Quick (I hope) question for you up-to-date computer network experts!
BACKGROUND:
We have 4 printers in our little home office - 1 colour laser and 3 injets of varying specs. All of them have died (apparently with no hope of resuscitation) in the past couple of weeks. The only one that works is an ancient Canon Pixma (with FAX!!!) that we can still use for black and white.
Now we have a much reduced need for printing, we were looking at fairly basic colour injets, starting with Pixmas, since we’d had good experience with them.
When looking at the specs for such things we’ve noticed that most of them give WiFi as the only means of communication. We would like Ethernet as well of course, being old-fashioned, but USB will do at a pinch.
QUESTION
A few of the printers, while quoting WiFi alone as their means of connectivity, also mention at the bottom of the spec “Interface du matériel informatique - USB”. Since I understand this to be a generic term which could apply to connection with any sort of computer hardware (I may be wrong there) can I rely on it meaning that I will to able to connect it to a desktop (and then, of course, share it with other computers in the network)?
I really appreciate your feedback on this (plus, of course, any recommendations you may have)
That’s a bit ambiguous, isn’t it? I have seen this on a printer and in one case it meant that it could print an image held on a USB memory stick. I think @Corona is right - you need to go and look at them in store.
We went through a phase of printers failing, don’t think they liked the move! Bought an Epson ecotank, its got hard wired and WiFi connectivity and you dont need to worry about ink cartridge replacement.
We bought a Brother MFC printer about three years ago and it’s always performed flawlessly. It wasn’t that cheap like some are but then we wanted A3 support. It supports WiFi, Ethernet and USB. We’ve bought third party ink cartridges without any compatibility or quality issues so far as the Brother ink is a tad expensive. Of course if you don’t want a scanner (we did) then an MFC may not be suitable for you. Can’t really comment if other ranges of Brother inkjet printers are any good.
We did too, for the same reasons as you but it’s one of the ones that died…
I’ve looked at several since @_brian suggested it and the ones so far have a heading but a blank page underneath it. That was canon though.
That’s what I was hoping - no luck so far outside the very seriously expensive larger office ones.
We’re geeks Actually, the truth is that we have a network set up here with quite a number of bits of hardware but, apart from the Livebox, nothing really operates with WiFi
I’d be surprised if a modern printer didn’t have a USB connection, though they will feature wifi or Bluetooth connectivity more prominently in their advertising.
It’s normally a USB-B socket on the back that takes a standard USB B to A cable, or B to C if you want to print from a modern laptop that only has USB-C sockets.
I would weigh up if you really need colour printing - a black and white laser is going to be much more economical, without the faff of multiple ink tanks.
A machine with bulk ink tanks as Mark suggested is another option if you really want colour but do the maths on how many pages you print versus the cost of the printer and ink over (say) a five year period.
I have a 15 year old Brother mono laser that is still going strong (and would cost me about £100 to replace if I had to), and a Canon Pixma IP8750 colour inkjet that is also at least ten years old which I run on non-Canon ink, for the odd occasion when I want to print a colour photo or document.
If it involves inserting a cable, I know it is going to go wrong - I have a bunch waiting to bin beacuse of ‘incompatibility’ claimed by my iphone. WiFi was made for me! I am sure that walking around the house is akin to being exposed to a barrage of x-rays…
Thanks Chris. Unfortunately, we do rather need colour, even if most of our printing is back and white.
The very recent more budget-like inkets really don’t seem to have USB connections. Rather disappointing given our setup.
We had a couple of brilliant Kyocera colour laser printers, now defunct, and a collection of Canon Pixma injets, which is why we were looking at the Pixmas to start with.
Chinese cables off Amazon can sometimes be dodgy - Amazon’s own brand Basics are usually OK at a reasonable price, otherwise I have had good results with UGreen and KabelDirekt brands.
How about a basic BW laser and a small PIXMA to go with it? Probably no more expensive than buying an inkjet that takes bulk tanks, and you can still print even if one of them develops a fault?
(but I bet I am missing something!)
