Buy brother laser. It’s more expensive, but it’s worth it long term. They last a real long time and the cartridges last bananas and they don’t care about “official” ink
Straight up when I bought my black and white brother laser printer I got an extra cartridge with it because I didn’t expect it to last very long
By the time I finally had to swap it out I couldn’t find the extra cartridge I bought with it because it had been so long
Needless to say I’m 3 years and 500+ pages into the second cartridge and happy to have this clunky little printer
Unfortunately someone snuck someone from HP into Brother’s executive chain. They’re starting the fuckery now too.
I guess the only right thing to do is to buy used Brother laser printers until they all break… Such warhorses.
NGL everytime I move I pack my Brother Laser like fine artwork
Nooooooooooo!
Sadly this is true and even on updated software for old printers. I’m rolling back though. The old versions worked fine.
I thought the latest update to the new brother color laser added cartridge DRM?
So far, on my 5 year old brother it annoys me to but toner from them but had a “do not show this message again” choice to click. Happened with two messages and no more so far. They also added a thing in status monitor when it tells you your toner levels wether it’s official or not and that you should not official. So far it hasn’t stopped me from using it, but like every corporation I fully expect them to go full stupid soon.
This is what i own. Amazing printer
My Dell mono laser is also going strong. Haven’t had a single issue in over 10 years. Ink printers have been and still are a scam
This should straight up be illegal
No joke, like what the fuck is this? I bought the thing, and you can just disable it ???
That’s the issue, people won’t stop buying these things and then complain - selling a scam calling it a feature should be illegal and all these practices should be called out as much as possible.
Why nobody has made an open source ink jet printer design like reprap, I will never understand. The printer industry seems primed for disruption with all their bullshit and their half century old technology.
The accuracy required for the ink droplets just isn’t there for prosumers.
I can (and have!) built multiple extruders for a variety of 3D printers. Some of my own design.
Sadly, the tolerances for an inkjet are at least an order of magnitude greater.
I have zero doubt that a few clever hardware hackers could design an open source inkjet printer. But A: They’d get sued back to the mesolithic by every printer company with a patent. And B: the process would likely involve micro machining your own hardware.
I’ve just said, “fuck it” to the entire industry. I’m in my early 40s and I’m reasonably sure that my Brother laser will outlive me. And possibly the heat death of the universe.
Patents expire after, what, 20 years? I’d be happy with an open source printer based on 20 year old technology.
I’d take a tractor fed dot-matrix printer over my current one just so I could play with the paper thingies on the edges.
You’ll pay an arm and a leg for tractor feed paper though.
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…and now they get chains.
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Until a big company realizes the most profitable thing to do is take that option off the table
Probably because they wouldn’t be as profitable.
HP could sell like a tenth the printers and still make more money
HP is probably the worst big tech device company. Their products are shit, break quickly, are overpriced and econ students love them.
I bought an HP Envy, one of these convertible laptop thingies, when I didn’t know any better. The hinge broke about a month after the warranty expired. Repair costs (at a local repair shop, but still) were like 200€ because apparently I had to buy a whole new top cover for the damn repair to work
Anyways, I’m gonna buy a Framework laptop next because fuck going through that again
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econ students love them.
Why?
Consumables make economists happy because of all the repeat sales.
Spending too much money on bad products is good for the GDP!
I wish there was a cheap simple laser engraver that could just “burn” black the surface of generic bulk printer paper. As in an inkless monochrome printer.
A bit like How to Cut, Score, and Engrave Paper With a Laser but without the need to use dedicated laser cutter.
With the explosion of interest in 3D printing, machining and laser cutters, I’m just eager to get hold of a printer like that and forever give up on liquid ink and toners of all sorts.
This does exist and you can see it in almost every supermarket in the World: the ticket printer. And the tickets end up fading
Ticket printers use a special thermosensitive paper.
Thermal printer is the technical name.
I get the sense that everyone responding to this is completely missing the joke.
They mean laser printers, people.
No he clearly says no ink and no toner. Toner is melted onto the paper after a laser (now mostly LEDs) heat up a drum. He’s talking about burning the paper with a laser… Which would be interesting but really hard to do where a top layer is burned black without toasting the rest of the layers.
Pretty sure that’s how my receipt printer works, but it’s just one color onto specialized paper.
specialized paper
Thermal paper. Thermal printer.
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Maybe because they already have dot matrix printer, so that new type of printer might not be high in demand if it’s on the market today.
I have an HP printer now, Epson before that. Both are dogshit. When the HP eventually kills itself, as they tend to do, should I buy a Brother? I heard a lot of good stuff about it but have 0 experience with it.
I have a Brother DCP L2541DW. Bought it last year and has been working since with no hiccups nor drum change.
Regardless of brand, don’t buy “at home” printers. Those are straight up scams. Just buy office printers.
