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Three Olives posted:If you are looking to bulk print labels, just do a mail merge into Word and use sheet labels. However for smaller label prints/one offs, a dedicated thermal label printer is worth every penny. The labels are cheap, thermal, require no ink, and you can get them in colors or clear. I don't mean like the weird label makers that print off little strips for expensive cartriges, like a Dymo LabelWriter. Thanks for the idea to use a thermal label printer. I will pass that along to see if that is a possibility.
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Jan 26, 2022 20:47
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Thanks Ants posted:If you check the Brother website there might be firmware updates available for it, which will do more to correct connectivity bugs than updating the drivers. With that said there's no reason not to update them. Sometimes firmware updates do also update DRM and mess up aftermarket cartridges if you’re using them.
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Jan 27, 2022 01:24
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Orvin posted:Thanks for the idea to use a thermal label printer. I will pass that along to see if that is a possibility. +1 on the thermal printer, brother makes decent units in the QL series which now have multicolor label options, just be aware that the label roll (and final output) on any thermal unit will get stiff over time due to the plastic degrading so don’t bulk purchase consumables.
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Jan 27, 2022 19:54
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Yeah, laser-based machines don't do labels particularly well because they need to apply heat to the label to fuse the toner, and that is always a crap shoot. And inkjets are all around terrible and smear. A thermal printer is way way better at labels, and they are usually cheap as heck.
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Jan 27, 2022 22:59
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Had another Altalink C8030 go into a deepsleep that can only be recovered by unplugging the power cable, powering it on at the tablet with the power cable out and then powering it back on, and then doing a software reload. And of course, Xerox have done something fucky to my laptop so I can't do a PWS software reload, the joys
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Jan 29, 2022 20:10
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On other manufacturers, such as mine, you can change the power mode in the settings so that the machine never goes into a hibernate mode and just stays in low power mode. It is a very slight increase in power usage, but it can prevent issues such as the above.
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Jan 30, 2022 01:08
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ShaneMacGowansTeeth posted:Had another Altalink C8030 go into a deepsleep that can only be recovered by unplugging the power cable, powering it on at the tablet with the power cable out and then powering it back on, and then doing a software reload. And of course, Xerox have done something fucky to my laptop so I can't do a PWS software reload, the joys I stopped working for Xerox in April of last year, but I had 200 C8030-C8070's in my account and never encountered that. No altbooting with a flash drive? Kinda surprised to see a software glitch on the altalinks, after the post code 5 glitch with the B8055's on release was fixed I didn't see a single issue on them. Versalinks, on the other hand......
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Feb 3, 2022 15:34
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We hae a Sharp MXC301W (or something close to that model #) purchased through some management company (instead of leasing though we paid for ink and servicing). The company got bought out by another. The new company dropped us a year later due to "we don't service this manufacturer anymore" or something like that after we had their tech come out and do a repair. Couple years later and a fusor is damaged/melted a bit I guess after having to print 600 pages (something we do like at most twice a year). Paper gets vertical wrinkles on it when things print through   There any good color fax, print, copy, scan printers you can just purchase when at most we print maybe 1000 to 2000 pages a month and need it more for copies/scanning to shared network folders (with a 50 page ADF being almost required) or am I better off just finding another company to lease something from/by some miracle get them to fix what we already have? I know nothing about repairing printers/copy machines MagusDraco fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Feb 7, 2022 |
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Feb 7, 2022 17:00
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MagusDraco posted:We hae a Sharp MXC301W (or something close to that model #) purchased through some management company (instead of leasing though we paid for ink and servicing). The company got bought out by another. The new company dropped us a year later due to "we don't service this manufacturer anymore" or something like that after we had their tech come out and do a repair. Never buy a mfp unless it’s for home usage, lease it every time.
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Feb 7, 2022 18:05
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SlowBloke posted:Never buy a mfp unless it’s for home usage, lease it every time. Would've been nice if we could have told that to my boss six or so years ago but oh well. So just find someone to lease a new mfp from. Okay then. MagusDraco fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Feb 7, 2022 |
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Feb 7, 2022 18:27
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A normal mfp lease runs 4-5 years anyways, so paying money to fix it is probably a waste. Far easier to lease a new or even refurbished(if you have to) machine.
