Laser All-in-one Suggestions

[ratdude747]

Re: Laser All-in-one Suggestions

^ When we fax, it's signed documents. That's the only reason fax still gets used- it's a "hard" enough standard that faxed documents retain the legal power of the signatures present, while scanned and emailed documents in most cases do not. When I bought my house, I had to fax a lot of things due to signatures... and likewise, there are a few paper forms left at my wife's work that she has to print, have people sign, and fax to HQ.

[Curious.George]

Re: Laser All-in-one Suggestions

^ When we fax, it's signed documents. That's the only reason fax still gets used- it's a "hard" enough standard that faxed documents retain the legal power of the signatures present, while scanned and emailed documents in most cases do not. When I bought my house, I had to fax a lot of things due to signatures... and likewise, there are a few paper forms left at my wife's work that she has to print, have people sign, and fax to HQ.

Yes, but a scanner coupled with a FAX modem (or internet FAX service) gives you that capability -- for those documents that must be sourced "from paper".

Granted, its an extra "thing" to maintain (as is the FAX machine). I mention it as it gives you an option instead of limiting your printer & scanner choices to "something that can do both AND also FAX".

We binned a bunch of AIO's yesterday because some part of each of them had "stopped working" -- thereby rendering the entire units "less than complete". They're just not worth the effort (for us) to fix, given that they'll be obsoleted by software changes NEXT year...

This is the appeal of my NetBSD based approach: it fares well with older kit as there is no real "driver" issue to update. Unfortunately, I haven't sorted out how to get the "push to scan" button to automatically fire up the whole process (and how to configure it to FAX vs. COPY vs. SCAN)

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Laser All-in-one Suggestions

^ When we fax, it's signed documents. That's the only reason fax still gets used- it's a "hard" enough standard that faxed documents retain the legal power of the signatures present, while scanned and emailed documents in most cases do not. When I bought my house, I had to fax a lot of things due to signatures... and likewise, there are a few paper forms left at my wife's work that she has to print, have people sign, and fax to HQ.

My Brother has a lot of faxing options, but I don't know about the other lasers they have. It'll show in the manual, if you're considering a Brother.

With mine, I can fax multiple ways. I can fax from the PC, instead of printing from the PC, I can receive faxes to the PC, or fax to email (as PDF, as picture, etc). I can fax the old school way.

We have a landline number and a google voice number. For the longest time, I had the google voice number forwarded to the house and setup distinctive ring. The Brother, I configured for distinctive ring. I gave the google voice number out as our fax number, and when anyone called, the house phone would ring, but differently, and the fax would instantly pick up.

There's ways to configure it also where they can enter a number to start a fax, something like *86 or something, and the fax machine will accept a fax then.

Fax is old school, but still needed sometimes I've noticed, especially in today's day and age, depending on what you're doing. I'm always leary about using free websites for confidential information. I'd rather fax something myself, if I feel it's important. Just my two cents.

[ratdude747]

Re: Laser All-in-one Suggestions

Well... I fixed the 1600n.

Decided to pop the back of it open... and low and behold, something's missing:



What's that? The jam-detect lever and spring. Found it sitting on top of the PSU/Input board:



Re-installed:



Did that fix it? Well, it does work again, but I found another issue:



Thank you sam young for a quality product

It's a size I don't have, so it will have to wait. In the mean time, I pulled the board, broke off a connector (which I resoldered before re-assembly), and found out partially why that cap blew up:



All of those resistors are on the 24V rail... Toasty.

Also, the board was covered in loose toner and bristles from the roller brushes up above:



I cleaned it out while I was in there, don't worry.

Now I just need to order caps and more toner, as she's back to life. Beats paying out the ass for a shitty all in one.

PS- I did find a Laserjet M1522nf for cheap and bought it... sadly, no 7 support for anything (I was able to get the vista drivers to work for printing but not scanning). The 1600n is a much beefier machine, so with it working it wouldn't have compared anyway.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Laser All-in-one Suggestions

Wow that looks really fucking terrible, what a design fail!

[ratdude747]

Re: Laser All-in-one Suggestions

Wow that looks really fucking terrible, what a design fail!

All of that is toner dust, not charring. That's the power supply for the fuser.

[ratdude747]

Re: Laser All-in-one Suggestions

And just as I finally find and fix the problem... this followed me home from goodwill today:






$15 wonder. Is it ideal? Hell no... no manual feed, slow print speed, and only 150 pages capacity in the one tray. Didn't get great reviews as a result (although it supposedly has good print quality?)

However, it is color, it does work (minus color due to a totally empty cyan cartridge, which I have on order), and best of all, it was only $15! Also the network scan either sends PDF's to email (like the massive ones at work), or save to one or more network folders (which works great for me, since I have a 2TB file server on the home network). This means that all my stuff only needs printer drivers, not scan drivers too.



The dell 1600n will still get recapped/refilled (found a deal on NOS Genuine toner last night) as planned and find a home elsewhere in the house (or just elsewhere, if anybody wants it more than I do (it's not exactly for sale, but trade bait if you're local or willing to meet me somewhere)... It's too nice to junk, even if it's from 2004.

[ratdude747]

Re: Laser All-in-one Suggestions

Holy Ancient Thread!

That said, I ultimately moved the Brother B&W workhorse to the office and replaced the printer cart with a smaller shelved unit that allows me to house both printers and a more modest 5 port 10/100 switch to serve both printers.

Network scanning works great. My wife eventually quit the job so they don't see much use these days. But I do use the scanner for taxes (like I'll be getting to next week or so).

The 1600N was given to my church to replace their old Canon copier the blew up (and I deemed to be broken beyond economic repair... maybe??? It's still in my garage!)... only for somebody to donate a brand new copier... it's been sitting there since. If I ever find a use for it, I'll probably reclaim it... since they've all but abandoned it. But since I have no use, might as well keep it there for a spare.