I have a Brother HL-2365DW. It’s a home printer, or maybe at most a home-office printer. I’ve had it nearly a decade with only two toner replacements. Being laser and networked solve the two biggest problems I’ve had with inkjet printers in the past, and those two categories are the main things I would strongly recommend to people when choosing a printer.
edit: I initially wrote “it’s not a home printer” (emphasis added here for demonstrative purposes). This was the exact opposite of what I intended to say.
I need to print in colour because I do papercraft :/ any tips?
There do exist colour laser printers, although I suspect if you’re interested in artistic printing their quality may not be good enough.
I couldn’t tell you what brands or models are good, but I’m sure some inkjet printers do exist in a less user-hostile business model. You just might need to pay a bit more for them up-front. You’d need to ask the opinions of other people in your hobby’s community for better advice I think.
Papercraft, it doesn’t have to be god-like quality. But better is… well better.
I will check it out! Thanks friend
I have a epson EcoTank printer and I really really love it.
The Ink is cheap and very good. I will never go back to cartriges.
Can confirm. Those EcoTank printers are awesome!
Interesting. I will check it out. Thank you!
I have had no trouble with my Brother printer in ~7-8 years of use. Of course, laser vs inkjet is not a particularly fair comparison, but I am still never going back to HP, Canon, and the like.
I need to print in colour, I’m afraid. Any tips?
In what way was the Epson dogshit? I’m mostly asking because I just bought an Epson printer a few days ago
It was a long time ago, so I can’t remember the specifics. But it was the ol’ asking for ink when it was obviously still full, bad software, unresponsivness and gradually getting worse and worse prints as it aged.
I’ve had a brother printer going on 10 years and it’s never let me down. I’ve changed toner three times over that time and each cart has never cost me more than 20 ish quid. No DRM carts, no jamming, no subscriptions just a printer that does its job. Even when it’s running low, it doesn’t prevent me printing, it’ll let me know it’s low then keep on printing until you can’t see the letters any more.
10 years ? Mine is around 20 years old. I slapped a Raspberry Pi on it to have it network-enabled and it still works like a champ. Never ever will I buy another brand.
my dot matrix never had this problem
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Do you realize a plotter is basically a large-format printer? And they don’t usually go below $1000?
Or just buy a cheap laser printer, probably a brother, that doesn’t have any of that bullshit.
Also AFAIK this is some HP program where you sign up for it as a service and they send you ink cartridges. It’s as dystopian as you’d expect:
Sign up & pick a plan. Choose a plan based on how often you print, not how much ink you use. Plans start as low as $0.99/month. Every page costs the same, so you can print high resolution photos for the same price as black and color documents.
Your printer detects when you’re low on ink or toner and automatically ships more when you need it.
Change or cancel your plan anytime with unused pages rolling over each month and extra pages cost just $1.
I’ve singlehandedly caused hp to lose thousands of dollars. People trust my advice and I’ve lost all trust in hp so I tell people not to waste their money on it.
When I got hired to take charge of the IT department, the first thing I did was phase out ALL HP products and then implemented an “Unacceptable and Barred Brands for purchasing” policy with HP right at top.
Thank you for your service
Unfathomably Based
Anyone have recommendations for MICR compatible printers that AREN’T HP? It’s the last HP product we have in my office.
Don’t buy a smart printer. Buy a dumb printer, then plug it into a raspberry pi.
Radicalized by Cory Doctorow, the first story there called “Authorized Bread” is VERY relevant to this topic. Thats the future we might be heading into. Ugh.
bUt ThE FrEe MaRkEt WiLl TaKe CaRe Of It!
Love Cory, thanks for sharing!
I’ve been radicalized against HP for a decade now. I bought an HP printer with the guarantee of a sizeable rebate. Of course, the rebate never showed up and every time I called about it, the customer service person would read their script, “Oh we sent that out just a few days ago should be arriving soon.” Uh huh. Here it is 15 years later, no rebate check and I’m sure they never intended to send one at all. I’m not a fan of HP at all.
I recently had to set up an HP printer that literally would not function without being activated via Internet connection first, but was received with a dead NIC and no way to activate through USB connection so just another piece of plastic for the landfill due to greed 🤷🏻♂️
That’s the same as the printer I recently bought, and the problem is, my Internet connection is very spotty at best, and my computer doesn’t support the needed software. SIGH. My printer’s a paper weight until I can afford a new computer system and better internet.
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HP execs seething every time I use my old ass HP printer that takes refills and doesn’t complain. The ink never dries out either. This thing got no internet access, they can’t disable anything without literally breaking down first my door and then the printer itself. I hope they use sleep over this.
Shoutout to the real OGs doing those refills, they fill them more than new ones and sell them for half the price.And this is why I use laser printers
Fuck HP. They provided the tech Israel uses to control and surveil Palestinians.
I wonder if that tech is subscription-based too.
Well that explains all the blown up civilians.