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Feb 7, 2022 19:31
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It's tax time and I find I have to print sensitive stuff a couple of times a year, and also the same for scanning. I COULD take photos of documents instead of scanning but I'd like to have a scanner. I don't have access to an office or anything, but I have a house so I can set up a print/scan station or something. Our multi-use machine scanner/printer died (lol) and maybe I want to get a cheap scanner and an ok black and white printer. Is the OP printer still the One To Get? (after googling etc, apparently it's 350 and the newer version is 180, newer version being HL-L2350DW) And I assume I can just get like a $40 scanner or something? (googles: HOLY poo poo so 100 for the cheapest and 200+ for most?)
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Feb 11, 2022 00:59
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redreader posted:It's tax time and I find I have to print sensitive stuff a couple of times a year, and also the same for scanning. I COULD take photos of documents instead of scanning but I'd like to have a scanner. I don't have access to an office or anything, but I have a house so I can set up a print/scan station or something. A laser multifunction device is probably the best way to go, at least in my opinion. The quality of life improvement for me has been significant compared to the inkjet multifunction I had.
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Feb 11, 2022 01:04
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If you only need to print/scan a few times a year, go to a copy/print place. Probably easier and cheaper.
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Feb 11, 2022 02:33
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redreader posted:And I assume I can just get like a $40 scanner or something? (googles: HOLY poo poo so 100 for the cheapest and 200+ for most?)
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Feb 13, 2022 12:08
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I can imagine that discrete scanners might mostly fall into two categories now, business document scanners designed to feed reams of documents through fast, and artwork scanners for high quality art/photo reproduction.
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Feb 13, 2022 12:16
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Oyster posted:I stopped working for Xerox in April of last year, but I had 200 C8030-C8070's in my account and never encountered that. No altbooting with a flash drive? Kinda surprised to see a software glitch on the altalinks, after the post code 5 glitch with the B8055's on release was fixed I didn't see a single issue on them. Versalinks, on the other hand...... I've only had it happen a half dozen times in the three or four years I was on the road supporting them, and a simple full power drain usually fixes it, we just always did an altboot to clean out the software in case something was lurking. Later versions of the software simply go low power to sleep rather than low power to standby to sleep which is *maybe* where the glitch was happening. And it also turns out that it might have just been my laptop having a day as I did a reload on a different device with it and it worked fine
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Feb 16, 2022 10:39
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CDW posted:So, I own a Black and White Brother Laser, it's a good printer, it works like a reliable tank. Epson EcoTank is the way not to get reamed on the inkjet front, as far as I can tell. Costs more upfront, but then you're free to use cheap ink as long as the thing works
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Feb 16, 2022 12:54
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I would like a printer that can print 11"x17" stuff. Black and white is fine. Brother et. al make some cheapish inkjets-does anyone make an 11x17 BW laser? E: if there was a cheapish tank/no cartridge option that would be fine too Kaiser Schnitzel fucked around with this message at 17:39 on May 24, 2022 |
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May 24, 2022 17:24
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Apropos of nothing at all I just got that Brother laserjet linked in the OP and it's so nice to have a printer that doesn't spend 10 minutes cleaning the jets etc just to turn on so I can scan something or whatever. Printers are a forgotten circle of Dante's interpretation of hell but this thing is by far the least punishment I've suffered in a long time.
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May 25, 2022 19:37
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I have this old Panasonic KX-MB781 all-in-one black-and-white laser printer that not longer works with USB. Furthermore, it's a pretty lovely Winprinter whose driver invalidates itself after some time; I think various Windows updates cause it to require a driver reinstall, which definitely requires a reboot to properly complete. I was hoping to get a new multi-function laser that can: 1. Print color as needed, but most work would still be black-and-white. 2. Still scan from a bed or a feed. 3. Could be comfortably installed in Linux. Like, my mom has this Epson WF-3540 that I added for her "no problem" if you need some kind of benchmark. 4. Can also print from B5 paper automatically--not from a manual feed. I use B5 for my notebooks and I found I don't have a printer that supports it at all! 5. Height less than 18 inches. 6. Can host wirelessly. 7. Bonus points for duplex printing. FAX don't matter. I saw the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M182nw. While looking into this, I saw a lot of stuff about HP being fussy with their cartridges and/or requiring an account logged in to something to print. What the hell? I also saw something like the Brother MFC-L3710CW. If there's some magical new printer coming out within a year I should wait for then I can hold off but I am assuming sure this market is pretty drat stable.
