Most of this stuff nowadays have similar innards, sometimes produced in the same factory.
The rest of your post is valid, but I don't think this is so true, or true very often. I really haven't seen any rebrands or rebadges, maybe a company like Dell does that but Brother, Epson, Canon, HP and other major printer makers seem to use their own designs. There may be some parts in common, much like with notebooks where many different notebooks might use the same LCD panel, a scanning element or a stepper motor might be used in several different brands, but that says nothing about the rest of the machine, whether the parts were properly designed or properly chosen to work and last a long time is a different matter. Being made in the same factory doesn't mean anything either.
Stick with reviews by outfits like consumer reports, c|net, etc. And take them with a grain of skepticism too. Some are paid by manufacturers to give glowing reviews.
In the end trust no one but yourself. Do your homework. Try things out if possible.
Word of mouth from a friend, co-worker or acquaintance would be preferred, but still it doesn't answer the basic question... is Brother now a more reliable brand? Years ago, they were cheap crap.
Who here owns which printer(s)?
I use:
- HP Photosmart Pro B8350
- HP DeskJet 9650
- Canon Pixma MP 780 (all-in-one)
...and quite frankly, I'm not impressed with any of them.
Ah, this brings back memories of the dreaded "HP Communications" app that refused to go away, even when I thought I uninstalled everything HP-related on my machine when I sold my old SLOW-AS-HELL HP printer. God, it was so. freaking. slow.
We now have a Canon PIXMA MP460 that works like a dream, even though the last Airport update forced us to connect it directly to the iMac and turn on printer sharing (which means my fiancée's MacBook can only print to it when my machine is turned on and awake... which is often, but that's beside the point). But I blame Apple for that, not Canon.
And Xerox's solid ink printers are fun and support Postscript natively, although they start at $700... So basically you no longer need to pay thousands for that kind of functionality - that's what I meant.
Stick with reviews by outfits like consumer reports, c|net, etc. And take them with a grain of skepticism too. Some are paid by manufacturers to give glowing reviews.
Consumer Reports is an independant operation and takes no ad revenue from anyone.
I bought a HP C5180 with my iPhone rebate, and I just double checked what it installed:
2 dock items (device manager, photosmart studio) which are applications in the 50mb HP folder located in Applications
1 item in Utilities (hp printer selector)
1 process: hp event handler
AppZapper showed me 3 plist items in Library/Preferences.
That's really not that bad. Perhaps they've been working with Apple a little more closely lately!
Precisely. Isn't that 2 dock items, 1 utility item, 1 process and 3 preferences entries too many? The only thing I need or want to see is an "HP 5180" item in the printer drop down of a Print dialog.
You expect OS X to pull off the AIO abilities of that printer? I don't think that would work. Apple would then have to supply the API for all of the printer manufacturers to follow when building their printers. That won't fly.
What I'm getting at is just because the OS knows what printer is the defautl printer, doesn't mean it will know how to do Faxing, Double sided printing, copying, scanning, etc just from a printer driver. There will need to be software to control all of that. And because printers vary so much manufacture to manufacture, Apple couldn't really supply an application that will work between all of them without pissing them off. I find the mentioned above completely acceptable for an AIO.
You expect OS X to pull off the AIO abilities of that printer? I don't think that would work. Apple would then have to supply the API for all of the printer manufacturers to follow when building their printers. That won't fly.
What I'm getting at is just because the OS knows what printer is the defautl printer, doesn't mean it will know how to do Faxing, Double sided printing, copying, scanning, etc just from a printer driver. There will need to be software to control all of that. And because printers vary so much manufacture to manufacture, Apple couldn't really supply an application that will work between all of them without pissing them off. I find the mentioned above completely acceptable for an AIO.
It's not that far-fetched. I think Apple provides APIs and driver structures for printers (including duplexing), faxing and scanning. A single program to unify all those functions to make it easy for the user, plus drivers, should be enough.
