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First post, by dnewhous

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What on earth is a Konica Minolta Nassenger good for? Printing the human genome appears to be what is happening in the video for the Nassenger 8 on Youtube. Any experiences?

K, the site answers my own question a little, it is referred to as a textile printing machine, so another use is to print wallpaper.

Another use appears to be giftwrap.

Custom t-shirts?

Daniel L Newhouse

Reply 1 of 21, by dnewhous

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In other news, HP advanced photo paper comes in several sizes. 4X6, 5X7, 8.5X11, and, 13X19!!!

What kind of printer uses at least 2 of those sizes? Canons site is down right now.

In still other news, HP still offers sprocket paper in 2X3 size.

But the sticky ZINC variation is discontinued.

Also, Office Depot no longer carries laserject paper!

And, we are out of coffee!

They make letter paper that comes with 3 hole punch.

Daniel L Newhouse

Reply 2 of 21, by dnewhous

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Also, the wikipedia is indicating that they are trying to use the DI-9 Mac Connect with the 8 pin LocalTalk? As Bill the Cat once said,
"tthhhpppppttttt."
Also, even if there were to fit a square peg in a round hole, connecting a printer to a network doesn't do any good unless the printer is
network ready. If not, the printer won't know what to do with a network signal anyway! Actually, the LocalTalk description on the wikipedia clearly indicates that the system works with MacPlus. K, but what does it have to do with Macintosh Classic which is clearly what the Apple printers page is for?

Last edited by dnewhous on 2020-08-13, 01:24. Edited 1 time in total.

Daniel L Newhouse

Reply 3 of 21, by dnewhous

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Is laser screen valid printer technology?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_UKv5v2bvY

I can't believe that HP laserjet and inkjet paper has come to an end. There is HP laser print paper. That is mostly glossy. Yechh. It's not glossy, nor matte, it's satin we want.

Last edited by Stiletto on 2020-08-16, 06:49. Edited 2 times in total.

Daniel L Newhouse

Reply 4 of 21, by Intel486dx33

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You can’t go wrong with HP Laser printers. I have always bought them. They just work as intended and they have good software support.
Did HP buy Samsung printer division ?

Reply 5 of 21, by darry

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Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-08-13, 21:46:

You can’t go wrong with HP Laser printers. I have always bought them. They just work as intended and they have good software support.

HP and Brother are my favourites .

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-08-13, 21:46:

Did HP buy Samsung printer division ?

Yes, in 2016 .

Reply 9 of 21, by gdjacobs

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Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-08-13, 21:46:

You can’t go wrong with HP Laser printers. I have always bought them. They just work as intended and they have good software support.

This makes me question if you've even used their consumer drivers.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 10 of 21, by dnewhous

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gdjacobs wrote on 2020-08-14, 19:32:
Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-08-13, 21:46:

You can’t go wrong with HP Laser printers. I have always bought them. They just work as intended and they have good software support.

This makes me question if you've even used their consumer drivers.

Ahem, the problem with HP for a while is the software available for free for use with their scanners went downhill. I even had to spend $35 on software for scanning, Vuescan. Now it's back up and works fine with later model scanners.

Daniel L Newhouse

Reply 11 of 21, by gdjacobs

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dnewhous wrote on 2020-08-14, 19:34:

Ahem, the problem with HP for a while is the software available for free for use with their scanners went downhill. I even had to spend $35 on software for scanning, Vuescan. Now it's back up and works fine with later model scanners.

Their software for printers has been horrible for years. I've never had problems with Canon, Lexmark, and Brother drivers, but HP printer drivers fail left, right, and center.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 12 of 21, by dnewhous

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gdjacobs wrote on 2020-08-14, 19:54:

Their software for printers has been horrible for years. I've never had problems with Canon, Lexmark, and Brother drivers, but HP printer drivers fail left, right, and center.

Now that you mention it my father had to call the Geek Squad once to install a new HP multifunction - I couldn't get it to work on my own. Now everything is fine.

There's also something called PaperScan that has OCR as an option.

Daniel L Newhouse

Reply 13 of 21, by BushLin

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The usual rule of thumb is Epson for inkjets and Brother for laser.
High end HP laser printers can be alright but are huge things designed for heavy office use, however, they all have the same support...
... Dude in an Indian call center, reading a script you can get from their website, they can't deviate from it even if you tell them you've already done those steps or even understand that you've identified the problem with some tests. What should be a 5 minute call takes at least half an hour.
I've seen HP drivers install SQL database software to operate which is bloated on its own without going into the security issues it introduced.
In short, unless you know what you're getting, don't assume HP is going to be a good experience. If you're into retro printers, the HP LaserJet 4 were built like tanks and have good drivers for old software.

Last edited by BushLin on 2020-08-15, 09:50. Edited 1 time in total.

Screw period correct; I wanted a faster system back then. I choose no dropped frames, super fast loading, fully compatible and quiet operation.

Reply 14 of 21, by Intel486dx33

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I have always had great success with HP printers. ( inkjet and laser and network and scanners ).
And they have great software to support there printers and scanners.
If I had to choose on printer to buy it would definitely be an HP.
From my experience.

And I have many years of experience with network printer from large corporations and campuses to home printing solutions.