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Jul 10, 2022 22:34
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Brother's linux implementation is about as good as it gets for linux, it's pretty much just CUPS drivers iirc, and they even support having linux hosts (ie your NAS) show up as targets on the scanner's onboard LCD interface as a "scan to host" target so it'll just show up as a file on your network share, etc. I won't guarantee it works plug-and-play in linux, but I've had it plug-and-play before, and at worst it will be no more complicated than extracting a zip and pointing CUPS at the drivers. Furthermore all the linux nerds have pretty much standardized on brother at this point so you're getting network effect of "that's what the linux nerds are running so any issues will most likely get fixed quick". If Linux is a serious consideration then brother is the way to go imo. I'm not saying no other brands work in linux but Brother is pretty much a cult among nerds at this point and it's for good reason, it's as close to zero-bullshit as it's possible for a printer to get, brother is never going to be worse than another brand in drivers and especially linux drivers. Color laser is a very difficult target, you can look back a page or two and see the responses to me asking basically the same questions, re "I mostly want B+W but I'd like to check the box on having color capability". The short of it is that a color laser engine is a lot more complex so it will always be physically larger than an equivalent B+W laser engine - the "compact" ones you are also getting much smaller B+W cartridges with lower capacity and higher cost-per-page so it's not directly equivalent to a B+W in the same price range. For an equivalent one it will always be significantly more expensive (you can figure on ~2x the price) so you should ask yourself really strongly whether that's a box you absolutely need to check. They are also physically much larger - I see that's a checkbox for you. rtings does really good printer reviews (I seriously need to just subscribe to rtings already) but if you accept brother and scanning as requirements then these are going to be your options. in brother terminology C = color, D = duplex printing, W = wireless. Note that the 3770CDW is where you get duplex scanning, that's a separate feature and if you care about things like scanning both sides of a bill, you want duplex scanning. The 3290CDW also only has a flatbed, no document feeder, so it's one sheet at a time. You don't have to buy from office depot, but the brother site is down for maintenance this afternoon so I can't look directly and best buy/amazon have a somewhat limited selection at the moment. Brother does tend to refresh their models a lot and there may be like, a 3700CDW and a 3710CDW and a 3715CDW that are virtually identical, compare carefully to be sure (sometimes they will change the toner cartridge to add DRM!) but they do tend to do "rebrands" quite a bit just to have something new to sell (or for specific retailers to have a unique model), for example I can't really find a difference between my L2700DW and the current L2710DW. You are correct that this is a market that moves extremely slowly, and actually beyond that right now laser printers are one of the things that has been hit pretty hard by shortages (better than a year ago tho!) since they're such complex/advanced products, so if you decide on something and it's actually in-stock then you might not want to hesitate too long before pulling the trigger. Best Buy has been pretty good with cycling stuff through occasionally and they usually have the best prices, maybe if you like one of the models they carry you might set a notification alert and pull the trigger within an hour or so when you get the email. Do check sams/costco as well if you have a membership, I see Brother printers in store pretty frequently but probably not the fancier models. They may have the nicer stuff on the website though. (w/r/t Canon MF743Cdw vs Brother L8900CDW that I was asking about earlier, I ended up taking a USB stick to Staples and doing some prints to compare and I didn't see a difference between the canon and the brother. So basically to combine the data from rtings and my completely amateur testing - there does seem to be a significant print quality difference between a "compact engine" (3000-series) and a "workgroup engine" (8000 series) even for simple clipart/presentation style stuff, but within a tier Canon vs Brother both seem to be similar. I didn't end up going for it after all, but, if I did, I'd get the L8900CDW for the combination of print quality, larger cartridges/lower operating cost, and brother drivers - but this is for me and I'm not space sensitive at all.) Be aware that much like inkjets, the "starter toner" is like 1/4th of a standard-yield retail cartridge so prepare yourself for a couple hundred bucks more expenses to come after a few hundred color pages. So this may tend to neutralize a lot of the difference of a "cheaper" printer - it's $500 for the 3770CDW and $400 for a high-yield set of the smaller toner cartridges, or $650 for the 8900CDW and $300 for a normal-yield/$500 for high-yield for the bigger cartridges. So the TCO-after-a-year isn't actually all that different for the higher-end printers - you'll make up the difference the first time you buy a set of toner cartridges and the bigger ones are cheaper to operate on an ongoing basis. In your case if physical size is a problem though you may not have a choice - the 8900CDW is a big boi and the 3770cdw is already 17" tall so it's not going to swing the flatbed open if you've got it stuffed in an 18" cubbyhole (actually you won't even be able to use the document feeder tray either most likely). Some people have previously told me that you really shouldn't buy off-brand toner cartridges especially with an expensive color laser (color is a lot more complex) and that they've seen it wreck printers before, but, also bear in mind the situation with third-party toner compatibility if that's something you care about... some brands have locked it down a lot more tightly than others, and sometimes newer models within a brand will change to a different cartridge so they can add DRM and lock it down better. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Jul 11, 2022 |
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Jul 10, 2022 23:26
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The above poster did an amazing job, but I will add that an 18 inch plus scanning color printer is a hell of an ask. I know that the printer company I work for makes nothing that size color, and even B/W would be tricky.
