Looking for a printer for OS X

I'm looking for a laser printer that will be used to print under OS X.

My old printer (Epson 5700i) is USB and doesn't work with 10.3, even
with the latest drivers. It never worked right even with 10.2 or 10.1.

My requirements are for a network poscript printer. I don't know if the
problem is lousy USB printer support in X or lousy Epson printer
drivers, but I want a printer that doesn't leave me dependent on
piss-poor support from 3rd parties for drivers. I want something that
will work with Apple's built in drivers without having to install
ANYTHING from any 3rd party. I don't care if that means I can't use
some fancy but useless feature that the 3rd party driver would give me.
I'm not interested in USB to ethernet adapters, or any other
rube-goldberg kludges or hacks.

I'm leaning toward HP based on my experiences with my mac at work. Got
the ip address, set it up to do IP printing in the Printer Setup
Utility, and it works flawlessly. Didn't have to install a thing.

I've looked at the Brother 5070N and the HP 1300N. The Brother also
does Rendezvous, which could be cool. It is cheaper than the HP, which
is also cool. I've never used a Brother printer, so I don't know how
well they really work.

The HP emulates poscript level 2, Brother emulates level 3. Does this
matter? They also both "emulate" poscript (instead of "real"
postscript?). Is this a problem?

Has anyone used either and have any positive or negative experiences?
Thanks.

In article <mark-D3D4DD.21090418022004 DeleteThis @nnrp.fuse.net>,
Mark Heiple <mark DeleteThis @tiredofspam.com> wrote:

 > I'm looking for a laser printer that will be used to print under OS X.
 >
 > My old printer (Epson 5700i) is USB and doesn't work with 10.3, even
 > with the latest drivers. It never worked right even with 10.2 or 10.1.
 >
 > My requirements are for a network poscript printer.

New, used? price range?
[snip]
 >
 > I'm leaning toward HP based on my experiences with my mac at work. Got
 > the ip address, set it up to do IP printing in the Printer Setup
 > Utility, and it works flawlessly. Didn't have to install a thing.

Yup, it's nice. If you end up going used or something, note that not all
printservers/ethernet cards support IP printing. Some of the cheaper HP
JetDirect cards don't, for example.
 >
 > The HP emulates poscript level 2, Brother emulates level 3. Does this
 > matter? They also both "emulate" poscript (instead of "real"
 > postscript?). Is this a problem?

I thought they emulated PostScript so they don't have to pay Adobe money
for the ROM. My department has a HP LJ 2100TN (with PS emulation), and
I've never had any problems with it. We print web-pages, pdf files (of
all sorts-mathematics, text in English, Latin, French, German, etc.),
word/wordperfect/various text files from Macs and PC's.
 >
 > Has anyone used either and have any positive or negative experiences?
 > Thanks.

I've not been impressed with HP's recent consumer-grade hardware. Their
recent drivers have been troublesome. I don't know that their stuff is
any worse than Epson/Brother/Lexmark, though because I don't work with
printers professionally and we don't have any lying around the
department.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->