[plug] printers (yet again)

[Craig Ringer]

On Thu, Dec 08, 2005 at 02:43:14PM +0800, Kev wrote:
> Hi one and all
> 
> I'm looking (yet again!) at colour laser printers, with a view to buying 
> one for our small LAN at home.  One which takes my fancy is the Samsung 
> CLP-550N.  In the blurb about this printer it says, under the heading,
> 
>     "Fonts"     136 PostScript3, 45 PCL5CE
> 
> and later in the blurb under the heading "OS Compatibility" it says
> 
> PostScript3(PPD) (Windows 95/98/Me/NT4.0/2000/XP, Various Linux OS, Mac 
> OS 8.6~9.2/10.1~10.3), Samsung proprietary driver (Windows 
> 95/98/Me/NT4.0/2000/XP)

Those specs are about as solid an indication as you can ever get that
it's a "real" PS printer. Especially the explicit Linux support and
mention of a PPD (after all, you COULD implement a PS and PCL RIP in
host-side software like some pro inkjets do). What you should also check
for, though, is how much RAM it has and what its CPU is. A colour laser
probably wants a flat minimum of 64 MB of RAM, preferably more, and a
300MHz G3 or similar.

I just bought a Xerox Phaser 8500 for work. I can't comment on it yet as
it's being delivered on Monday, but I'd be glad to let you know how it
goes in case you're interested.

Also check if it uses an Adobe PostScript 3 RIP, or "PostScript
Emulation" (an alternative RIP implementation). Some non-Adobe RIPs are
great, such as recent GhostScript based RIPs, but many embedded RIPs are
utter crap that will produce inferior output, work more slowly, and
choke on some perfectly PostScript compliant jobs. Should you be so
unlucky as to be saddled with such a printer, try switching to using
PCL.

Another imporant thing to confirm is this printer's running cost
including service kits (fuser, etc) and toner for both B&W and colour
jobs. If you can, find out if it uses "chipped" cartridges, since that's
usually a sign you'll be forced to buy overpriced toner from the
original vendor.

-- 
Craig Ringer