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Jul 11, 2022 00:50
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:I saw the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M182nw. While looking into this, I saw a lot of stuff about HP being fussy with their cartridges and/or requiring an account logged in to something to print. What the hell?. The cart thing is just a chip to validate the toners as genuine, i also don't advise going with compatible units since it will make the prints look poo poo(if i remember correctly m1xx have drums and ink in the same cart). The account is required for connected services or their managed ink product(where you pay hp a monthly fee to get toners and maintenance for that printer).
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Jul 11, 2022 06:25
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I set up my neighbor's HP inkjet. It tried to sign them up for the ink subscription service during the driver installation. (I said no, 'cause it felt pushy.)
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Jul 11, 2022 06:35
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Yeah that was a good reply. I measured this Panasonic and it's just a little over 12 inches as it is so I think I'm looking at much taller no matter what and shouldn't fuss over it. It had spoiled me in that regard . . . and only in that regard. I have to concede that color toner just fattens up the machine a whole bunch.
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Jul 11, 2022 08:48
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Not sure whether to post here or the Mac software thread, but I've got an HP M281fdw colour laser MFD. I have occasional problems where MS Word documents make it completely lose its poo poo. The printer will spool up to print, then crash and reboot. The screen usually says Code 79 service error, which when I research it says it's either a corrupt firmware or a dodgy DIMM (AFAIK I can't replace the memory on this printer and the code seems like a generic bit of HP speak). I thought it was the printer that was borked, but having done a few power cycles, updated the firmware and tried printing other Word docs of a similar page count and complexity (20 odd pages, no graphics or anything fancy) this particular file still makes it crap the bed. The other docs seem to print fine, but this one crashes the printer, even when I make a PDF of the document from Word and try and print that in Preview. Maybe there's some weird escape command or bit of data in there or something? Anyway, this is just casting a net to see if anyone has any experience of anything similar? (Moc OS 12.4 / Word 16.63.1)
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Jul 20, 2022 16:53
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HorseHeadBed posted:Not sure whether to post here or the Mac software thread, but I've got an HP M281fdw colour laser MFD. I have occasional problems where MS Word documents make it completely lose its poo poo. The printer will spool up to print, then crash and reboot. The screen usually says Code 79 service error, which when I research it says it's either a corrupt firmware or a dodgy DIMM (AFAIK I can't replace the memory on this printer and the code seems like a generic bit of HP speak). Can you test making a PDF out of that document, putting on a fat32 usb drive and connecting that usb drive to the front usb port? If it crashes that way too, the error is on the word side of things.
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Jul 21, 2022 14:04
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Bet you are using the wrong driver. Probably the Airprint driver, as that is what OSX likes to default to when it can't figure out the correct driver to use. Also OSX changed how printing works in the most recent major update, you may be needing just to update the driver package. Peachfart fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Jul 22, 2022 |
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Jul 22, 2022 02:28
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SlowBloke posted:Can you test making a PDF out of that document, putting on a fat32 usb drive and connecting that usb drive to the front usb port? If it crashes that way too, the error is on the word side of things. Yep, that crashed it, too. Tried printing it from LibreOffice and it did print, albeit by substituting Courier for some other monospaced font. Suspect that the problem's in the font or something? Anyway, I'm back to using LibreOffice because although it has a horrible UI, it seems a little bit better behaved in not doing stupid poo poo like this. Peachfart posted:Bet you are using the wrong driver. Probably the Airprint driver, as that is what OSX likes to default to when it can't figure out the correct driver to use. I seem to be using the HP Postscript driver. It being HP though, it installed several different apps to manage various aspects of the device, which makes it impossible to find a way to update it. That's good to know about the printing system update in MacOS. I'll investigate that a bit more. I suspect this is just one of those stupid things that should have worked but didn't. Thanks both for your help ! 
