The part of this that really makes me mad is that brother use to be the chosen one but they pushed a firmware update and now I have to pry the chips of first party toner and glue them into generic.
this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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Technology
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Once they get a taste of that market share it's hard for them to give it up. So they'll start doing this shit to keep people in their ecosystem. They make nothing on their printers and hope to make it up with ink/toner sales. So they want you on their brand.
Fuck printers, fuck print drivers, fuck toner and definitely fuck fax machines. Watching a nurse print something to fax it somewhere else, then for that person to scan it back in. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. All they do is generate waste.
honestly one of the things I had no idea about was how fucked up windows printer drivers were. I used to think it was just because they were all crap, but then I fully moved to linux and discovered that Microsoft is the issue! Printers just work in linux.
Hmm my 4-year-old $100 Brother printer is due for its first toner swap. Generic ones are $20 but Brother owns are like $75. I'm gonna have to see if this applies to mine.
Their bottle printers are bad?
I have an old brother laser I've refilled by hand a couple times. But when it dies I might just use the 5¢ printer at the library for the few print jobs I need.
A lot of libraries have free printing now. It's great
Luckily here in Kansas City the library does b&w printing for free.
Fuck HP. I bought a printer at the start of quarantine and HP bricked it when I opted out of their ink subscription service, so yeah, I'll just use my tax-funded printer instead.
Does anyone else think there might be a market for open-hardware, "not-enshittified" printers?
Clearly not, or it would have caught on by now. I've been using Linux for almost 20 years now, I've tried open hardware phones and e-readers. Not bragging, just saying I would be the target demographic here, but I've never even heard of a serious open hardware printer effort.
I would love it if there was a smaller company like Framework or System76 that made printers that weren't enshittified. Something with open firmware and hardware that also could be easily repaired. Or at the very least an open standard that existed for printers to use. I know companies like HP or Epson wouldn't buy in, but maybe some smaller players could join in with that if there was.
When people expect to get A LOT for very little, this is to be expected 🤷.
Buy a second hand HP 1100 1200, 1300, 4200, they'll last you a life time, but... nobody listens 🤷.
My first IT job, we literally had a team who got paid to fix the 4200 swingplate assembly. They wore down that frequently.
Wait, are we talking about the same printer?
These were beasts man, going through 40k pages withought a hitch.
Yeah, that and another model. It's frequent enough that there are videos on YouTube on how to replace it. That part would wear down around 30k pages, or once a month for our fleet of printers; there were several hundred of those printers on the network. Minimum 2 hours of work for that part. We went with Ricoh and Xerox for the next contract and the reliability was better.
Maybe, I've only had experience with a few of them, not hundreds... never had any problems with the swingplate. Feeder rubbers, yes, but that's a common problem on all printers, you just sand those down a bit and they work like new.
These can still be pretty good if used for home printers, 30K pages without a problem, that's a lot for home use. You could probably still get one of these for like $100 second hand. That's not a bad deal considering how good these things are.
Ricoh are great, but I've had bad experience with Xerox. Xerox used to be great, but they dropped in quality the last decade or so. Ricoh are still great though.
I've been using a Samsung black and white laser printer for quite a few years now and I've been happy with it. I put in a third party toner cartridge two or three years ago and it's still going strong.
I have a Samsung as well. It's quite old and in order to print I have to:
- press print
- wait for it to try and fail
- turn it off and then on
- press print again
- push the paper in right as it's trying to grab (otherwise it won't grab any).
If I don't follow all these steps it won't print. I bought a 2 pack of toner, though, so I am not allowed to get a new one until I use it all, which will take forever since I rarely print because it's such a pain.
Anyone have thoughts on a color laser printer? I’ve got a high schooler with the occasional need to print in color, but I’m not sure if it’s worth getting a color laser or just going somewhere to print for those odd jobs, and just getting a regular laser printer.
They are expensive. You'll want to set your driver to default all jobs to black & white and change it when you want to print in color. Otherwise a kid could go through them quick. I'd recommend just having it done at a print shop or office type store. I'd rather pay the few cents for b&w or few dollars for color than ever deal with a printer again.
I have a color laser but usually not printing color unless printing pictures.(usually because there are materials my son needs to use with BI, those print with color will be more helpful.)
I agree though we should be able to move to a more digital style. But paper are also still pretty good material to draw/write/play around with. (sometimes I print out the plans for paper craft or paper plane, and it's fun to do with kids.)
If the color printing is only for school works, then doing it in a printing shop cost less in the long run. (toner is expensive for laser printer as well. )
I have a black and white laser but am considering color for crafting purposes. But the B/W laser has done well for years and rarely needs toner.
Unless you're printing in color every day, you are absolutely better off getting a black & white laser and having the color prints done at a print shop.
I have been very happy with my Lexmark.
I have been very happy with my Lexmark.
I have been very happy with my Lexmark.
I have been very happy with my Lexmark.
For the past 20 years, I’ve used my B&W LaserJet for black and white work and sent any colour jobs to one of the local print shops. It’s worked out just fine; I’ve never needed colour work done in a hurry.
I'm not american and i can pretty much live without any printer.
I think it's amazing how well the tiny factories built with low-cost parts work. DRM is terrible but I haven't dealt with that first-hand.
My old canon printer is still going strong. 3rd party cartridges are very cheap.
Cool... But I am not sure how this adds value to the issue at hand?
With time old printers will break and people will be forced into these clown "ecosystems"
They still sell the Pixma Pro 100 line. It works with 3rd party ink still. Plenty of the printers on eBay for less than 200 as well.
And if you really want to go environmental, get a refill kit and a chip resetter.
I just got a cheap brother laser printer and the toner seems to last forever.
Since 1999 I'm only on my second Brother Laser printer. They are champs and 3rd party toner is inexpensive.
Don’t update the firmware. In 2022 they released firmware that blocks non genuine toner.
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