Help Me Buy My First Printer, Copier, Scanner, Please (Page 2 of 2)

I took some time this morning to read up on this product.  Even though it's interesting, and under better financial circumstance maybe even viable it's of no use to me now because of the price.

I'm going to make this purchase and I'm expecting to get five, maybe eight good years of usage out of this new device but don't intend to spend that much more again on a plug.  I'm not fussing -- I just can't justify spending an amount equal to or even half of a new printer when I'm so  severely limited by my piteous monthly social security checks. 

It was the the time period I grew up -- a nickel was a nickel then.  I mean, for fifty cents you could buy a McDonald's hamburger, small soda and small fries and have enough money left over for a copy of Newsweek magazine at the corner store.  The two or three cents change would get you a pack of gum.  Now, if I buy gum at all its a dollar and something and the corner store is no more.   

Last edited by dubois (2012-01-24 19:33:43)

That's how much I paid for mine, and that was almost a year ago. Mine is the Ethernet one though, not the wireless-N variety.

^ Now that's impressive, and a nice review of its capabilities.

<meh>

I know what you mean although I used to have a black and white photographic darkroom back in the early 1970's.  It was great, stinky fun, especially the stop bath. 

Let me throw in a 'second' for the HP Officejet 4500 recommended by mynis01.  Works out-of-the-box with the installation of hplip package.  I'm using it with #! and Arch without a hitch both via USB connection and via wireless.  Also works without a hitch with an iPad using the PrintDirect app or through Apple's 'Pages' application - AND from my wife's Nook Tablet.  I've used for standard and photo printing with great results - I have not tried the scan functions yet...something for this weekend maybe.

@dubois

On the HP4500 -

Okay, I have tried scanning, and I'm very happy to report it works just fine - although I did have to resort to installing the hp-toolbox GUI tool.  I'm certain it is possible to scan from the command line - but - well -

I already had hplip and its depends/requires installed - also sane and its family - so all I really needed was the hplip-gui, which automated the scanning process very well.

Here's what I did:

1.  Installed hplip-gui
2.  Started the GUI from terminal with the command hp-toolbox (added to menu later - can be run from autostart if you so desire)
3.  The GUI offers a "scan" menu entry
4.  Put the handiest colorful paper item I had on the scanner bed of the printer
5.  Walked back to my laptop (I was running wirelessly from a different room)
6.  Clicked "scan" - which opened the scanning dialogs
7.  Left all settings at default, gave the image a filename and directory destination
9.  Clicked "scan" on the dialog box
10.  Got the following image (screenshot below)

So, this worked very well.  As I posted earlier, the basic printing features including photo printing I already knew worked out well - so this was something I wanted to try anyway.  You can specify a number of different image filetypes - the one pictured is .png but I could have picked JPEG and a number of others as well.

For what it's worth, here are the main packages I have related to hplip and sane:

hplip
hplip-gui
pnm2ppa
libsane-hpaio
hplip-cups
hplip-data
libhpmud0
libltdl7
libijs-0.35
libsane
sane-utils
libsane-hpaio
libsane-extras
xsane
xsane-common

I hope this helps.  I hated to have to keep an old cowboy in suspense for so long.

Last edited by busprof (2012-01-28 02:33:54)

My brother has a HP4500 and that works very well, printing, scanning and copying. It worked out of the box with the hplip package in the repos (sid).

I own a HP 6500A (needed duplex printing) which also works perfectly, but it is outside your price range. Both were very easy to set up on Linux (and Windows for my brother).  I've used them both with usb and wireless. Be aware that the usb cable may not be included. I haven't tried out the fax, haven't got a use for it

The 4500 is going for $90 at Amazon at the moment.

And I say that's real fine of you.  I reckon the only thing and in retrospect it's a bigger issue than I first realized is that I really wont be using this for printing photos but making copies for a very small home and office setup and now I'm wondering if I've made the right choices.  I don't need a fax and could very well do without.  But what my brother had to say bears repeating.

UPDATE -- this is a copy and paste from my brother's email reply to my recent request for his opinion

So this gives me something to think about for a day or two [default limit I've always given myself when making a decision of any kind] plus I get to look at more cool websites.  Will post again with my thoughts, etc., later, or reply to any comments made. 

Last edited by dubois (2012-02-09 14:36:30)