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I'm going to keep my LaserJet 5 running for as long as I possibly can. That should be doable because it was built before Carly "Let's Make HP Suck" Fiorina came in and ruined everything.
If you do not try to print on cardboard, these things will still be printing when the last cockroach on earth died!
I was even able to score a JetDirect card on eBay for about $15 a couple of years ago, so it's directly on the network too. One thing that *is* good about modern printers compared to older ones is that Ethernet ports are always included.
Consumer-grade printers now also have wifi. I don't like that at all. Unless you're planning on having the printer on your lap while you sit on the couch, run a damn cable to it. :)
Yep, those JetDirect cards are nice, especially the fact that they are modules.
I got an old Canon printer without network connection a couple of years ago. It is rather a "prosumer" thing, lots of connectivity, like USB, cardslots and IR, but no network. My experience with Canon is, that they are not built to last, but this thing is invincible. I attached it to an AP with a 5m usb cable, so it is WIFI enabled now. It even survived the first AP, an old FritzBox (famous german engineering in da house router brand made by AVM) where it ran rather unstable and was only a generic network printer. We needed to power cycle that one once a month. Now it is an Airport Extreme and it needs powercycling only once a year, also it can be recognized as the real thing and computers use the proper Canon driver.
The thing with printers that are built with WIFI is, that they have some protocol for printing from mobile devices. If you have a linux machine, you could install avahi and get the same benefits, I did that and it works like a charm. You need a CUPS (OSX or Airport Extreme use that too) that has this printer added with the proper driver/ppd. Cups needs to offer the driver via avahi as a normal printer. You browse that info and generate a new avahi service file for that. There is also a python script that does it for you. Look here for an example: http://edoceo.com/howto/cups-airprint
My file is a bare minimum approach, it wasn't working previously with too much info copied from the output of cups:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
<service-group>
<name replace-wildcards="yes">AirPrint iP6700D @ %h</name>
<service>
<type>_ipp._tcp</type>
<subtype>_universal._sub._ipp._tcp</subtype>
<host-name>serverhostname.local</host-name>
<port>631</port>
<txt-record>rp=printers/Canon_iP6700D</txt-record>
<txt-record>note=Canon Pixma iP6700D</txt-record>
<txt-record>pdl=application/pdf,image/urf</txt-record>
<txt-record>URF=none</txt-record>
<txt-record>UUID=8ab3263d-9548-3087-7073-ee2e43627cc8</txt-record>
<txt-record>TLS=1.2</txt-record>
<txt-record>printer-type=0x901c</txt-record>
</service>
</service-group>
PS: It really is annoying that Apple does not just add this by default on the AP!
"Hyperconvergence is all about simplicity" is a vendor's way of saying "just buy everything from us and there won't be any trouble."
There is a bit of truth in there. And I'd say that Apple is rather good at that, but you have to embrace the walled garden.
MS and Google do not cover the whole palette, so it is an unfair comparison. But in the MS world, nothing is ever easy. And in the Google world, your convergence has a shelflife of 2 years, tops.
And in linux, you pay a high fee in the currency of private time to get any convergence at all.
So please, bring this hyperconvergence on! Now!