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Comment by EvanAnderson | Hacker News Reader

Fed a diet of the necessary consumables-- toners/drums, fusers, rollers, separation pads, etc-- a 1990s LaserJet will outlive us all. For me, "peak LaserJet" was probably the LaserJet 4 w/ an integral JetDirect. The 4000 that followed was pretty solid and faster but more plastic-ey than the 4.

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Not surprising at all--HP in the early 1990s was still very much an engineering-focused company (both H and P were on the board until `93) that made high-quality, durable products. This was right before it got gobbled up by MBAs and celebrity CEOs, who spun it off into a hundred subunits hawking flimsy plastic trinkets and "business consulting".

I got an HP Laserjet in the late 80s for a computer center I ran at the University of Washington in Seattle. It was the best piece of hardware I've ever purchased. The clincher was the care with which they packed it and the simple instructions to take it out of the box and get it running.

I knew it was going to be great before even powering up for the first time.

What happened to HP is so sad. They made fantastic products, especially their high precision stuff. Those oscilloscopes still fetch a decent price on ebay because they're so dang good.

Up where I live there were a lot of HP employees in the LAN party scene pre broadband. Anyone would be frustrated and angry over layoffs, but what happened locally was a different level of disillusion and disappointment. It was brutal to just watch as someone adjacent, not going through it.

Fiorina got a lot of sexist nonsense thrown her direction, but at the end of the day, was still a terrible CEO. HP's capitalization grew by 3 billion dollars in a single day when it was announced she was on the way out. Markets certainly aren't oracles, but that's one hell of a shift.

Agreed. I used to have a DeskJet 500 which I sadly got rid of years ago. It had much better build quality than modern inkjet printers.

> This was right before it got gobbled up by MBAs and celebrity CEOs, who spun it off into a hundred subunits hawking flimsy plastic trinkets and "business consulting".

Indeed. Very sad.

I have a 15 year old Wi-Fi Brother Laser that is still going strong. I’ve replaced toners a few times and the drum once. I’m sure it will last another 10 years. They still sell a brand new model that is almost identical.

Would you have the model numbers for yours and the newer model? Thanks in advance.

I can perhaps give the model number of mine — it’s a Brother HL-2270DW laser I purchased in 2014, has wired ethernet in, wifi connection, and has been in use ever since. Most of the time it was on wifi and I can confirm wifi also works without any glitches or problems.

Brother makes surprisingly solid machines for their low cost. I've got a Customer w/ a few of the small Brother machines (HL-L6200DW) on a factory floor printing hundreds of pages / day each. One of the units finally failed w/ >200,000 page count. Being a ~$250 printer and I didn't feel at all bad about them throwing it away.

The 5mp was a straightforward parallel printer that fully supported both PCL5 and Postscript and was affordable. I think that was the peak.

Nowadays I get by with a P2015dn because you have to have Ethernet, and it suffers from the wake-on-lan issue but it's tolerable. I'm afraid to try anything more recent.

But the thing I miss most is that it used to be cool to be a fan of HP. Now that's just nostalgia.

I think it was a 4 that I had for ages. This was even in the days when taking something like this in to be repaired was still a thing.

Had a Samsung laser printer that didn't last long and have had a Brother for years.

Agreed on the 4, those things were indestructible. I had two in the office in IJmuiden, ended up donating one when our main HQ moved to Canada. Both the donated one and the one that I still have are still running today. Toner cartridges are still available, both the originals (a bit pricey) and lots of aftermarket options for about half the price of the branded one.

I fully expect the one I have to outlast me, the other is in a more hostile environment and might not, but it too seems to be doing just fine, print quality is still excellent.

Yep. HP, Agilent, then Keysight, which is the only good part left of the original HP.

I have a 4L but the paper feed has weird jam issues over time.

Check the alignment of the paper feed sprockets, likely there is some remnant of an old sheet of paper in there or a bunch of lint. You do need to maintain such a device over the longer period, it's not exactly magic!

I own a HP 4050N that I paid 5 euros at a bank bankrupcy in 2008.

Still have not changed the cartridge (apparently it is good for 10k pages).

I am starting to worry that all cartridge refill businesses will close before I need a refill..

A fun thought, but my HP LaserJet 4050N from ~1998 crapped out after ~16 years.

Ah, just out of warranty... too bad, really! But do not despair, you could probably fix it if you set your mind to it, or make one working one out of two broken ones, assuming you can find another broken one.

This was years ago. I went without for a while but recently decided my demand for color printing and scanning in my home exceeded my supply of cash needed to get a crappy injket. Even used color laserjets are hard to come by for mortal prices.

Keep an eye on bankruptcy auctions, those tend to have lots of good hardware which gets sold at very low prices. The more obscure the auction house the bigger the chance that you will score cheaply.

How cheap are you insisting on? Single function networked color laser printers are in the mid $200’s, new.

If you add a page fed scanner, you’re looking at $400-500.

Surely, you’ll waste $100’s on dried out inkjet ink and buying a new inkjet printer / scanner combo every 2-5 years.

Cheap laser printers, like cheap inkjets, use the cheap razor/expensive blades model, too (and leverage the popular understanding of the semi-knowledgeable that that is an inkjet but not laser issue to get away with it.)

watch craigslist and such. I got a brother 4040C N for $20 with full toner.

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