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+[[!tag hardware printer scanner]]
+
+# Quite new to Linux printing and scanning
+
+Once upon a time, I owned a slow, noisy dot matrix printer. Which has
+been dropped since a long time, as the specific ribbon cartridge
+was no more produced.
+
+I have long resisted the purchase of a new printer, for various reasons:
+
+* no substantial need for it
+* ink cartridge are expensive
+* another kind of electronic device in a house already full of them
+* I use fast printers at work, which all do fancy stuff: copying,
+  stapling, sorting and scanning; I feared being disappointed with
+  cheap home printers
+
+But at last Christmas, due to pressing requests to Santa Klaus, I
+finally succombed and went hunting for a printer. 
+
+The home/SOHO printer landscape has changed a lot since the dot matrix era. I
+fast figured out I could get for below £100:
+
+* a networked device doing printing, copying and scanning
+* all the above in color and at photo quality
+
+The networked printers mostly do Wi-Fi, which I don't use. The
+available choices are a bit more limited for wired ethernet. I wanted
+also out of the box Linux support, so this excluded the most recent
+models. 
+
+The current state of the art for Linux printer drivers is here:
+[[http://www.openprinting.org/printers]]
+
+For scanner drivers, look here: [[http://www.sane-project.org/cgi-bin/driver.pl]] 
+
+I finally went for the Epson Stylus SX515W, as it was available locally for £80.
+
+# Epson Stylus SX515W installation
+
+The Epson Stylus SX515W appears to be similar for all practical
+purpose to the Epson Stylus SX510W. List of features:
+
+*  printing, copying and scanning in color
+*  ethernet, USB and Wi-Fi networking
+*  slots for a lot of memory cards (CompactFlash, Memory Stick, SD and xD-Picture directly, other via adapters)
+
+The operation guide is quite terse, it shows you where the power plug
+is, but you have to deduce the place of the USB and LAN jacks, as
+these are not very visible from the outside. There is a CD with
+drivers, but it is Windows/Mac specific, so I didn't dig further. You
+may have luck with Wine.
+
+The printer has a panel control with an LCD screen, and it is obvious
+enough how to use them to define an IP address for your printer, so it
+becomes a device of your LAN. So far USB and Wi-Fi networking not tested.
+ 
+## Copying
+
+No need for a driver for that. The printer offers copy and photo
+buttons. The photo button adds crop and resize options over
+the copy button. 
+
+## Memory card
+
+Various options to ease choosing the photos to print from a camera
+memory card. Not tested so far.
+
+## Printing
+
+You have to install cups (in my case, the Debian cups package), and
+the Gutenprint drivers. In Debian Lenny, Gutenprint drivers are
+available in package cups-driver-gutenprint, but the SX515W is too new
+to be included there. So you have to install directly that
+[package from the Gutenprint project](http://www.openprinting.org/download/printdriver/debian/dists/lsb3.2/contrib/binary-i386/openprinting-gutenprint_5.2.6-1lsb3.2_i386.deb). Notice
+that this package is external to the Debian system; it installs in
+/opt and has a dependency on package lsb.
+
+After that, you can install/manage the printer via
+http://localhost:631, and printing will work. I was happy to notice
+that information like ink level is accessible through the printing
+options of popular applications (e.g. evince, mozilla, openoffice).
+
+## Scanning
+
+Printing is done from computer to printer, so you command it from the
+computer. You are ready to scan when you have put the document to be
+scanned in the printer, so there is a scan button command on the
+printer panel. That obviously will work only with some
+software installed on the computer where you want to send the scan.
+
+You have to install package libsane. Here
+again, libsane from Debian Lenny appears too old, you have to get the
+package for Squeeze. You can go ahead with this: it won't pull in
+only a few other Squeeze packages. So your stable Lenny system
+won't end up being half Squeeze.
+
+Then you will have to install a frontend to control the scanning
+process. xsane is the standard tool for that, it should come with
+every Gnome desktop installation. Starting xsane will recognize your
+scanner and offer you to start a scan with various options, and this
+will indeed work perfectly.
+
+But remember what I said before: it's more logical to start the scan
+from the printer. And that won't work. In scan mode (scan button
+pushed on the printer), a menu is available to choose the networking
+method; only USB is available there. So something is still wrong.
+
+xsane is not the only scanning application around; it got some
+competition recently from applications claiming to be
+[more lightweight and simpler to use](http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/Simple-Scan-Brings-Much-Needed-Sanity-to-SANE-71623.html
+).
+
+A final word about the Sane project: the fact that scanning can work
+through the network for some scanner models is not emphasized a
+lot. The possibility is even missing in the latest
+[Scanner-HOWTO](http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/Scanner-HOWTO/)
+from 2004.
+
+# Conclusion
+
+So far, except for the above scan button problem, everything works
+fine with that multipurpose printer. Only time will tell the following:
+
+* is the device robust enough?
+* the set of ink cartridges of all colors is around £20; is that 
+  fair for the number of printouts per set?
+* the device is indirectly promoted as good enough to avoid you going 
+  to the photo lab for your prints, as you have options for photo 
+  quality paper or glossy look; is this true, especially w.r.t. the 
+  previous point?