A month or so ago, I received a document that had been signed by the people who needed to sign it. I needed to print it, sign it, scan it, and save it to where it needed to be saved. I tried to scan it on Mrs. L.A.'s printer from my MackBook Pro, but I don’t have the correct driver or something. Mrs. L.A. scanned the three pages from her Windows computer and emailed them to me. I took screenshots of the pages and pasted them into a Word document, then exported the Word document as a .pdf file and saved it. So there was a solution.
The company president called last night and said my retiring boss said the company should buy me my own printer. He wants me to tell him what to get.
My requirements are:
[ul][li]Must be able to scan from a MackBook Pro running Mojave to a .pdf file;[/li][li]Must be able to connect wirelessly;[/li][li]A nicety would be for it to have the capability to scan multiple pages into a single .pdf file.[/ul][/li]
And of course, it should be as inexpensive as possible while having the listed functions.
I rarely print anything at home. I use the printer in the office when I need to print something, and that’s where I always scan to .pdf. (The pages are scanned, and then emailed to me.) So it’s not going to be used a lot; just when I need it while telecommuting.
My research about 3 months ago looking for an ink jet (not my preference, but lower $$ vs laser) with scanner (all-in-one) found that, at that price point, Brother brand seemed to get the best reviews and happiest users. She also uses a MacBook.
I’ve never owned a printer/scanner combo, but I’ve been happy with Brother laser printers for decades.
I will repeat the frequently offered advice in threads like this that if you don’t print often, a laser will save you lots of money in wasted ink over the long term, regardless of how cheap the initial price of the hardware is. Even when someone else is buying it.
I agree with the choice of a Brother printer but I’ve been all-in on laser for years now after dealing with clogged nozzles and the price of ink. If you’re okay with monochrome prints, I can recommend the Brother DCPL2550DW. I’ve used it many times for your specific use case and it’s been relatively painless. That’s as good as printers get.
Not surprising. Printers as a category tend to suck but I can confirm that the Brother MFCs are Mojave-ready. The only issue I had was the printer disconnecting from the wifi on my Eero mesh system. I had to turn off band steering on the Eero and all was well.
I’d also recommend Brother laser printers. Years ago, I bought a Brother MFC-L5900DW. It’s still going strong, even after years of alternating months-long periods of zero demand and months-long periods of constant use. This machine is one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.
As a side note, smartphone cameras have finally reached the point where they can serve as a scanner in most cases.
There are some excellent apps for this–I use Scanner Pro from Readdle. These apps let you photograph a document, apply simple de-skew by selecting the page corners, and then convert it to a really nice B&W pdf that looks exactly like a photocopy, before storing it in your favorite cloud service.
I use this app for photocopying tons of sheet music, and for copying receipts. If I had to print, sign, and scan a doc, this would be my go-to app.