Having finally heaved my wretched Epson Stylus Color 740 printer into the bin (very satisfying, that), I lived quite happilly printerless for a while… but finally needed one for bits and bobs.
I looked at inkjets, and found the ink is still expensive. I looked at networkable printers, with ethernet and even WiFi. Cool, but expensive. I’m on a budget.
I was tempted to get a cheap black and white laser printer, but was torn between the HP Laserjet 1010 that Comet had for �80, and a Samsung ML-1510 that Comet were doing for an amazing �50 – less than the toner cartridges cost!
The HP1010 has great reviews, but for every web site that said it worked with Mac OS X, I found one that said it didn’t. Even HP’s own web site contradicts itself on this.
In the end, price won out – and the fact that the Samsung’s box says “Works with Windows, Mac and Linux”, Samsung have Mac OS X drivers on their web site, and I couldn’t find anyone bitching about it on any Mac forums.
And it works a treat. Having garnered good reviews when it was �150, I can report it’s also well worth �50. It’s crap for photos, but the text is great – and anyway, who buys a B&W laser printer for photos anyway. The printer is pretty small (bigger than the HP1010, though) and not only works with OS 10.3 (Panther), but also works with OS 8.6, which means it works with my ancient RevA Bondi Blue iMac. (I downloaded the latest drivers from the US Samsung web site). The HP1010 would have needed an upgrade to OS 9 at least, and even then might not have worked. So I’m very happy.
It’s not the fastest printer in the world, but I’m happy. A web page from Safari spat out fast enough, but some fairly complex Adobe Illustrator artwork took much longer, but looked great when it appeared.
Ah, I love the smell of ozone in the evening… and I have another reason to get a Gocco now… oh, dear, could be quite an expensive cheap laser printer, after all.