[Info-vax] Nice printers for OpenVMS?

[Richard B. Gilbert]

On 8/4/2012 10:30 AM, David Froble wrote:
> 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.

It helps to use a good printer to start with.  I have an HP Laser Jet 
4000 with a Jet Direct card.  My wife and I share the printer.  It's 
been working like a champ for the last ten years.  On the rare occasions 
when when I print something from one of my Unix boxes, it goes to the H-P.

It's fast and the output looks great.  I had one failure while under 
warranty. What more could I ask for?

My best coup with my last employer was to replace our "work order" 
printers.  These these were impact printers that could feed either of 
two tractor fed forms.  If you hear a small voice screaming "Kludge", 
you are absolutely right!  Making matters worse, repair parts and 
ribbons were imported from Germany at great expense!  When we had to buy 
a fourth printer in order to have a minimum of two printers in working 
order, I stepped in and pointed out that the printers were killing us. 
I suggested Laser Printers.  We settled on H-P printers, redesigned the 
forms, and rewrote the printer software.  The new printers were faster, 
quieter, and several hundred percent more
reliable.  Instead of two or three printer failures per week, we had 
maybe a failure per year.