Best printer/sharing setup?

dviant

Ok so my Epson 740 is dying and I'm looking to get a new printer. I 'm looking for a not-terribly-expensive good all around printer. Will be used mostly for printing the wifes school papers. We may be getting a digital camera sometime this year too so thats a consideration.



Currently I have the 740 hooked into my SMC Wireless Barricade and use its little network print server to access it via my PC (wired) and Powerbook (wireless). CUPS used to work from the Powerbook but after 10.2 it just prints gobblygook (perhaps user error hehe), so lately I've been using a G4 350 to share it out.



So my two main questions:



1) What do you feel is the best printer/brand for my purposes

- Print quality

- Speed

- OS X support



2) If I ditch the SMC for an Airport basestation, can you use it to share printers with PCs (running WinXP)?



Any suggestions/insights/first hand experiences would be helpful.



thx!

madmax559

samsung ml-1430 laser



best printer ive owned ...forget inkjets

unless you really need color



the printer is attached to my linux box & all the

other machines win2k/osx use it with no issues



samsung doesnt have a current driver for osx so you

will have to tweak cups on osx to see the printer

other than that its a damm good buy....

i think the printer goes for $150 or less

dviant

huh.... no one here uses printers? or tried to use Airport printer sharing with Windows?

mccrab

(1) HP 2100 (laser) - it's a real workhorse. I have the extra bins (for up to 500 sheets) - it is very reliable.

(2) Get the Airport extreme base station - it has a USB connector. I have PPPOE running on it and use it with Macs and Windows XP - have not tried printing with it on XP.



I am travelling for a few weeks but will try printing on XP when I get back

dviant

cool thanks McCrab, i'm real interested if it works with XP...