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I am having a hard time with this one, perhaps one of you has had the same requirements and found a stellar solution. For years I had an HP all in one with a CISS system. I print exclusively documents and have zero interest in printing photos. Recently my cat managed to completely destroyed the printhead by sitting in the paper output area, (lesson learned). So now I am back in the market.
Thats it. However in my hunt I've found mostly printers touting their photo printing qualities, and have limited to no CISS available online. I could of course go buy an older all-in-one, but then I sacrifice airprint. Any recommendations? |
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Instead of buying a printer that supports AirPlay, which will limit your search considerably, consider buying a printer from a brand you trust that has everything you need with it then using some software like AirPlay Activator, to use it as if it was an AirPlay printer. Not very many printers are AirPlay compatible out of the box, and those that are, are generally less useful/have fewer useful features (at least in my experience). Here is an article I found that should guide you through the process (you'll need to have a computer act as a middle-man but this can be done completely wirelessly). The article spells out all the instructions and fine details but essentially the software just acts as if it is the AirPlay printer and then when it receives the print instructions from your device it will pass them along to your actual printer. I've used it in the past and its always worked well for me. It should also be noted that this method does not require a jailbreak of any kind and will run without modifications to your iPad/iPod/iPhone. I had middleman software accomplishing airprint via my ubuntu home server. I have not had great luck with it as far as stability, uptime, ease of use. I would really like to get a printer within the narrow range of printers that support airplay out of the box. Airprint middlemen like aiprint activator require that you have a mac running. Which defeats the whole point. I want to close my macbook for the night, go to another room and print a recipe from the iPad, without having to monitor the whole system. For a middleman to work, its got to be on a home server. They may have released an update to fix that, I remember seeing some news a few weeks ago about it. I've used a similar tool running on Ubuntu with no issues whatsoever. I'll check into that and get back to you. Thanks much. If I had the rep here I would upvote you. Well I got the rep, so here is your +1! |
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I ended up going with this one: http://www.brother-usa.com/MFC/ModelDetail/4/MFCJ280W/Overview#.USBUMFrwL4Y and found it to be an excellent experience. The price is low with a focus on documents, (its not a consumer color printer pretending to be a pro photo printer), completely wireless, has excellent CISS support and AirPrint built right in. I highly recommend to anyone. I've been an HP user for years, but brother has made me a believer. Sweet! Hope you get a lot of good use out of it! I personally live AirPrint because it has zero setup and is very easy to use. |
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You can find a list of AirPrint compatible printers here. I have the HP OfficeJet 8500A Plus and it is AirPrint compatible. I love AirPrint because it works with almost every app and its integrated throughout iOS. It works very well. Have never had an issue with it. |
