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Comment by thanatos519 | Hacker News Reader

Indeed. Who prints documents with inkjet?

I have a Brother MFCL3730CDN CMYK laser for document scan/print/copy and Epson EcoTank ET-14000 for photo and art prints.

A-fscking-mazing devices both.

Both provide (to be found somewhere in the maze of modern hardware vendor websites) solid (modulo CUPS wrangling and vendor filesystem layout) Linux packages. I've only had one recent glitch when Brother introduced some sort of USB/network bridge daemon that occupied the port so VueScan (Software so good that I don't mind that it's not open source, because it does exactly what I need and more. A work of art worth every penny.) couldn't find the scanner.

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Inkjets are tempting if you don't print many documents because the initial cost is pretty low. And ink cartridges also tend to be low cost compared to toner at the unit level. Laser printers take up more space too.

The problem is if you don't print a lot, the cartridges dry out, and the ink clogs in the printer and whatever else, leading to a big pain.

The Xerox Phaser solid ink printers produced really pretty images. It's a shame they are discontinued. I think you can still buy the ink blocks but they are probably going to phase them out.

That reminds me of a funny story. A previous employer had replaced a bunch of ancient HP LaserJets (we're talking LJ4s.. they were old) with these really nice Phasers. They printed fast, the output was gorgeous, and the drivers didn't suck. The replacement was facility-wide, so there were around 20 of these things.

A month later, IT was tasked with re-replacing them for everyone but marketing overnight. Literally overnight, as in, we're paying overtime for this. The boss didn't know what was happening until a week later, but it was a fire drill of an intensity that you usually don't see outside of a full outage.

It turned out that, while the Phasers do generate gorgeous hardcopy, the wax-like prints, can, with some effort, some skill, and a sharp knife, be popped off the page. A customer figured this out and had been effectively stealing service by way of paying invoices with numbers quite literally pulled off the page. The old Laserjets were placed back into service everywhere but the marketing group.

Haha true. They’re much better for photo and presentation than for legal documents.

I paid like £30 for used laser colour printer couple of years ago and I've been printing a lot since then. Never had to buy any toner or other maintenance products, except for paper.

If you print only occasionally, wouldn't it be easier to just use a print shop? Not sure how common they are in the US though.

I detect an opportunity for Amazon to introduce Prime Printing with same day shipping.

Before I bought a laser printer, I used to just go to the library to print things, at least document-wise (probably wouldn't work for photos).

Libraries are literally everywhere in the US, they're more common than McDonalds.

If your library doesn't have a print service you can use a Kinkos instead. It's more expensive, but if you only print once in a blue moon it's cheaper and less hassle than an inkjet (which will be all dried out or the cartridge will be empty from running the nozzle cleaning cycle every few days) when you need it that second time.

Laser printers can sit idle much longer but they're bulky and sometimes energy hogs.

Is library printing not a thing everywhere?

I've always seen it at every library I've been at (both school and public), but I suppose it might be more of a regional thing.

I live in Chicago and there's a bunch of FedEx shops a bus ride away. They all have self-serve pay-per-page printers, just bring in a USB drive with whatever you want to print.

On top of those, a few months ago I found a PrintWithMe [0] station at a corner store that's only a 5 minute walk away.

[0] https://www.printwithme.com/

I have the same Vuescan (awesome awesome awesome software) issue with my Canon MG6220.

It "generally" works over Ethernet, but occasionally goes off the rails, and I have to scan over USB.

Because of that, I have the printer installed twice, once on the Network (where it lives most of its life, shared) and once as USB, that I connect during really heavy scanning sessions, which is seldom.

People with kids.

I have $200 OfficeJet that has a free fax service that I need once in awhile and I use the instant ink thing.

Laser MFPs are expensive and the toner is super expensive. Brother lasers are great as long as you’re ok with 600dpi.

Aren't there 1200 dpi BW laser printers?

Yes, just not the <$90 models often recommended. Laser costs go up fast, and good color quality is a physically large unit usually.

If you care about print output and print often, inkjet will get you better value.

> Who prints documents with inkjet?

Most people print with whatever their employer/university has.

so true - when i started working at home full time 3 years ago i purchased my first ever printer

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