions@herveybayaustralia.com.au> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: printer recommendations? Message-ID: <4CFB6754.8030704@herveybayaustralia.com.au> In-Reply-To: <20101204172534.1258.qmail@joyce.lan> References: <20101204172534.1258.qmail@joyce.lan>
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On 12/05/10 03:25, John Levine wrote: >>> My printer is a sturdy old Lexmark Optra T610. CUPS has a driver, >>> which does duplex, N-up, and so forth. Each toner cartridge is good >>> for over 10K pages, so I buy one about every two years, and I can >>> usually find one for $100, making the per page cost very low. >>> > >> Lexmarks are very badly designed (but very slowly getting better >> ergonomically), expensive to run, and crap themselves with generic >> toner. ... >> > So, just to be clear, you're telling me that I am imagining the fact > that my printer has worked reliably for ten years? > > You got galactically lucky. > I can believe that Lexmark has made bad printers, but if you can > still find an Optra T, they're great. > Having recently spent some time in a place where I fixed Lexmarks on a regular basis I'd find that very had to believe. I'd steer clear of any Lexmark printer, but the T's were the biggest white elephant I've ever come across- and I have worked on just about every make known. I'd repair around 100 a week, and many I'd seen the previous week with a different error. The error codes are enigmatic, and the repair procedures (by Lexmark themselves) have no clue as to what is really happening. You just get used to whats what and fix it. And that was just recent experience. My longer term experience shows me that this is not an age related problem but an inherent lack of experience in building printers. IBM make computers- they make very shit printers, but they were tired of losing to the competition who were good at making printers, so they decided to throw their hat in the ring as well. Quality wise they don't even rate either. I'd say Xerox, HP, Canon are competitive- at the higher end are good photo laser. Kyocera, HP make the most durable and reliable workgroup class- Kyocera offer a cheaper rate than any. Oki... not entirely sure. They used to make cheap photocopiers which were reasonable. Canon and Kyocera SOHO personal lasers are neck and neck. The rest are so so. But by far my worst experience has been pretty much anything with Lexmark on it- ink or laser. Inkjets its between Epson and Canon, Epson are good to OSS and Canon are cheap to run. Epson definitely produce a better photo though. But an Epson laser is very expensive to fix. I have a Samsung colour laser which I had some driver issues with (but got it working very well now), and I've used Canon inkjets and Xerox personal lasers. I am a tech and I know what runs and what the monthly output ratings are, as well as service counters. The monthly output of a workgroup Lexmark is not even a third of the Kyocera SOHO laser- that should tell you something: 100,000 pages a month for a Kyocera 1020D (personal/SOHO), compared to 30,000 for a Lexmark T630 (workgroup). Ridiculous to think they'd even compete! Plus the Kyocera is around $500-600 compared to $3000 for Lexmark? I've seen the Lex get replaced by 2 1020D's- redundancy and duplexing for 1/3 the price! Not even a second thought... Good luck to you, but I wouldn't bother looking to repair the T610...
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