Suggestions for Printer Solutions for WFH

[MNussbaum]

As our WFH mandate has stretched on, we've gotten to a crossroads where we need to set many of our users up with printers at their homes. Our Mac users do not have admin access to their laptops, so allowing them to go out and pick up any printer they want (or use their personal printer) doesn't seem like a very good option.

We're hoping to suggest a particular model that will be easy for them to set up, install via Self Service, and use without need for IT intervention. That, or looking for ideas for making the process of supporting whatever printer they have easier on IT.

I'm sure many of you have already had to tackle this issue over the past few months, so I am hopeful for some feedback from our fellow admins as to what you have done to best solve this issue for your users. If there is a certain model of printer you've deployed that has caused you minimal headaches, I'd love it if you'd share!

Thank you!

[k3vmo]

bump. I'm trying to decide what to do in this situation as well. Much of our problem is that it can involve HIPPA and I'm trying to see if Forcepoint can monitior something like that.

[hrhnick]

I would recommend a list of printers that work fine with a generic driver that you want to support, and then make a script that runs on each machine and gives standard users access to add printers on their own.

/usr/bin/security authorizationdb write system.preferences.printing allow
/usr/bin/security authorizationdb write system.print.operator allow
/usr/sbin/dseditgroup -o edit -n /Local/Default -a everyone -t group lpadmin
/usr/sbin/dseditgroup -o edit -n /Local/Default -a everyone -t group _lpadmin

[bradtchapman]

Brother laser printers with WiFi support AirPrint and emulate PostScript very well. Many models support duplex printing. I’ve owned two and they are flawless on Macs.

[bradtchapman]

Here’s a model that will do copy, scan, and print.

Brother HL-L2395DW

I have the HL-L2380DW, a similar model that is just a couple years older.

The user interface is a color touchscreen; it’s very easy to set up on one’s home network and use common features. The lesser printers like the HL-L2370DW have a 1-line LCD display and require using up and down arrows to type each character of your network key. Major PITA.

For the above printer, there are MacOS drivers for 10.15 on their website now.