Multi-Function Printer Recommendation
 

Does anyone have any experience and recommendation for a multi-function printer for home/personal use? My must haves include high-quality black and white printing, scanning, and compatibility with a Mac (PowerPC G4 and Intel).

Added: From what I've read, the Canon's uses ink cartridges like there's no tomorrow, the Brothers' scanning software doesn't work well with Macs, and the Samsung's doesn't scan with Macs period. It's looking like the HP C7280 may have to be it? Added #2: Ok, never mind... C7280 doesn't work with Leopard. I think I'm pretty much SOL.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Have you considered a low cost laser multifunction? I have the Brother MFC-7820N. I know you said the scanning software doesn't work on the Mac so it's not an option for you, but I dunno if you looked at the B&W laser multifunction category or whether you considered it out of your price range.

I've been quite pleased with my Canon MP530.

I used to have HP products, but had a lot of compatibility problems (however I use WinXP, not a Mac).

I print a lot of photos, and have found the Canon color prints superior to my HP; also, the HP prints seemed to fade much faster than the Canon.

I bought this one as well and have been very pleased with it. It doesn't drink anymore ink than the Epson it replaced.

My wife uses a HP Laserjet 3050 multifunction printer and it is really nice. It's so nice that I just ordered myself one also. Officemax.com has refurbished ones for $149 vs. $299 for a new one. She runs Windows Vista and she had to get a new driver cd from HP, but once she got that everything worked perfectly. I don't know how they work with Mac machines.

I'll have to third the recommendation for the Canon MP530. Although to conserve ink I use it in conjunction with a cheap HP laserjet. The HP gets all the B/W printing, and the Canon does all the scanning/faxing/color prints as well as photo printing (does a great job.) I have no complaints.

Mac user here.

I would go to cnet.com, read through their reviews. It really depends what your primary uses will be, i.e. is scanning more important, is printing good pix the priority, etc. Macworld.com reviews are also worth looking at but with leopard, you shouldn't have problems with compability.

Some are great at printing but lousy at scanning. All obviously will fax in/out.

Mac user with an HP L7780. Only used the printer and fax, so far.

I would not buy an inkjet as you'll just lose your wallet on the ink. The startup cost on a laserjet is higher but the incremental cost will be much lower.

I've used Brother and HP laser MFPs and they both worked out well for me...

I have a several year old Canon MP730 which is a great MFP. In particular, the ink is dirt cheap because there is wide availability of not-refilled generic compatible ink for it so if you are paying for the ink I recommend any Canon that uses BCI-3eBK, BCI-3eC, BCI-3eM, BCI-3eY. The MP530 mentioned earlier in this thread and the MP830 use different model ink carts but the generic is almost as cheap as for MP730.

I also have a Lexmark which has great print quality but the ink is very expensive. My employer pays for the ink for this one so its not an issue.

Do the laser printers you used print in color? Were they a reasonable cost? I've just starte looking for one.

You can get consumer priced laser printers these days. I think the HP 2600 goes for about $300 or thereabouts. I have an HP 3600 (bought it a few months ago) which is the next model up and it has been great so far. One of the benefits of the 3600 over the 2600 at least when I bought it was that it came with full cartridges rather than half cartridges.

I bought a canon MX700 3-4 months ago and so far LOVE it. It took me less than 15 minutes to set it up on the home network and then all you do is install some software on each computer and voila - each computer has network print access.

Scanning works like a treat - I have recently digitized reems of paper files. Printing is pretty good quality. faxing (both from the machine and from pc on the network) seems seemless.

The only downside of it is that it doesn't do duplex - but that wasn't a big deal for us - YMMV.

I can't say I have noticed that it uses ink any more than any other printer we have used.

I forgot to mention that the MP530 does do duplex printing, a big plus for me.

Thanks everyone for your input! I think my best bet is to wait for the scanning abilities on these MFPs to function better with macs before buying one.

Actually we have a really cheapo Brother unit here in the office, and it *does* scan to a Mac. But it's a bit finicky. The software acts up and sometimes won't scan unless the computer is restarted. This was supposed to be fixed in one of the updates, but it seems it has not been.

I was eyeing a new low-end Canon laser unit for home, but the scanning on those definitely doesn't work on a Mac; not even sure the printing works. HP low-end laser can be tricky with Macs; the cheapest stuff doesn't have drivers.

Canon usually supports Macs, though, so maybe we'll see some Mac drivers for that eventually. The unit I'm thinking of is the MF3240 which functionally appears to be a good bet.

Currently using HP-6310 with MacBook and no problems. Project for weekend is to upgrade from Tiger to Leopard. OP says C7280 doesn't work with Leopard- should I anticipate a problem?

Thanks for this! It's 157.99 at Amazon right now w/ free shipping. Gets great reviews overall, too. I'm in.

most of these econo multi machines do not paper feed the images worth a damn. so you end up standing over the machine stuffing each page of your fax into it, and when you misstuff, you have to wait til the machine quits so you can redial and start stuffing again.

Just a quick update... I ended up buying the Brother MFC-7820N from costco.com. I love it!

I have the MFC-7820N for about a year (on a small home pc network), and am also very happy with its quality and price. It's about $200 now at Staples, which is a good price for a laser printer with an ethernet connection--throw in the scanning capabilities, copier and fax, and it is a real bargain.

The only area I wish improvement is the ability to scan into a PDF-I find that the file size is larger than what other systems create (this is probably a function of software, and I do knock the scanning resolution down).

I can't seem to find whether this one prints in color or not. Can you tell me?

It scans in color and prints in B&W. I went for a duplexing model, the MFC-8860DN. I'm very happy with it. They also have models with wireless networking.

I see. I'm lookng for one that prints in color. I know I asked before, but I'm more serious now.

If I were buying, I'd go with a Brother. They support the weird OSes I tend to run (XP Pro x64 for example). The one or two times I had to call for support they were excellent. HP has left me lacking drivers on multiple occasions.

Brother's color MFC line can be seen here.

I'd go for one with a built-in network interface. That makes the unit accessible to all machines without any particular one having to be turned on. I also like the duplexing option.

Looks like the prices for color laser printers is still too high for me.

Color laser is remarkably cheap. I recently bought a Brother HL-4040CN from Costco for $279. If you add that to the price of a fax/scanner you can see why the all-in-one units are still so expensive.

Maybe you're right. We already have a multi function ink jet. All we need is the color laser printer portion.