On 2019-07-14 15:40, Stuart Henderson wrote:
If you don't want trackable prints, don't buy a colour laser printer of any brand, it is very common. Unsure about mono and inkjet printers, I would tend to assume that they're common on at least most hi-res colour printers.
Nearly every printer sold today (including cheap inkjets AND b&w printers) have these tracking dots. It's unclear why/how this came to be; I've heard multiple stories and am unsure which to believe, if any. Regardless of the why/how, consensus is clear: those dots are real and can tie output back to your printer.
I read that Postscript printers produce superior graphics (from Xerox website):
In 2019, that remains true only in a very small number of edge cases. The absolute highest resolution graphics today are mostly printed using ESC/P (if Epson), PCL3 (if HP), or whatever Canon uses (if Canon). Mostly people "prefer" Postscript output over PCL because the default rendering gammas(sic) are slightly different and Postscript is usually perceptually more pleasing. Adjust gamma on your PCL printer from 1.1 to 1.2 and *poof* just as good as Postscript. YMMV, even Postscript-compatible printers are all different nowadays.
If I was looking to spend money on a nice printer I'd get one which can accept postscript and PDF directly over lpr. (I'd be very tempted by the hp "pagewide" printers. Also Kyocera seem good especially for high volume stuff).
I haven't tried Kyocera recently, but I have tried HP recently in that line. Stay as far away as you can get. All the decent PageWide printers seem to be discontinued already, and the replacement 11x17" color OfficeJet Pros are severely lobotomized and need to talk to the "cloud" for almost all functions except basic print-to-paper... and even that doesn't work very reliably, even with the Windows/MacOS drivers.
If I was looking for something cheap and cheerful then I would worry less about postscript but look for something where I can see signs of support in the ports tree. The HPLIP ports are nice and easy to use and work with a wide range of HP and some other printers, easiest to use with CUPS (it really isn't difficult), but if you want to avoid it I believe the HPIJS part of HPLIP can be used without CUPS. I've heard good things about brlaser for the non-postscript Brother printers too, though most of them do have ps anyway. Even if keeping things cheap I would definitely want something with an ethernet port (it doesn't add much if anything to the cost) for flexibility of positioning the printer, easier sharing between machines, and not having to mess around with permissions on device nodes etc..
Agreed - most decent business printers nowadays come with both ethernet and wifi, so you get the best of both worlds.
Brother's mono lasers are generally *excellent* value for the money. Color lasers unknown. Stay away from their color inkjets, they are effectively Win/Mac-only. (But if you are on Win/Mac, those provide excellent $/page.)
Epson's color inkjets are pretty good, and at the *really* high end beat color lasers in all ways, and include Postscript. (Those high-end units also cost many 10s of $Ks. But, wow, nice specs.) Lower-end units support ESC/P and mostly work with CUPS. Buy the business models if you want a decent cost-per-page.
Canon printers can be decent, but are not usually good value for money... YMMV, just make sure you can return it if you can't make it work.
HP used to be very good, and their mono LaserJets are still acceptable. Color LaserJets... less good, but maybe still acceptable. Inkjets? Who knows, there's a new model every week, each incompatible with the last one.
Your best bet will likely be to purchase a new "business-grade" printer from a shop that will let you return it if you can't get it to work.
Unfortunately, YMMV depending on what part of the world you're in, any local promotions/sales, the phase of the moon, whether Jupiter is in alignment with Saturn, etc., etc.
Good luck, -Adam
