[Info-vax] Nice printers for OpenVMS?

[David Froble]

Dirk Munk wrote:
> JohnF wrote:
>> Dirk Munk <munk at home.nl> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>> What about Brother printers? They're just as good as Epson.
>>>
>>> Not bad either, you're right.
>>> The Brother C M Y toner kits are good for 3500 pages,
>>
>> For b&w printing, my Brother HL-5370DW is great, at under $250 USD.
>> And it's wireless/wired as well as duplex. The b&w toner cartridges
>> are refillable but two or three times, with bottles of toner ~$10.
>> Then you do need a new cartridge for ~$75.
>>     Color's the glitch. But most soho/workgroup situations print
>> mostly b&w, with only a few occasional color pages. So the solution
>> is to buy an auxiliary cheap-o color inkjet for those occasions.
>> With that strategy in mind, Brother's the obvious choice for the
>> workhorse b&w jobs. That's what you need to focus your thinking on.
>>
> Oh sure, but I was focussing on the members of this group who might be 
> searching for a printer that will work for PC's and/or Mac's as well as 
> OpenVMS, so for hobbyists and not for business applications.

The current printer I have is far from the first.  Even far from the first laser printer. 
  So I had plenty of experiences to draw upon.  It wasn't the salesman that I wanted to 
talk to.  It was the downstream service and costs that I had learned to investigate.  I 
wanted support who's first question wasn't "what is your credit card number".  One 
company, Panasonic, would not even talk to me about error codes before getting paid.  I 
just wanted to know whether to get service or a new printer.  They wanted me to pay for 
that info.

So before the current purchase, I called about support and pricing for drums and toner.  I 
didn't talk to every company.  I doubt I'm aware of every printer company.  Regardless, 
the Brother service was friendly and helpful and would talk to me without first asking for 
money.  The replacement drums were half the cost of those of other companies.  Toner 
prices were reasonable.

My current printer is a Brother MFC 7820.  I use it for printing, scanning, and copying. 
I no longer have a land line so fax is not used.  My requirements are fully satisfied by 
B&W.  So far I'm totally satisfied.

One other lesson I've learned about printers, if the warranty period has passed, use it 
until it breaks.  Then don't even think about repairs.  Just get a new one with a new 
warranty period.