[PLUG] recommendations for printers?

[Karl Kulaga]

Get a cheap laser printer - you can find cheap ones for ~$120 if you watch
the deal sites for a week or two and get a seperate color for the color
print outs, I think albertsons has a cheapo inkjet for $40 or something, if
you really don't care about print quality that much . . .

Now, my laser printer info / advice
If it is an newer lower end HP (like 1?00 series), call up their support and
get the 3 year extended warranty - it is around $40 and they send a unit out
to you next day air when and no matter how many times it breaks (and don't
be cheap on this, because it WILL break at least once in 3 years, and
shipping printers is expensive), I'm guessing the same thing for the other
brand's lower end lasers - generally the fusers aren't made to last 3 years,
most are designed to work for a year.

 Of course, check compatibility before you buy - I believe the laserjet 1200
had some issues with macs under X a while back, but I think it has been
rectified - just don't expect much support from any printer company (short
of processing rmas). And here's an hint for calling support about printers,
always try and get the mac folks - hold times are usually a lot shorter, and
if the printer is smoking, they won't ask you to do much software
troubleshooting ;)

You will save so much $ in ink that you will be very happy and you will
virtually never have to change the toner. Print quality for letters, etc is
much better too and no more smearing printouts in our great portland
climate. I've recently printed the better part of a _box_ of paper on 1
toner cartridge on my laserjet 3p that was made in '92.

If you want to do some fixup work (and probably changing the pickup rollers
is all you need to do), there are quite literally tens of thousands of
pre-carly (key word PRE) HP laserjets out there. Sure they are big, but they
will last (laserjet 3's, 4's, you probably want to avoid the 5's though, the
laserjet 4000 and 4050 are kind of big but I've seen several with a page
count of over a million pages - basically 3 or so years of printing 24-7,
work it out if you're bored.) virtually all are available for dirt cheap -
around / under $50 or so. You can always remove extra paper trays to save on
room and used wired print servers (like a 170x or 300x) go for cheap
nowadays so you can leave that printer into a different room.

Good luck. . .

Oh and on most hp laser printer's with a display, you can change the ready
message by sending the following code ;)

%-12345X at PJL RDYMSG DISPLAY="Message"
%-12345X