I hope I don't end up hating myself for this, but I have bought a new HP printer. I think it's been just over four years now since I actually had a printer at home. But, I figured I could use a decent scanner/copier/printer at the casa. Now, the primary objective was as always best value for money followed by functionality, since my requirements are very little for the printing world.
I must admit, I didn't do much preliminary investigation; because, I thought I could handle this quite well on my own based on experience. I mean, it just needs to be cheap and have good support for the Mac and at least I should be able to print from Linux as well. Everyone knows the primary cash cow for 'inkjet' type printers are the cartridges, anyway. Also, I wanted to avoid HP, because HP customer service is quite daunting. Just like BT, there is no face to HP really.
Well, enter Curry's. The Curry's on Ealing Broadway is just across from an Argos; so, I thought this would be a decent place to start in the retail world. Curry's didn't have the widest selection, albeit decent though. They carried Epson, Canon, Kodak and HP printers and all-in-one scanner/copier/printers. The particular one that caught my eye was the Canon Pixma MP 580. This model does not include WiFi or duplexing but does have a higher resolution and bluetooth. For the price of £88, it's not too bad.
They did not have the MP 620, however. That particular model includes WiFi and auto duplexing. But, Argos did for £146. I wasn't ready to spend that kind of money on a printer though; so, I turned back to Curry's and had a look at the HP C4585 which does have WiFi. Both the Canon and HP support Mac, and I figured the Linux drivers would be available for printing at least because of Cups. So, I went ahead and took the £68 on-sale HP. I went across to Argos and got a much better deal on the ink and headed home.
Installation on Mac was a snap, and I won't cover that here. Instead, after I had the printer setup , I wanted to at least be able to print from Linux, and using gnome's printer configuration made that a snap. It auto-discovered the printer on the network and default selected HPLIP driver. However, I was curious about the scanner and status functionality. So, I google'd HPLIP and came across this which indicates there is a GUI that does support scanning and status, e.g. ink levels.
I searched the Jaunty package cache 'apt-cache search hplip' and found the appropriate package and then installed it 'sudo apt-get install hplip-gui' which installed an HPLIP Fax utility under Applications > Office and an HPLIP Toolbox under System > Preferences. For the record, I have not tried the Fax utility, but the HPLIP Toolbox works very good for scanning and checking status such as ink levels. The options to align print heads, calibrate, and clean the heads are also available. So, it looks like I actually got more than I bargained for on this purchase.
I must admit, I didn't do much preliminary investigation; because, I thought I could handle this quite well on my own based on experience. I mean, it just needs to be cheap and have good support for the Mac and at least I should be able to print from Linux as well. Everyone knows the primary cash cow for 'inkjet' type printers are the cartridges, anyway. Also, I wanted to avoid HP, because HP customer service is quite daunting. Just like BT, there is no face to HP really.
Well, enter Curry's. The Curry's on Ealing Broadway is just across from an Argos; so, I thought this would be a decent place to start in the retail world. Curry's didn't have the widest selection, albeit decent though. They carried Epson, Canon, Kodak and HP printers and all-in-one scanner/copier/printers. The particular one that caught my eye was the Canon Pixma MP 580. This model does not include WiFi or duplexing but does have a higher resolution and bluetooth. For the price of £88, it's not too bad.
They did not have the MP 620, however. That particular model includes WiFi and auto duplexing. But, Argos did for £146. I wasn't ready to spend that kind of money on a printer though; so, I turned back to Curry's and had a look at the HP C4585 which does have WiFi. Both the Canon and HP support Mac, and I figured the Linux drivers would be available for printing at least because of Cups. So, I went ahead and took the £68 on-sale HP. I went across to Argos and got a much better deal on the ink and headed home.
Installation on Mac was a snap, and I won't cover that here. Instead, after I had the printer setup , I wanted to at least be able to print from Linux, and using gnome's printer configuration made that a snap. It auto-discovered the printer on the network and default selected HPLIP driver. However, I was curious about the scanner and status functionality. So, I google'd HPLIP and came across this which indicates there is a GUI that does support scanning and status, e.g. ink levels.
I searched the Jaunty package cache 'apt-cache search hplip' and found the appropriate package and then installed it 'sudo apt-get install hplip-gui' which installed an HPLIP Fax utility under Applications > Office and an HPLIP Toolbox under System > Preferences. For the record, I have not tried the Fax utility, but the HPLIP Toolbox works very good for scanning and checking status such as ink levels. The options to align print heads, calibrate, and clean the heads are also available. So, it looks like I actually got more than I bargained for on this purchase.
