New Laser Printers

I’m needing to buy a new printer as my 20+ year old HP Laser Laserjet 4 has finally given up the ghost.
I’m looking at a HP M404dw A4 Laser Printer. It’s networked & has wifi.

I currently use an Edimax print server & RemotePrinterFs using PCL5. This has PCL5C PCL6 & PS3. I presume drivers would still work for this.
I currently can print from Linux, Windows & Riscos.

It also has wireless. I presume this is suitable for Airprint from an Ipad etc?

Any thoughts, other suggestions or recommendations?

Ta. Ron

Basically for printers I recommend to opt for Postscript using PS3 from Martin Würthner – an network.

I already had the case that printing with the “default” PCL the printer recommends to use the quality was in some cases crappy (even from Windows) whereas with Postscript it is just fine.

The reason for network printers is they are easy to share with other computers and with that in addition no need to worry on the USB side.

Basically for printers I recommend to opt for Postscript using PS3 from Martin Würthner

I second that wholeheartedly. Excellent print quality, reliable and fast.

Can’t speak for the specific printer mentioned, but Dave’s IPP stuff has certainly made a difference here.

I could always talk to the laser, it’s not documented, but throwing PCL at it via RemotePrinterFS to port 9100 gets pages output. It seems to understand all of the LaserJet drivers, but the LJ6 goes up to 600dpi so the output looks good.

With IPP, I can get colour out of my inkjet. It only supports 300dpi, but this is a printer choice so no IPP driver can do better. That being said, it’s an inkjet with heads in the cartridge. I have my doubts that the hardware is even capable of higher quality. Often the “1200dpi” is actually 300dpi (or so) in several banded passes. That’s how my Brother and the Canon did it.

Dave’s work also supports URF, meaning I can get pages out of the laser that way, and also get results from an ancient AirPrint-compatible HP thingy.

Since it’s sending a bitmap, it can output anything that can be rendered on RISC OS.

And it’s quite refreshing to have the Pi in the living room and the printer in the bedroom and stuff “just works”.

Okay, just read a fiche technique for that model of printer, and it supports URF (AirPrint) and PWG-Raster (IPP Everywhere) so it should work.

The info is here https://www.soluprint.lu/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/M404.pdf but it’s in French.

It supports PostScript level 3, so MW’s PS3 driver should work very well.

It supports PWG-Raster, so my drivers should work very well.

Wireless has nothing to do with Airprint AFAIK. If the printer is on the network, be it by wired (preferable) or wireless, and your Ipad is too, then you should be able to print from the Ipad.

I discovered yesterday that I can print from my Samsung mobile phone to my ancient Epson RX620 via the Linux box. It looks very much as if Mopria and IPP have a very large overlap, although Mopria printing standards are available to member organisations only, so I may have jumped to an unsound conclusion.

Thanks everyone for a speedy reply.

Ron