I am looking for a new monochrome laser printer for home use. My main considerations are:
-Compatible with OS X, Linux, and Windows XP.
-Small and quiet.
-Low power consumption and consumables cost.
-Network interface preferred, or compatibility with cheap USB print servers.
Does anyone have any insights or suggestions?
As this has been covered before... I would suggest a Brother Laser Printer. I have had great success with a Brother HL-5040, which because it uses a CUPS driver, is compatible with OS X and Linux. I also used it on older versions of Windoze, and since XP drivers are available, I would assume it will print acceptably under Windoze. It has both Parallel and USB interfaces, and was at the time, available with a network interface. (Which I though was too expensive.)
The HL-5040 is no longer available, however newer versions of it are available. Cost per page is entirely acceptable and comparable to that of an HP. Any number of people here use Brother machines with success.
No laser printer is "low power", just because it takes power to run the whole mechanism. Some LED Printers do use less power, but they are rarely worth putting in a new drum unit, so they are a throw-away. Proper adjustment of the sleep mode, and making sure that a networked printer is not actually accessible on the Internet, will save you both power and paper!
I had a number of reservations about HP machines, especially at the cost of the machines I was looking at. For half the price I could buy twice the machine, and the Brother actually came with OSX drivers. If I was doing less volume of printing, I'd even consider one of their smaller laser printers, which would entirely do an acceptable job.
Some of the Lexmark printers are quite acceptable, but in order to get a printer that is inexpensive per page to run, you have to look at their larger office grade printers, which would, in my opinion, be out of budget for home or small business users. The smaller ones look cheap, but they tend to be a throw-away simply because of the cost of consumables compared to the cost of a new machine.
So I suggest checking out a Brother HL-5240 (I think that is the current model), or it's smaller bretheren, which I think is called an HL-2040?...