They are just easy to use. Once you learn how to set them up properly.
I was lucky that I worked for a computer education center that taught me allot about the HP printers and setting them up.
It was NOT always as easy as it is today. Today you just plug it in and it downloads all the drivers for you.
But there was a time when you had to manually install the drivers from a network server or CDROM.

HP Openview, HP Jet admin, HP web jet admin. OCR software, fax software, etc.

It use to be fun to manage network printers on a large campus.

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Reply 15 of 21, by BushLin

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Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-08-15, 09:46:
... They are just easy to use. Once you learn how to set them up properly. I was lucky that I worked for a computer education ce […]
Show full quote

...
They are just easy to use. Once you learn how to set them up properly.
I was lucky that I worked for a computer education center that taught me allot about the HP printers and setting them up.
...

Do you mean HP are great and easy when you can lean on the experience of seeing various models being guinea pigged on hundreds of users and figure out you want a particular PCL6 driver for one model and a specific PostScript driver on another...
Which models have inherently bad design, oversaturate pages or where no drivers exist which can reliably print more advanced functions like 2 pages per sheet etc.
In that case, yes, it's easy to pick HP because you have a support team and many users to identify what the bad options are.

Screw period correct; I wanted a faster system back then. I choose no dropped frames, super fast loading, fully compatible and quiet operation.

Reply 16 of 21, by Zup

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Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-08-13, 21:46:

You can’t go wrong with HP Laser printers. I have always bought them. They just work as intended and they have good software support.
Did HP buy Samsung printer division ?

I must say that I've been looking for an HP all in one replacement and it seems that I must stay with HP, but I'm not very happy.

Advantages of HP printers:
- They have drivers for most OSs, even for non PCL printers and/or scanners.
- Ink and consumables are easy to find everywhere.

Disadvantages:
- Windows drivers are bloated to the extreme, unless you manually install them (via device manager).
- Consumer stuff is crappy (more about that later).
- Scanner software is crappy.
- Every scanner I've tried (except office stuff) seems to produce bland colours.

I've got a HP Laserjet M1132MFP (all-in-one, laser, monochrome), and like most of their consumer stuff seems fragile. The drivers (as installed from CD) are full of useless shit, including (but not limited to) their own consumables shop, software that sends your printer metrics to HP, and official HP adware. Fortunately, you can get rid of most of this stuff installing the drivers via device manager.

The scanner part had a minimal driver (even worse than standard SANE drivers). Colours were bland and it seemed to have less definition than my previous scanner, and most grayscale images were unreadable. Also, (AFAIR) the software lacked capabilities like scanning to PDF (or couldn't make multi page PDFs, I don't remember) so I had to search other software. To add insult, the scanner failed just after warranty expired (E8, carriage can't get home position I guess). I tried to repair it (lubricating the carriage) but it worked only for two weeks. I've looked for a replacement part... but it's expensier than the entire printer.

So, I'm using my old Canon 5200F scanner on top of my printer. It's older but the software is way better (even being unsupported on Windows 10) and produces better images. When I finish the toner cartridge, I guess I'd try to replace the printer but I don't trust consumer HP stuff although it seems it's the easier way.

BTW, my requirements are:
- Laser monochrome all-in-one.
- It must work on Windows and Linux systems (note that my previous printer, a Canon LBP2900, had Linux drivers but they stopped being supported).
- Ethernet connection.
- Send to file capabilities (i.e.: scanning directly to a file on a shared folder).

I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...

I'm selling some stuff!

Reply 17 of 21, by dnewhous

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I remember now the purpose of Mac Connect. It was to connect a printer to a computer with enough data transfer so that hypertransport and USB were never needed. It was supposed to have something better than a DI-9 which is a German DIN connector.

Daniel L Newhouse

Reply 18 of 21, by gdjacobs

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BushLin wrote on 2020-08-15, 10:41:

Do you mean HP are great and easy when you can lean on the experience of seeing various models being guinea pigged on hundreds of users and figure out you want a particular PCL6 driver for one model and a specific PostScript driver on another...
Which models have inherently bad design, oversaturate pages or where no drivers exist which can reliably print more advanced functions like 2 pages per sheet etc.
In that case, yes, it's easy to pick HP because you have a support team and many users to identify what the bad options are.

Which drivers need a script to reboot the print spool every hour.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 19 of 21, by Stiletto

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Weirdly enough, I JUST got done yesterday picking out and installing a new multifunction printer for a little old lady friend of my family who prints things for her various church groups.
I've done this twice with her now. The last time, about 7 years ago, we went with an HP OfficeJet 6700 Premium. We had a few problems with its software over the years which would require fresh reinstallations or weird patches. I'd even had the software tweaked as recommended above. Even yesterday, it clung to the hard drive and did not want to cleanly uninstall (This problem, incidentally: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printer-Softwar … -a/td-p/7449473 ).

But yesterday, all went smoothly with the new HP OfficeJet Pro 9015. Other than being ungodly ugly, based on its specifications it's a huge step-up in performance and connectivity. Its installation process required me to install "HP Smart", a Windows Store app which seemed (just based on gut feeling, I didn't actually check) to be slim and trim. HP Smart walked us through the printer installation, downloading a few things like an online installer would do as it went, and no errors. Can it be that now in 2020 HP is starting to conquer its "bad software" issues?

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto