[furyg3]

Slightly OT, but what is everyone's favorite minimalist printer? Are there any?

I avoid printing like the plague, but sometimes you just need to print a ticket, letter, or a photo of a document you have on your computer. I don't need a scanner, wifi, 500MB of software, or even color. I need something which is small and out of the way when I'm not using it (most of the time), cheap, and ready to go when I have to print something.

I kinda miss dot-matrix printers, to be honest.

[thearn4]

I have a Brother HL-2270DW for the rare printing that I do need to do at home. Has been great so far.

[benyami]

I have this printer hidden in a corner. You would never notice it is there until it receives a job over the wifi. Simple and just works.

[cdr]

I have a ~ 10-year-old HL-2040 that's somehow still running. I use it for printing throw-away stuff like notes or recipes. It was maybe $30. It predates even the toner cartridge caps being welded on, so refills are relatively painless and $4.

[beamatronic]

I also have this printer and would highly recommend it. It's cheap and it works great.

[crazygringo]

Yup. There's a reason it's been Amazon's best-selling laser printer for... at least a year, I think.

[angersock]

Chinese printnet! XD

EDIT:

Stupid comment... Brother Industries is actually a Japanese company. Learn something new every day.

[Gracana]

This probably isn't quite in the spirit of what you're asking, but I like old laser printers. You can get an HP LaserJet 4m for less than $75 just about anywhere, the toner cartridges are less than $50 and will probably outlast any basic needs you have, and if it has any problems it's easy enough to clean and replacement rubber rollers can be purchased cheaply. The service manual is even freely available and it describes the device's theory of operation. Cool!

[voltagex_]

The only thing is that the 4M and 5M probably use a large amount of power compared to their modern counterparts - anyone got any measurements?

You should be able to throw most dialects of PCL and PostScript at those printers and they'll work fine, so this fits the GP's requirements (not having 500mb of software)

Anyone know how to make Windows speak PostScript?

[Gracana]

Yep, printer drivers are already available in Windows, which is nice. According to the manual, the 4m uses 195W when printing, and 55W in standby. The 5m is 300/80, and 22W in "power save" mode. I'm guessing that's a mode where the fuser is fully cooled off, so it's probably slow to spool up if you enable that.

[oomkiller]

Older laser printers with network support is what I prefer. No drivers, just point postscript at its IP address and go. Some have weird gotchas on Linux, so try for older HPs. Don't mind their age, they're built to last and 2D printing technology hasn't changed much in years.

[allegory]

Bought an HP DeskJet 2540 for £39 for home. Has WiFi, colour, a scanner and just works over the LAN without any effort so is probably the opposite to what you desire.

However I've lost count of the number of times the scanner/copier has been useful even though I didn't want that bit to start with and the WiFi actually makes it easier to use. No more finding that USB cable.

It's the peak of value to be honest and a worthy trade off.

[ghshephard]

I don't think I've ever used a scanner since the camera became half decent on the iPhone. Even when I have 40 pages of text to scan, it's more straightforward to just snap it from my desk than to walk the 50' or so to the $8000 scanning/printer we have in the office. And, when I'm in the field - well, you get the idea.

I guess if I was scanning hundreds of pages, It would probably be worthwhile to use a desktop scanner, but for 40 pages or less - smart phone camera wins every time.

[Steuard]

Everyone has their own priorities and processes. For me, being able to throw half a dozen pages into a document feeder and get a small, good-quality PDF in my email a minute later is a big step up from the effort I used to put into assembling image files into multi-page online resources for my students.

What do you do to minimize irritants like uneven margins and wonky viewing angles? (Every time I've photographed printed pages, I've wound up feeling stuck with a bunch of work to make the output actually look reasonable.)

[Stratoscope]

> What do you do to minimize irritants like uneven margins and wonky viewing angles?

My favorite solution: CamScanner. It's one of the apps I use most on my Android phone, and is available on iOS too. There's a free version and a Pro version for $5. I don't know the differences offhand, but I bought the Pro version without a second thought after trying the free one.

It autodetects the edges of your document and crops and deskews it, and then enhances the color/brightness/contrast for readability. It will do this automatically or you can adjust the cropping and enhancement manually.

For more intensive cleaning up of scans (either from a camera or a scanner), there's a wonderful open source app called Scan Tailor:

http://scantailor.org/

A few months ago I scanned an old manual for the SIMPL (Systems IMPLementation) language we developed and used at Tymshare in the '70s. It was a photocopy of an original manual with most of the pages skewed a bit one way or the other, and dark speckles all over the place.

I cut off the binding (lucky for me it was Velobind so I just cut off the back strip with a knife and had it re-bound at Kinko's when done) and ran the pages through my Brother MFC-9070cdw at 600 dpi. Scan Tailor took the page images and deskewed them, removed the speckles and generally cleaned things up. There were one or two pages where I made some manual adjustments - and also I turned off the feature where it zooms the page to fit just the text on it since I wanted the text to be the same size on all pages. Other than that I just let it do its thing and the result was pretty nice - the PDF looks much better than the original manual!

[aaronbrethorst]

I bought a scanner earlier this year, but I use it exclusively for scanning film negatives. (and positives on occasion; slide film is gorgeous!)

I also bought a dedicated semi-pro photo printer last year. A full load of ink costs me $120 for 8 itty bitty tanks.

[agumonkey]

Just saw this http://deals.kinja.com/this-wireless-laser-printer-will-make... Not trying to promote anybody, just read the comments. There are some people happy. I've rarely associated happiness and printers.

[blumentopf]

Apple LaserWriter 16/600 PS (1994)

Got it on eBay for 1 Euro. Eats standard HP LaserJet cartridges that you can find on eBay for just a few bucks.

[smacktoward]

I use Samsung's ML-2851MD, an inexpensive black and white laser: http://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/ML-2851ND

Pros: fast, reliable, inexpensive to operate (I've had it for 4 years and have yet to need to buy a new toner cartridge), speaks PCL & PostScript out of the box so it works fine on Linux without any vendor-specific software, includes an Ethernet port so I can plug it into my home network, supports duplex printing (printing on front and back of a sheet of paper).

Cons: can't print in color. Really, that's about it.

I don't think this particular model is still for sale, but this $199 model from their current lineup looks like the modern equivalent: http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/printers/SL-M3320ND/XAA

[simi_]

Whenever I have a question like this I turn to The Wirecutter, they usually deliver.

http://thewirecutter.com/leaderboard/printers-2/

[mmanfrin]

It's been mentioned, but the Brother HL-2270DW. Only printer I've ever felt the need to evangelize. Auto duplex, very fast, wifi, unobtrusive. It just works.