I have a Brother MFC 8950DWT monochrome dual tray laser that is my everyday workhorse - never lets me down, maintenance is easy, customer support is excellent, scans to/from USB, wireless and prints from my phone. 500 page trays mean I can print two copies of pretty much any set of docs without reloading. My backup is a Brother MFC L5700DW, monochrome dual tray laser with 250 page capacity.
I get toner from Amazon - I use V4Ink, 2 high capacity cartridges for less than $30, and judging by the print counter they last just about as long as the brand toner. I donāt get the automatic low toner warnings from the printers, but the quality of the print starts to fade when the toner needs to be replaced.
I always use Brother drums; anything else is too much risk for me.
I use a Mac system as well and never have been able to print correct, very frustrating. I finally ended up installing Parallels on my Mac which allows me to work thru the Mac and thru Windows butā¦it seems like a little more work at times. When you say you use a PC to act as your print server are you just using it to print or is it connected to your Mac? Does ANYONE work with the Mac alone and have any suggestions for a printer that works with it?? Iād appreciate any advice. Iāve been working this way for 4 years and contacted Mac, HP, Adobe, geek squad, etcā¦none of them were able to resolve the issue.
Susangh8, Iāve had several conversations with Brother support, all the way to Tier 4. The challenge is not the printer, nor our Macs. The challenge is with Adobe not building specific drivers for automatic multisize printing in the Mac environment. This is a known issue with Brother tech support and they have notified Adobe of this issue, to no avail.
BTW, I use Acrobat Pro and not the freebie Acrobat on my Mac. You will notice the Mac Acrobat print interface, does not include a selection to choose āPrint by document sizeā as there is on a Windows system. Yes, the laptop is used solely to print mixed sized docs with the freebie Acrobat app. It is connected wirelessly to my network, as is my printer. My procedure is to place the docs to be printed in a cloud space, then print from there via the archaic lap top to the printer. Works like a dream.Why Adobe hasnāt produced a patch for this known Mac issue is beyond me.
Since I am a graphic designer, and that is my primary source of income, the Mac stays, and the PC laptop is a red-headed step child in my office.
Page separator software is a half measure. Donāt do it. They require more file handling and manipulation and if youāre not careful things can get messed up. Besides, many times these files need to be put back in their proper order. That is time consuming, very tedious and prone to error. Instead, spend the money on a good laser printer. I have a Brother HL-5200DW, and there are many others who use Brother products that swear by them because they do the job. My printer is fast and reliable and uses VERY inexpensive toner cartridges with excellent results. It separates any mixed size document easily. Stay away from printers with small paper capacity. You will be racing around from printer to printer just to feed them.
Mine is by BROTHER WITH DUAL TRAYS
the way the doc is sent to you is how it will print
Some signing agencies and or title co donāt know how to email a mixed page document my ran about 800.
I have an Oki B431dn with the optional paper tray (Part# 44575714). I got the printer on sale at Costco for about $150 a few years ago and got the additional paper tray at Provantage for about $100. The printer
comes with a network card, wifi enabled and a duplexer (if
needed). The OKI toner can be expensive but I have had good success
with ebay toner resellers. I sometimes buy the prefilled 10K page count OEM compatible cartridges for about $30 on ebay or amazon but decided to start refilling my old cartridges with kits on ebay. This cut my toner cost in half to about $15-20 for the toner and computer page count chip that snaps into the side of the cartridge. I buy the 10K toner refill and the 10K chip (sometime together, sometimes separately). The Drum kit (Part#44574301)
needs replacing every 30K pages and costs about $50 for an OEM
compatible on ebay. The best part is the OKI support which is available
24/7 via phone and you always get a person in the US who will help you
with issues. This service is worth what you pay for the printer, to me.
Hope this helps.