You expect OS X to pull off the AIO abilities of that printer? I don't think that would work. Apple would then have to supply the API for all of the printer manufacturers to follow when building their printers. That won't fly.
What I'm getting at is just because the OS knows what printer is the defautl printer, doesn't mean it will know how to do Faxing,
Yes it should.
Quote:
Double sided printing,
Yes, through drivers.
Quote:
copying, scanning, etc just from a printer driver.
Yes, yes and yes. Drivers should be able to grab any of that data and send it to the appropriate apps or send data from apps to the printer...that's the whole point. The APIs abstract everything so that any printer can print anything sent to it by Mac OS X's print dialog (as long as the drivers are present of course)...and it should work the other way too. When someone scans something, the drivers should be able to send data from the printer to Mac OS X and send this to Image Capture or send a fax image through the computer's modem.
There's no excuse...if the drivers can send this data to an HP app...it can send this data to any app.
Quote:
There will need to be software to control all of that. And because printers vary so much manufacture to manufacture, Apple couldn't really supply an application that will work between all of them without pissing them off. I find the mentioned above completely acceptable for an AIO.
Printers don't receive or send encrypted data that can only be read by a single proprietary app. Things don't happen magically. Standards are usually followed. And if they aren't, the drivers should make sure the data can be understood by Mac OS X.
I bought a HP C5180 with my iPhone rebate, and I just double checked what it installed:
2 dock items (device manager, photosmart studio) which are applications in the 50mb HP folder located in Applications
1 item in Utilities (hp printer selector)
1 process: hp event handler
That's really not that bad. Perhaps they've been working with Apple a little more closely lately!
update: AppZapper showed me 3 plist items in Library/Preferences.
My parents have a nice little 17" iMac with the 512MB of RAM and this had been plenty of memory for them. A few weeks ago they acquired an HP Photosmart 8100 printer and since then had been complaining of a slow system.
I checked it out for them last weekend - HP's software is all PPC running under Rosetta! They're not even Universal Binaries, hence they are chewing up nearly all the (small amount of) available RAM on loading - and they insist on loading on logon, regardless of whether the printer is being used. I tried unchecking whatever the only thing was in the auto-load on logon preferences but regardless of me unchecking the option, it still loaded.
This finally convinced them to upgrade the RAM but this is pathetic for something that should be a simple printer driver. Try taking a look with Activity Monitor, you may be surprised (or I may if your drivers differ from theirs!)
I'm sure they're not the only ones, but even so....
Consumer Reports is an independant operation and takes no ad revenue from anyone.
Sure, they don't sell ads, they just sell huge blocks of subscriptions. The ratings are based on subscriber feedback, so the more subscriptions a company buys, the more direct influence they have over the ratings.
Ripping out that huge pile of steaming HP software was a pleasure. My PSC 2150 finally croaked last week and I have never been so happy. What a piece of junk.
No more HP stuff for me. I looked at a Lexmark driver and it was actually in an OS X installer. Imagine that - not in a Carbon-kludged VISE installer that wants to mess with your /System folder.
"The HP printer drivers will be delivered post-install via Software Update," the company told testers.
Good - we need more 3rd party updates delivered via software update. Flash & Windows Media also have a huge marketshare and while I tell any newbies considering a switch that they don't have a do a second install for security (probably negated by Vista now), they certainly have to do one for media playback.
as for printer drivers in general - they're all crappy on OsX. i'm sure this is why Apple bought Unix CUPS and will no doubt refine it further for improved driver performance and usability.
Ripping out that huge pile of steaming HP software was a pleasure. My PSC 2150 finally croaked last week and I have never been so happy. What a piece of junk.
No more HP stuff for me. I looked at a Lexmark driver and it was actually in an OS X installer. Imagine that - not in a Carbon-kludged VISE installer that wants to mess with your /System folder.
Has Lexmark changed their other ways though? They were the ones that put chips in the ink cartridges and sued anyone that reverse engineered the chips to make competing inks.
