Typophile

recommend a ps laser printer

mb

i’m looking for a postcript laser printer to use with my powerbook for printing proofs of my college work, and other projects. i don’t really know where to start though! had a browse of a mac specialist site i’ve used for other purchases, but there were at least 50 different models to choose between.

we do have printers at college, but only 4, and they’re shared between the entire graphics department (a good few hundred, there’s 55 in my pathway alone). plus it’s not open during the holidays, which doesn’t help. so rather than queue for an hour or so i think it’s time to take the plunge and fork out the money.

i’m on a typo/graphic pathway, so something that deals with type quite nicely would be good.
and also, preferably something that can deal with fairly thick stock (up to 200gsm).
my budget isn’t that great, £200 or £300 max, as i’m a student...
oh, and something that works well on mac os X would be handy too!

thanks...

‹ OpenType, now more open If Typography was a Video Game ›
jupiterboy

Look at a refurb. or used 4MV. 11x17 edge to edge. Only 600 dpi though. Looks like a few selling around for under $400 US. I’ve had one for years.

http://www.printertechs.com/printer/refurbished-hp-laserjet-4mv.php

edeverett

I bought an Samsung ML2250 from ebuyer.co.uk for only £80 (inc. vat and delivery) earlier in the year, and it is doing me well.

Its not a real Postscript printer but at 1200dpi the output is good quality. It claims to take card but I’ve not tried it.

Ed.

nepenthe

We had this discussion not too long ago, and I ended up buying an HP 1320. I think it is more flexible with regards to stock, and also has a built in duplexer. However, and for whatever technical reasons, I find that the quality of the output suffers noticeable when using the duplexer. So when quality counts, I still do manual duplexing. I would say that it renders text quite well at its best quality setting. Its graphics printing is probably average for a 1200dpi laser printer. I do not know whether I would recommend this or not, since I haven’t directly compared its output to other similarly priced printers. The one Ed bought seems to be a better value overall, especially if you can get the Samsung on sale.

strata

I bought (2years ago) an Epson EPL6100PS it’s a4 and main specs are as follows: (pasted from Epson website)
* Print Speed of up to 16ppm
* Resolution of up to 1200dpi
* First page out in 15 seconds
* Standard USB 1.1 and IEEE 1284 parallel interfaces
* 200MHz High Performance Processor
* Standard 8MB memory upgradeable to up to 136MB
* Flexible paper handling: 250 sheet paper cassette
* EPL-6100PS - Standard unit plus Adobe® PostScript® 3™ and a total of 40MB RAM.

I don’t know if Epson do an up-to-date version of this printer but it’s well worth a look if they do as this one has lasted me well and I can’t fault it on anything. It’s easy to maintain and couldn’t be simpler to replace toner etc. Oh and most importantly it’d fit your budget too!

mb

yeah, i managed to bring up that discussion when i was searching, but it seemed a little fragmented which is why i thought i’d post with some specific requirements. there’s just so many about, it’s difficult to know which one to choose! thanks for some suggestions..

aluminum

If you want to avoid the surcharge for built-in Postscript support, you can consider getting any ol’ laser printer and then using PDFs as your ’rip’ software.

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