Re: What is a good printer/all-in-one?

Lars Eighner wrote:
On Tue, 25 Mar 2008, Isaac Mushinsky wrote:

Yes, I saw that. But FreeBSD is not linux, and using multiple drivers for
the same device is more of a problem for us. HPLIP, on the other hand,
requires bare ugen, not loading ulpt or uscanner or perhaps even umass, a
very unnatural and cumbersome thing for me (I want umass, and I also
sometimes use a Nikon photo film scanner, which work via sane).

You can use umass devices with HPLIP, but you must load umass after the
printer has attached as a ugen device. Then you can attach and detach umass
devices as much as you please. You seem to imply there is a conflict
between uscanner devices, but I don't see what that conflict might be. Uscanner will not grab the scanner function of a multifunction printer with
hplip. It doesn't appear there is a conflict of executable names either.

There is absolutely no all-in-one device which will work out of box with FreeBSD.

HP devices as you noticed require kernel recompilation and have that undocumented umass driver removal and load. They are probably best bet but they are expensive (I am talking laser as I would stay away from ink-jets by all means).

The second group of devices which should work out of box Epson CX all-in-one class devices (which
are ink jet so I would stay a way from them anyway) are not listed in
uscanner driver so they will not work out of box without manually adding your devices into the driver and then recompiling despite the fact that epson and epson2 backends support them.

Future of Epson scanners is bleak on FreeBSD as Epson has released proprietary drivers for Linux. I believe
any effort for writing sane-backends for Epson scanners has terminated.


I personally like Brother all-in-one monochromatic devices for home use which are probably $150-200 cheaper than
equivalent HP devices. I have seen good all-on-one for $120-150 on line.
Brother has scanner drivers for them brscan and brscan2 but those drivers have hidden
binary blob libraries which depend on Linux kernel. They can not be compiled on FreeBSD. I talked to their
technical support in Japan and they were the one to tell me to give up and disclosed quite a few information about
them.

Samsung has very cheap color laser jet printer which often require Splix driver (ported for FreeBSD but version 2.0
which is written from ground up is
expected soon). I have no idea about their scanners but you can get refurbished color laser jet form Samsung for $100 if you are lucky. They are probably way to go if you need color printing too.

I personally would get an honest printer which in the worst case scenario speaks PCL possibly with flat bad copier
and get used scanner for $10 which is explicitly listed on hardware notes of FreeBSD.

If you are doing lots of scanning I would even considering deploying Linux unless uscanner, ugen, and few other
drivers which are at the moment incapable of getting Vendor and Product ID get better.


Cheers,
Predrag






Thus I am looking for a network device, or if USB, then it should appear as
separate uscanner/ulpt/umass.

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 1:08 PM, herbert langhans <herbert.raimund@xxxxxxx>
wrote:

Hi Isaac,
this is a good start:
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting

In the 'printer' section you find a ranking and evaluation how the
printers do on unixoid systems.

Cheers
herbs

mount -t wbush /dev/whitehouse /dev/nul


On Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:12:52 -0400
"Isaac Mushinsky" <itz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> My 10-year-old deskjet being out of ink and probably not worth a
replacement
cartridge (it works, but makes some mechanical noise lately), I am
considering a reasonable replacement, preferably with scanning/copy
possibilities.

I tried to get Photosmart C4280, but while I was trying a faulty
printcap on
it, it lost its mind permanently (says 'incompatible print cartridges',
and
does not respond to the button combinations that HP support thinks
should
reset it). Besides, you can either attach it as ulpt or uscanner device,
or
play with hplip drivers as a generic device, but it seems too
confusing. It was a waste of time and money for me and I am going to
return
it.

Requirements:
1. Reasonable physical size (should not be much larger than the old
deskjet).
2. Either network/lpd or USB, scanner should be well supported by sane.
If
used via USB, it should be a compound device (i.e. printer, scanner and,
if
there, the umass device should appear as separate devices to avoid
kld-loading and unloading modules). I heard Epsons show up as compound
devices? any HP laserjets?
3. Reasonable maintenance cost (maybe a laser printer, I do not care for
color printing that much).
> _______________________________________________
freebsd-questions@xxxxxxxxxxx mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "
freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxx"

_______________________________________________
freebsd-questions@xxxxxxxxxxx mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "
freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxx"

_______________________________________________
freebsd-questions@xxxxxxxxxxx mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxx"




_______________________________________________
freebsd-questions@xxxxxxxxxxx mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxx"

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Following Clean Install Epson Problems
    ... a scanner and an All-in-one all working together. ... Epson NX300 working and had no room for another All-in-one. ... clean install of Windows about a month ago, ... Their driver support, New Soft, stated ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.print_fax)
  • Re: [opensuse] Epson v330 scanner
    ... I have become interested in the Epson V330. ... but Epson has a driver for it. ... My question is if I install this driver, will XSane be able ... especially from anyone who has tried this.with an Epson scanner. ...
    (SuSE)
  • Re: [opensuse] Epson v330 scanner
    ... I have become interested in the Epson V330. ... but Epson has a driver for it. ... My question is if I install this driver, will XSane be able ... especially from anyone who has tried this.with an Epson scanner. ...
    (SuSE)
  • Re: Following Clean Install Epson Problems
    ... XP can and does support two scanners. ... I'm using has a USB HP3970 and a networked Epson Workforce 600 MFP. ... scanner, and then redirecting to the network connection. ... excessive "DPC" latency if this driver is used with a multifunction unit. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.print_fax)
  • SOLVED: scanimage -L doesnt work as normal user
    ... down to getting the permissions right. ... To make Epson 2480 work, there is no need to patch the uscanner.c ... device on uscanner0, but scanimage correctly idenfies the scanner. ... I don't know if there is any benefit from using the uscanner ...
    (freebsd-questions)