Now i am use the HP and apple laptop but HP and Apple working on automated printer driver delivery in Leopard. HP is reported to work with Apple to allow users of Mac OS X Leopard to instantly to the latest versions of HP printer drivers over Leopard built-in software update. Please help me this problem.
Comments
Most of this stuff nowadays have similar innards, sometimes produced in the same factory.
The rest of your post is valid, but I don't think this is so true, or true very often. I really haven't seen any rebrands or rebadges, maybe a company like Dell does that but Brother, Epson, Canon, HP and other major printer makers seem to use their own designs. There may be some parts in common, much like with notebooks where many different notebooks might use the same LCD panel, a scanning element or a stepper motor might be used in several different brands, but that says nothing about the rest of the machine, whether the parts were properly designed or properly chosen to work and last a long time is a different matter. Being made in the same factory doesn't mean anything either.
Stick with reviews by outfits like consumer reports, c|net, etc. And take them with a grain of skepticism too. Some are paid by manufacturers to give glowing reviews.
In the end trust no one but yourself. Do your homework. Try things out if possible.
Word of mouth from a friend, co-worker or acquaintance would be preferred, but still it doesn't answer the basic question... is Brother now a more reliable brand? Years ago, they were cheap crap.
Who here owns which printer(s)?
I use:
- HP Photosmart Pro B8350
- HP DeskJet 9650
- Canon Pixma MP 780 (all-in-one)
...and quite frankly, I'm not impressed with any of them.
We now have a Canon PIXMA MP460 that works like a dream, even though the last Airport update forced us to connect it directly to the iMac and turn on printer sharing (which means my fiancée's MacBook can only print to it when my machine is turned on and awake... which is often, but that's beside the point). But I blame Apple for that, not Canon.
Xerox, my favorite brand, produces Phaser 6120: http://www.office.xerox.com/printers...spec-enus.html ($350)
HP produces LaserJet3050 (I'm sure I've seen other models in this range): http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en...2-1140783.html
And Xerox's solid ink printers are fun and support Postscript natively, although they start at $700... So basically you no longer need to pay thousands for that kind of functionality - that's what I meant.
Stick with reviews by outfits like consumer reports, c|net, etc. And take them with a grain of skepticism too. Some are paid by manufacturers to give glowing reviews.
Consumer Reports is an independant operation and takes no ad revenue from anyone.
I bought a HP C5180 with my iPhone rebate, and I just double checked what it installed:
2 dock items (device manager, photosmart studio) which are applications in the 50mb HP folder located in Applications
1 item in Utilities (hp printer selector)
1 process: hp event handler
AppZapper showed me 3 plist items in Library/Preferences.
That's really not that bad. Perhaps they've been working with Apple a little more closely lately!
Precisely. Isn't that 2 dock items, 1 utility item, 1 process and 3 preferences entries too many? The only thing I need or want to see is an "HP 5180" item in the printer drop down of a Print dialog.
What I'm getting at is just because the OS knows what printer is the defautl printer, doesn't mean it will know how to do Faxing, Double sided printing, copying, scanning, etc just from a printer driver. There will need to be software to control all of that. And because printers vary so much manufacture to manufacture, Apple couldn't really supply an application that will work between all of them without pissing them off. I find the mentioned above completely acceptable for an AIO.
You expect OS X to pull off the AIO abilities of that printer? I don't think that would work. Apple would then have to supply the API for all of the printer manufacturers to follow when building their printers. That won't fly.
What I'm getting at is just because the OS knows what printer is the defautl printer, doesn't mean it will know how to do Faxing, Double sided printing, copying, scanning, etc just from a printer driver. There will need to be software to control all of that. And because printers vary so much manufacture to manufacture, Apple couldn't really supply an application that will work between all of them without pissing them off. I find the mentioned above completely acceptable for an AIO.
