Printer suggestion needed - for individual printers in office

Kenazo

Lifer
Sep 15, 2000
10,429
1
81
Our 25 person accounting firm runs a Windows 2008 R2 RDS with each user connecting from their own Windows computer @ their office/cubicle. A bunch of our users have printers on their desks - either HP P1505's or P1505n's.

We want to replace these P1505's because they have been nothing but headaches.

The P1505's were originally coming into the RDS session through the RDP client, but because of how 2008 R2 talks to Windows XP computers that caused 10 meg print jobs as soon as there was anything more complex than straight text since 2008 R2 turned every job into an XPS document before pushing it across the RDP client to the local computer and out to the printer, so we turned each printer into a shared printer on the local computer and added them as network printers from the RDS computer.

This works great, unless the power goes out. If that happens we have to run around and reinstall each printer locally to get the firmware to push to the printers again (stupid host based printers).

The P1505n's work awesome and aren't subject to that host based issue, but print jobs seem to jam in their print queues once/twice a week which necessitates logging in to the RDS as an admin, reset the print spooler and delete the offending job.

I'm sick of this garbage.

Where do we go from here? Does anyone make a small non-host based printer that we can have sitting at everyone's desks? A network printer is fine, but not needed. We used to have old HP 1100's that worked flawlessly for nearly 10 years. I want to get back to that kind of life! :)
 

DEFIANT!

Member
Sep 10, 2010
32
0
0
How many pages a month are they printing?

For individuals printing 2000pgs or less a month, the Dell 1130(n) printers have been a favorite of mine. Fairly low-cost/maintain, and easy to network (assuming that a network-optioned unit is purchased). Under $200 makes it a good, cheap b&w desktop printer that you can dole out to just about everybody, and if they break beyond their default 1yr warranty, it's economical to just replace it with a new one.
 

Lemon law

Lifer
Nov 6, 2005
20,984
3
0
Earth to Kenazo,

You are a 25 person office, now start using your office options. Its absolutely insane to have laser printers on every desk and then try to share them. Especially since the HP1505 is now a low cost consumable deliver laser printer.

If I were in charge of your office, I might think about one and only one low consumable cost and low purchase price laser printer at every desk, attached to only that one desk top computer. Then I would have one and only one high speed B/W laser that features very high printing sped and low consumable costs networked to every computer, and then I would have one and only one printer able to do color. And on top of that I would want scanning and faxing capacity on at least one office computer.

But losing networking printer software at every power failure is crazy and a huge black hole in office expense and productivity. Having one printer at every desk top means your people don't have to leave their desk at every print job, but to network all 25 printers together serves no purpose.