Tech question

Have two iMacs at home: one on first floor and one upstairs in my office. Also have Mac laptop. Wifi strong enough to cover house.

Have two crappy HP cartridge printers, both on last legs.

Ideal is laser printer with Bluetooth that I can set on antique butcherblock (it outweighs our entire family) in dining room and print from all three Macs.

Seems entirely reasonable request to me, and I assume there are lasers with Bluetooth.

So the question is, what's the best value for a small business owner like myself?

Comments

[Kevin]

Good question. If you are near an Apple Store, I would ask a Genius. A setup using an Airport Express, which uses wifi could also work. The problem with BT is the limited range: only 30' of so.

[Craigicus]

Brother has a $150 laser (B/W) that has built in wifi.

Aug 2008 story - Price Watch: Brother HL-2170W Wi-Fi laser printer down to $79.99 shipped

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13845_3-10022134-58.html

[Alec]

Don't look for a bluetooth solution- it's range is limited.Use a Apple Airport

Express: http://store.apple.com/us_epp_215300/product/MB321LL/A?fnode=MTY1NDA0Mg&mco=MjE0NDc0OQ and hook up any printer that has a USB port+ Extend your wireless network and add remote tunes over the on board stereo output (if you have a stereo co-located wherever you want the printer.) You could even hook up the HPs in the meantime.

[charlie]

$120 laser printer with wifi. Very easy.

Or if you want to get fancy, get a color laser attached to an apple airport express ($100)

[Bob Kawaratani]

Hi Tom,

I think you mean WiFi, not BlueTooth. I have a Brother Inkjet printer that I network to my Macs (iMac, MacBook, Power Book) using WiFi. Works fine. Also, works fine as a scanner and color copier. I think that they have multifunction laser printers with WiFi (at least a quick search indicates that at least Brother, HP and Sasmsung do). Also, you can use an AirMac Express to connect either an USB or Ethernet printer (not to mention your stero) to your Macs. That way you chose from a wider range of printers. In any event, think about how often you print large number of pages. I have a light duty Oki printer which is very nice but tends to poop out when I print more than 50 pages at a time. Anyway, happy shopping.

[Jon D'Angelo]

Checkout Newegg.com

Easier and cheaper method would be setup the laser with one of your desktops (whichever is on all the time) and just share the print over your wireless network. Works great...

[BlackFlagQ55]

Not yet found a printer for home or small office worth the $$$. Closest is a Canon 8180c color laser. Pricey but so far not too much trouble. Brother uses a wireless Samsung CLP-315W

Good luck. Printing, while much advanced over previous iterations remains the Achilles heel of personal computing, IMO. And buy nothing from HP.

[McD]

Tom,

Apple's Airport Exress WiFi base unit can support a printer via USB and all those Mac's could print to it as an online resource. Cheaper than a new printer.

[Lex Bubbers]

Hi Tom, very unlikely that Bluetooth will cover your house. Better use the wifi network to connect your laptop/desk tops to a printer. There are many wifi enabled printers available. I use one myself.

[Deniz Durmus]

Two airport express routers, one connected to DSL/cable, and the other anywhere in the house to extend the wifi range, print wirelessly to any printer and stream audio from iTunes. Works great!

[Jeremy]

You don't say whether you want color. If so, I just bought an HP Photosmart D7460 that has wifi and bluetooth and that Just Works.

[Tom Barnett]

Very helpful.

[David Emery]

Why not buy a good quality (color laser) printer and hook it up with a cheap WiFi access point, configured as network extension (rather than as the network host...) I bet you'll get a much better quality printer that way.

I have a Dell 5100cn (a couple years old, I think the printer itself was made by Xerox), and I love it! Any good quality printer will soak you on cartridges, etc; best to pay a bit more for print speed.

My experience with HP stuff, incidentally, is pretty uniformly poor (especially on Mac networks.) But the printers are done by a different part of the company than a lot of their other stuff.

p.s. that Dell printer is hooked up to my all-Mac network, Dell even included OS X driver/PDD installer, to my great surprise.