It's not that far-fetched. I think Apple provides APIs and driver structures for printers (including duplexing), faxing and scanning. A single program to unify all those functions to make it easy for the user, plus drivers, should be enough.
You expect OS X to pull off the AIO abilities of that printer? I don't think that would work. Apple would then have to supply the API for all of the printer manufacturers to follow when building their printers. That won't fly.
What I'm getting at is just because the OS knows what printer is the defautl printer, doesn't mean it will know how to do Faxing,
Yes it should.
Double sided printing,
Yes, through drivers.
copying, scanning, etc just from a printer driver.
Yes, yes and yes. Drivers should be able to grab any of that data and send it to the appropriate apps or send data from apps to the printer...that's the whole point. The APIs abstract everything so that any printer can print anything sent to it by Mac OS X's print dialog (as long as the drivers are present of course)...and it should work the other way too. When someone scans something, the drivers should be able to send data from the printer to Mac OS X and send this to Image Capture or send a fax image through the computer's modem.
There's no excuse...if the drivers can send this data to an HP app...it can send this data to any app.
There will need to be software to control all of that. And because printers vary so much manufacture to manufacture, Apple couldn't really supply an application that will work between all of them without pissing them off. I find the mentioned above completely acceptable for an AIO.
Printers don't receive or send encrypted data that can only be read by a single proprietary app. Things don't happen magically. Standards are usually followed. And if they aren't, the drivers should make sure the data can be understood by Mac OS X.
Why would TWAIN exist if this weren't so?
I bought a HP C5180 with my iPhone rebate, and I just double checked what it installed:
2 dock items (device manager, photosmart studio) which are applications in the 50mb HP folder located in Applications
1 item in Utilities (hp printer selector)
1 process: hp event handler
That's really not that bad. Perhaps they've been working with Apple a little more closely lately!
update: AppZapper showed me 3 plist items in Library/Preferences.
My parents have a nice little 17" iMac with the 512MB of RAM and this had been plenty of memory for them. A few weeks ago they acquired an HP Photosmart 8100 printer and since then had been complaining of a slow system.
I checked it out for them last weekend - HP's software is all PPC running under Rosetta! They're not even Universal Binaries, hence they are chewing up nearly all the (small amount of) available RAM on loading - and they insist on loading on logon, regardless of whether the printer is being used. I tried unchecking whatever the only thing was in the auto-load on logon preferences but regardless of me unchecking the option, it still loaded.
This finally convinced them to upgrade the RAM but this is pathetic for something that should be a simple printer driver. Try taking a look with Activity Monitor, you may be surprised (or I may if your drivers differ from theirs!
I'm sure they're not the only ones, but even so....
Why should we ever have uninstall drivers to update them?!?!?
Consumer Reports is an independant operation and takes no ad revenue from anyone.
Sure, they don't sell ads, they just sell huge blocks of subscriptions. The ratings are based on subscriber feedback, so the more subscriptions a company buys, the more direct influence they have over the ratings.
No more HP stuff for me. I looked at a Lexmark driver and it was actually in an OS X installer. Imagine that - not in a Carbon-kludged VISE installer that wants to mess with your /System folder.
"The HP printer drivers will be delivered post-install via Software Update," the company told testers.
Good - we need more 3rd party updates delivered via software update. Flash & Windows Media also have a huge marketshare and while I tell any newbies considering a switch that they don't have a do a second install for security (probably negated by Vista now), they certainly have to do one for media playback.
McD
Yep. I is about time HP they did this.
Well said!
Ripping out that huge pile of steaming HP software was a pleasure. My PSC 2150 finally croaked last week and I have never been so happy. What a piece of junk.
No more HP stuff for me. I looked at a Lexmark driver and it was actually in an OS X installer. Imagine that - not in a Carbon-kludged VISE installer that wants to mess with your /System folder.
Has Lexmark changed their other ways though? They were the ones that put chips in the ink cartridges and sued anyone that reverse engineered the chips to make competing inks.