This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Yeah, locked me right into "brother laser is the only way to go, fuck inkjet and fuck HP."
100%. Bought a Brother laser printer about six years ago, only replaced the toner twice and the drums just this week.
Prints so much better than ink jet, lasts forever, no subscription to anything.
Can vouch for Brother. Amazing product all around. In a few centuries it will be a myth like Excalibur.
I have to add, the app is pretty decent. Not that it's fancy or anything, but it prints whatever you want. Open an image in a new window and share to the app. Bang. It almost always works without hassle.
The time for regulating these evil business practices out of existence is now. It’s clear they won’t do the right thing out of moral obligation, so they need to be made an example.
At the very least, no product (printer ink) should be legal to sell at a 2000% markup. Or design cartridges where you can't use up all the ink.
No, that time was about a century ago when the Great Depression hit and USSR was trying their hand at an alternative.
Our oligarchs, instead, thought the Austrian fellow had it going on.
While I don't disagree, there is also something to be said for being a savvy consumer. Stop buying their shit. Do your research. If people spent as much time researching their decisions as lamenting them, they'd be happier with their purchases overall.
I haven't paid for printer ink in over 10 years. I'm still on my starter cartridge for the laser printer I purchased that far back.
I’m in the same boat with my laser printer that I bought in 2014, but I still think we need new laws prohibiting predatory practices. Similarly, I’m savvy enough to successfully avoid scam calls, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think we need more regulation and harsher punishments for those people making scam phone calls.
Modern civilized society shouldn’t require everyone to be aware of all the new technological advancements that can hurt them. Our govt should be responsible enough to effectively legislate and punish the offenders, and we should not resort to victim blaming in the absence of such legislation.
Absolutely. But that involves being politically engaged. We have a government that doesn't serve the people because people aren't engaged. People spend time arguing politics but can't be bothered to vote twice a year. We have abysmal voter turnout rates in every metric.
Our presidential elections are the highest turnout, and even that is laughable, and that's arguably the LEAST important election. Mid terms are worse turnout than that. Off years worse still. And primaries, which I'd argue are the MOST important election because they let you change the core spirit of the two parties, have the worst turnout of all.
We need to vote.
Or, and bear with me here, consumers could wake up and not purchase garbage?
It's been plain for a solid decade+ that consumer inkjets are garbage and money pits. If people keep buying, why should HP stop selling?
Comes down to a basic question, "Does the government owe it to you to not hurt yourself?" Meh, sometimes yes, sometimes no. Crazy complex for a simple question, ain't it?
But if one can't be assed to take 5-minutes of research before purchasing a printer, seeing how fucked up HP and inkjets are, I can't help them, and it ain't the government's business to stop them.
Consumer protection from predatory practices is literally "government business".
What a horribly naive and flawed perspective.
“If people aren’t smart enough to avoid murders and not get murdered, I can’t help them, and it ain’t the government’s business to stop murders.”
Yeah, gambling, then lootboxes demonstrated citizens need to be protected from dark patterns. And their use by government officials (say by the George W. Bush administration) should be felonious.
Laughs in Brother laser printer ownership
I bought a Brother LH-23200 monochrome laser printer in 2016. The only times it has failed to print it's either been out of paper or the toner ran out. The toner lasts forever. And a box of four toner cartridges costs $26. It's the Toyota Hilux of printers.
I just switched to an old Dell LaserJet printer. Threw away my HP Inkjet MFP after they pushed a software update to lock out third party ink. I refuse to pay this stupid game.
Ignoring the disgusting mentality of leadership for the moment:
These are actually probably what the vast majority of home printer users (and a lot of small office printers) would want. The main drawback of ink based printers is that they dry out (and the rollers get dirty). But if you are printing even a few sheets a month, you get around that. And buying small amounts of ink makes sense for anything short of a medium/large office that is printing large numbers of documents per day.
Which is where toner comes into play. Laser/toner printers are awesome. They "never" dry out, tend to be enclosed enough that the rollers are protected, and are fairly cheap to restock if you buy large enough cartridges (and have a printer from the past decade or so). But laser printers are actually HORRIBLE for home use (and the environment) since they are basically aerosolized microplastics. And the cost argument starts getting messy for home users, but that is a huge rabbit hole.
The reality is that people need to realize that their local library have printers and they just need to bring a thumb drive and a buck. But... I am also the kind of person who has a laser printer next to his 3d printer (that room is fucked anyway).
We have a printer that appears to be setting a new trend? They are like inkjet in that they use liquid ink but they are tank based. The ink tanks are built into the printer and you buy ink in a glorified squirt bottle that you can dump into the tank via a fancy mechanism. We bought one 3 years ago and it still works today. It's still using the ink it came with (it comes with a lot of ink). If I don't print anything for a long time (maybe 4 months+) I do need to run a maintenance job but it starts working again after that. Seems pretty good to me so far.
The ink refills also appear to be reasonable cheap even if you buy first party.
I haven't owned an inkjet in 20 years. I will never own one again.
It's worth the extra money for laser. I just replaced my 1996 laser printer. I don't remember ever replacing the toner.
Oh, and it was smaller than most printers you can buy today.
Took an old HP laser from my last job. It's tiny and can't seem to break. Using it now for WFH where I have to print plenty of shipping labels.
Spent $60 of company money on 4x toner cartridges. Seems like cheating. I'm shocked when one actually runs out, can never remember where I stashed the spares. 1,500+ pages from one cartridge? Like I care.
(The wifi is a pain, interferes with (more noise) other shit and seemingly can't be killed. "Hey Google, turn on/off the printer." Small annoyance.)
I have an 8 year old wide format photo inkjet and it has yet to dry out or have issues with the rollers.
Pixma something something 1000 by Canon?
It's a pro 9000 mk ii. Quite a bit older than the 1000
I fucked up once and bought a HP printer. It won’t happen again.
Just remember this simple saying: “HP printers, no thank you”
Boasting about being evil. Nice.
Locking in customers is a sane, normal business practice. Sell razors cheap, get 'em on razor blades. One would hope said business provides a solid product, but what if they don't?
If consumers, after a decade or two, can't recognize how stupid inkjet tech is, what a money-hole it is, and what a clusterfuck HP is, why should HP act differently? 5-minutes of Googling would solve this issue for consumers.
"Buy a Brother laser." And we're done here.
Anyone who has one of these should be buying a Brother laserjet.
Louis Rossmann made some amazing videos about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACX_VfsjkZA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_XiaMzzZUo
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=ACX_VfsjkZA
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=J_XiaMzzZUo
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=oVWk9Zh82O4
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=nxDDXCo7bfU
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Hey, HP... 🖕
Office Space that thing!
I have a subscription because my parents bought me an HP printer, as soon as it breaks I'm getting a Brother
You could say it’s already broken 🤣
Cunts
I know everybody is enjoying their brother laser printer but I want to shout out an honorable mention to my homie Dell 3330DN who still works without any hiccups or repairs since 2012 and got me through all of uni. Never had to change the drum.
