help me choose a printer or fix the one I have

[mjremote]

OK hi there. I had an account a while but have lost the info about so started a new one.

 So here is the situation. I have managed to get my brother in law on pclos kde and things are going alright with the transition so far. I have been able to help him through a few issues so if we can figure this out he should be happy staying with linux and pclos in particular.

as part of the switch I got him a new printer. it is a hp photosmart 6515. For the most part it works with hplip with the following couple of exception which are important to them.  I cannot seem to get it too pick up the photo paper from the separate 4x6 tray. selecting 4x6 photo seems to have no effect on that and I cannot seem to find a option in the print dialogs to select that?  In a related issue if I try to load the 4x6 in the main tray it simply wont pick it up to print on. it tries but fails.  Also I cannot seen to get the scanner to function the hplip driver seems to recognize its there and will load xsane if I try to launch the scanner but then xsane will fail to communicate with the scanner.  There is a message that shows up about the failure and I cant tell you what it is specifically right now since I am not at the machine and he lives a fair distance from me. I have not concentrated much on that been trying to fix the paper tray issue first as the is what they want more than anything atm a good photo printer.

So my question is this does anybody have any ideas on the paper tray thing?

also if I cant get that worked out can someone suggest another reasonably priced printer <100 that does good prints and just works?  the only caveat I have for that is that the replacement inks should be available at walmart as any other store that has ink is about 25 miles away and they don't really order stuff online.

THANKS

[Just17]

Is task-printing-hp installed?

Has the HP Device Manager been of any use with the paper issue?

[mjremote]

ya pretty sure I used task-printing-hp to install the printer

no the device manager does not seem to help, I can pick paper size but it seems to have no effect on what tray it tries use


as a side not this was on a system that was fully updated as of a couple weeks ago and pretty much a stock install with almost no programs installed other than the base. and nothing from outside the repos.

I started another full update on it yesterday but his internet is so slow it was gonna take 3 hours to download them and I could not stay around that long.

[Just17]

ya pretty sure I used task-printing-hp to install the printer

no the device manager does not seem to help, I can pick paper size but it seems to have no effect on what tray it tries use

Under Print Settings - General tab, there is no selection for the Media Source or Media Type?

That would be strange indeed!

[mjremote]

there is a selection box there and I can select 4x6 photo paper just fine, however the the problem seems to be that I cant find a selection to say the paper is actually located in the secondary tray

if I put in a full sheet of paper in the primary tray and select 4x6 it does just what I would expect, print a 4x6 picture on a full sheet. for some reason that eludes me at the moment it wont pick up a 4x6 sheet from that tray if I do that it tries for a few seconds then complains that the tray is empty.

I will also state that it has a card reader and a touch screen and have been successful in printing off the card and from the secondary tray just from the card without the computer so I know that tray should work.

it has just seemed odd to me. heck if I could get it to pick up the photo paper from the main tray I would not even worry about it. 

right now my thinking is to get another printer work out any bugs here then take the printer to him and swap out. this is viable to me as I kind of need a new printer as well I don't need the photo stuff like he does

thanks 

[Just17]

What options are presented for Media Source?  also for Media Type?

[mjremote]

unfortunately I dont remember all the options it list. I am not there right now.

I did while I was there look for an option to select the photo tray but never found it. maybe I just not look in the right place

I will admit my linux skills are not that great and even with a gui I could miss something

also I did see that there are people on windows that are having pretty much the same problem as him(me I am tech support for pretty much my whole family it seems) so there is an outside shot the problem may be with the printer itself

 

[Just17]

unfortunately I dont remember all the options it list. I am not there right now.

I did while I was there look for an option to select the photo tray but never found it. maybe I just not look in the right place

I will admit my linux skills are not that great and even with a gui I could miss something

also I did see that there are people on windows that are having pretty much the same problem as him(me I am tech support for pretty much my whole family it seems) so there is an outside shot the problem may be with the printer itself

 

Unfortunately without access it is difficult to know

As you say it might be a problem with the device .....  or it could be some not finding the correct setting?

All I can say really is that the location for selecting those settings is available in the HP Device Manager .....  you might get a chance to double check

[MCP]

I have an HP Photosmart C6150.  All I can say is I have no problem scanning with it.  I have printed photos, but I use the HP programs in XP running in vbox.

That said I looked at the print dialog box and notice that there are 5 tabs.  The second tab "Page Setup" has a button to select "Paper Source" and in it you can select "Photo Tray".  I don't  know if this is the setting you are looking for and as I said before I have not used this feature in PCLOS.

For what it's worth,
MCP

[mjremote]

k thanks I will double check when I get down there again which should be soon.

the scanner thing I will tackle when I get the printing figured out. I know when I tried once xsane popped an error that said something to the effect that it could not communicate with the scanner. will post that too when I get a chance.

I know he would not deal well with vm's as he is not well versed in computers to begin with.