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Jul 23, 2022 12:53
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Adobe Acrobat Reader has at least in the past had an option for PDF printing that rasterizes the document on the computer instead of letting the printer do that. It generally makes printing slower (because it has to transfer huge full-page bitmaps) but it does work around almost any weird printer PostScript interpreter issue.
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Jul 23, 2022 13:12
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HorseHeadBed posted:Yep, that crashed it, too. Tried printing it from LibreOffice and it did print, albeit by substituting Courier for some other monospaced font. Suspect that the problem's in the font or something? Anyway, I'm back to using LibreOffice because although it has a horrible UI, it seems a little bit better behaved in not doing stupid poo poo like this. Word will try to keep fonts as defined in the docx file, hoping that the end user(be it another computer or printer) will understand them even if the computer is running on do not. Which might end up in issues when the rendering is done one the printer(postscript) rather than on the pc(pcl or whatever equivalent your printer make uses). Unless you work in professional print, i advise against postscript drivers if you can.
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Jul 23, 2022 13:21
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SlowBloke posted:Word will try to keep fonts as defined in the docx file, hoping that the end user(be it another computer or printer) will understand them even if the computer is running on do not. Which might end up in issues when the rendering is done one the printer(postscript) rather than on the pc(pcl or whatever equivalent your printer make uses). Unless you work in professional print, i advise against postscript drivers if you can. The HP driver has options to do with card stocks and things that I need for my work. What’s odd is uninstalling MS Word seems to made the Courier font disappear from my system. I thought it was one of the fonts that came with Mac OS, but Word ate it all the same..
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Jul 25, 2022 10:37
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HorseHeadBed posted:The HP driver has options to do with card stocks and things that I need for my work. What’s odd is uninstalling MS Word seems to made the Courier font disappear from my system. I thought it was one of the fonts that came with Mac OS, but Word ate it all the same.. Courier is an optional font on Monterey and higher, you can reinstall it using Font Book.
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Jul 25, 2022 14:52
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SlowBloke posted:Courier is an optional font on Monterey and higher, you can reinstall it using Font Book. Hm. It's not showing as one of the faded out fonts in Font Book. Unless you know of some mojo to get it back, I guess I'm using Courier New, which isn't quite as heavy and legible to my old eyes.
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Jul 25, 2022 16:32
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HorseHeadBed posted:Hm. It's not showing as one of the faded out fonts in Font Book. Unless you know of some mojo to get it back, I guess I'm using Courier New, which isn't quite as heavy and legible to my old eyes. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212587 It seems that simple courier has been removed, i misremembered being an optional download
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Jul 25, 2022 21:50
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I'll start this out saying that I've been HP biased since last century when I was an office tech keeping a fleet of HP 4100s running. My current printer is an 11 year old HP 2025dn which should keep working for a long time, except HP has only released a generic driver for Windows 11 so it looks like I'm losing features on my new computer. Also right now I'm using an old inkjet all-in-one that's sitting in a spare bedroom for scanning, which works but isn't ideal. 1. Am I actually losing access to stuff like duplex printing and the ability to print an occasional envelope from the supplemental tray with these generic drivers, or am I actually just losing HP bloat? 2. Does any printer manufacturer make a color laser all-in-one that is built like those old HPs, i.e. designed to be maintained by a person with hands? I've read RTings reviews but they don't mention how well they open up. Should I actually be looking at low-level enterprise stuff if I want to find user-replaceable wear items? I realize this is like buying a new car because it's out of gas, but if my printer's no longer being supported by the manufacturer I'd rather get a new one that does all the things I want than spend $500 on a new rack of color toner and keep running into the next room to scan the second side of a page.
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Aug 7, 2022 22:03
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I don't know the answer but if they still have the drivers for Windows 7 and up 64 bit on the website I bet they work
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Aug 8, 2022 04:32
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Tricky Ed posted:I'll start this out saying that I've been HP biased since last century when I was an office tech keeping a fleet of HP 4100s running. My current printer is an 11 year old HP 2025dn which should keep working for a long time, except HP has only released a generic driver for Windows 11 so it looks like I'm losing features on my new computer. There is a good chance the universal printer driver(PCL5) will cover all the functions of your printer and HP has pretty much stopped developing custom drivers for anything without a scanner/fax inside. Try checking if the universal driver works for your printer.
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Aug 8, 2022 08:13
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We finally settled on a Brother MFC-L3770CDW and I might as well be trying to buy the horn off of a unicorn right now. Office Depot wants to act like they sell them for $499 but they just don't have them at all anywhere.
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Sep 9, 2022 22:21
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