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Office Depot sells printers at very low (or even negative) margin, and then inflates the margins on cables, paper, ink, and warranty. If you want the best deal, get the printer from OD, and everything else you need somewhere else. That $20 USB cable they sell costs them $1 and you can get the same or better online for $2.68.
I appreciate the exact price of $2.68.
Why is this number everywhere?
Ask Jim Carrey.
Who in the world is using a USB printer in 2023?
Ethernet bby
Who is using an Ethernet printer in 2024?
Wifi bby
People who value their sanity. WiFi is unreliable.
Yeah, wireless printers can eat my refuse. I just spent a fruitless hour fixing my neighbours printer. Their crime? Restarting the router spooked the printer connection to the network. Shit system integration and poor documentation make this job needlessly painful.
I have a wireless Canon. Has worked flawlessly for years. Never had any issues. Replace the ink every now and again and it keeps chugging.
I believe you. We can make wireless stuff work if we really want to. My Bluetooth headset links with the phone perfectly every time. Attempt the same trick with Teams on a PC, forget about it. Wifi generally seems quite solid these days but if I get a choice I will use ethernet. It would have to be really bad to warrant going back to wired headphones but with a printer, meh. I don't walk around my house with it and run a few copies from the kitchen.
Same experience with a brother printer connected via WiFi.
I suspect you are single? Because I can tell you a partner will mess any wireless printer up.
Partner hasn't had issues either actually. Normally I'm in full agreeance about printers, and wifi printers. But this one has been solid.
Never had a problem with mine.
Eh, for SOHO users with a clear 2.4GHz space, probably works well enough. But for us IT people... We Know
If anybody has issues with your printers wireless connection constantly dropping. Try setting a static IP address for the printers wifi connection. I've fixed 3 wireless printers by doing this. My wife's work bought her a new wireless laser printer 2 years ago. Thing would lose its ip address every time it went into sleep mode, and it would only reacquire an IP address about half the time. Changed it to a static IP address, and now it always just works.
Who is using a printer at all in the 2020s? Fuck printers.
Who in the world would put a cheap blackbox in their household and give it access to the internet.
Selfhosted CUPS bby!
The reasonably new android phones seem to detect unix network printers now, so wireless printing works as well. Mostly... we're talking about the printers after all.
Those bastards like me that want reliability. I am willing to fight with the printer but not deal with the better half when that expensive shit box doesn't work
All the people who deal with an IT department that has a brain explode if you ask them to go off DHCP.
my highschool robotics club :)
we had a printer in our CAD area that we would just plug into whichever PC needed to print. it was pretty jank but worked, and that not the kind of thing worth spending money/effort on.
Same thing is true for a certain enthusiast PC store in the US except the margin is low on almost any high-ticket item.
Aye this is 100% correct! I used to manage a store in NC. Also none of the tech services are actually done by the associates. We just attach a USB with a program for someone else to fix it remotely.
I know I'm super late to the party, but everyone should know about Monoprice.com
It's honestly my go-to website whenever I need audio cables, video cables, PC/laptop adaptors, or even network cables. But they offer a lot more than just cables.
Let's say you need to buy a personal printer cable (USB-A to USB-B) at's 6 feet long. Office Depot's lowest price is just under $6. Best Buy's lowest price is $7.99. Staples' lowest cost offer is a bit over $3. Walmart's lowest price is just under $5. Amazon's lowest price (minus Monoprice items on the site,) is just under $7. Monoprice offers one 6 foot long printer cable for $1.99. And after adding the shipping cost for me, it came out to be $5.
This principle applies to many stores. If you shop at a mattress store the mattress pads are priced at triple the value.