Switched to a Brothers printer well over a decade ago that uses toner instead of ink and couldn’t be happier.
The initial WiFi setup was done straight from the printer using buttons. Never asked to install any driver. Hands down the best one I've ever had.
I also love it, and hvae set up the wireless twice on the machine, like you say.
They introduced recharging cartridges, dropping ink prices by an order of magnitude, while still keeping ink quality very high. Third party ink quality was always hard to predict, I prefer relying on the manufacturer's.
I'm happy with their approach.
The experience is different: Brother doesn't have any mobile app, which is an additional reason I like them.
As long as Brother will make printers that work that way, I will continue to buy them.
The app gave me much better experience by integrating with Dropbox, Drive, Evernote, etc. It's extremely easy to print/scan documents from/to the cloud.
Wired networks are so much better than wifi, so anytime I have walls/ceilings open for renovations, I always come in after the contractors leave to run some ethernet wires for future use. After a couple of renovations I've got some really useful runs for hardwiring some of the things I use most: TVs, printers, and an extra wireless access point in my garage for extra range.
A family member bought both an Epson and a large flatbed HP printer in the past few years. Neither of them work (recognized, but do not print) while my much older (over a decade and a half) HP printer does work including scanning.
Cartridges have chips and the printer randomly stops recognizing the third party ones. The official service provider told me it's the cartridges and the solution is to buy original ones at over 3x the price.
I am not a happy customer.
My vague impression is that Brother printers try to detect whether a cartridge is for the correct printer model, but not whether the cartridge is Brother brand. So long as the generic cartridge has a chip that says "I am designed for this printer", it should work.
(The worst they do is advise you on the website to buy "genuine Brother ink" because of the increased risk of jams, cloggings, etc with generics. Im sure this is overplayed, but its not an altogether imaginary risk.)
Is it possible that your generic cartridge is just crummy? There really are a ton of Chinese generic cartridge brands, and it would not be surprising if some are crap. Maybe try a different brand of generic?
Also, the last time two slots failed at once, or in a very short timespan (black and yellow). Unfortunately I don't remember which slot failed when it happened for the first time.
So, the data suggests it's the printer but as always, more data is needed.
This experience led me to permanently distrust Wirecutter recommendations, as they (currently and for many years) have listed HP as their #1 recommendation for both lasers and inkjets.
I wanted a networked color laser MFP that could be used from within Linux without proprietary binary drivers, i.e., needed to natively support PostScript and have PPDs available. I did not want to give HP any business given what it has turned into.
Canon has color "imageClass" devices that fit this bill. I wasn't able to find a Brother unit where the PPD was self-contained, but maybe I missed something. The Brother PPDs I was able to get from their site had additional filter scripts or binaries to which they called out. The scanning function works great on the Canon via the "AirScan" SANE backend (I use it in WSD mode). Third-party toner cartridges are available. I needed support on an occasion and found competent, pleasant, non-outsourced Canon staff via their phone support line. Pretty happy with mine.
Now that WSD and AirScan are popularly supported on business-class MFPs and don't require manufacturer-specific SANE backends, there are probably other choices worth looking at as well. Kyocera is another brand that seems to support first-class PostScript printing.
None of the examples highlighted in the comment I responded to should be required for ANYONE to print, not just me. Electronic versions of each of them are better, more effective, cheaper, and have less environmental impact
One example is all of the missing animal posters people hand out and distribute.
Also, QR codes providing quick access to some electronic info is nice, but you still have to print them. Also, random QR codes placed somewhere are not going to get scanned. You must also print other things along side them to give enough info on why someone should scan the code.
I feel like I'm just feeding a troll at this point
I remember not too long ago gas stations used printed cards to show the price of gas, now they use electronic signs...
I see digital signage systems that have QR Codes displays for customers to customers to scan all the time.
Menu Boards at fast food places have largely been replaced with Digital signs.
I really can not think of a single thing in the world that is not better in electronic form...
> you are not in a place to dictate what is best for anyone except yourself.
Make up your mind, when I speak of what impacts me then I am selfish and not considerate of others, when I speak for others I am talking out of turn...
You can not have it both ways
If your yearly volume is low enough (and specialised enough), you can come out ahead even if the price per page is relatively high.
Whatever you're printing will look 100% better/more professional if you get someone else to print it using commercial tools.
Printers are cool if you need to quickly print some black-and-white papers in a jiffy. But anything more than that (and even that) is never going to compare to getting it properly printed.
It's like filming video with your phone: it will always pale in comparison to an actual, video-oriented camera.
> Printers are cool if you need to quickly print some black-and-white papers in a jiffy.
Well not that long ago look what happened with disruptive scooter and ebike rental.
Those things piled up faster than landfills could handle it.
With printers billions were already made in the 20th century.
There are so many thousands of tonnes of surplus printers at any one time, a huge percentage of which have not yet been landfilled, that all I use are rescued printers and I'm in a business where the only deliverable product is paperwork.
Even though I am the pioneer of the paperless approach.
Anyway, recently things like the discontinued Brother HL-2270 series are more common as discards but have plenty of life left in the hardware.
When I got one complete with a couple new toner refills, it was a good time to add it to one of my paperless subnets. Printing which had been non-essential could then become discretionary and the actual cost per page would start at zero and stay that way for the remainder of the toner it had plus the two new cartridges. Well actually only zero compared to other printers considering the cost of the paper is the same.
I like this printer better than the equivalent HP's and Lexmark I have kept running in those offices still largely doing full paperwork output for each job.
When Windows 11 was released the Brother website posted a message having a positive outlook for compatible drivers to become available for download within a few weeks.
That did come true and it turned out better than anticipated since it was still just the same drivers that had been validated for Windows 10.
That's the kind of engineering I like.
Now they have a detailed list of all their printers supported for Windows 11 with a highly respectable array of discontinued models going back many years.
With the printer connected to a regular Windows network, wireless or not, you can fire up a Linux workstation and the printer is easily detected, although you may need to select something like USA Letter Size paper if the default is European A4.
Once again I don't recommend actually purchasing a printer when there are so many homeless needing adoption.
I typically always do. I have a 20 year old HP colour laser, but it is showing its age. All the praise for Brother printers on HN, somehow short circuited, bypassed my check-it filter.
Thanks for kicking it back in gear.
You get a choice of a deb or an rpm packaging the following blob:
> brcupsconfpt1: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux.so.2, for GNU/Linux 2.2.5, stripped
very uncommon use case...
lpadmin -p myprinter -E -v "ipp://<address>/ipp/port1" -m everywhere
Your Brother printer just happens to be a laser printer, most manufacturers offer them, you can buy Canon laser printers as well.
They’re usually placed in an higher price bracket, though, so the economics are different (printer price is likely not subsidized).
The brand has nothing to do with the tech, though. And AFAIK it’s possible to add chips to toners, just the same way as you can have chipless inkjets.
The article is about Canon inkjets, mostly consumer ones. You said:
"Switched to a Brothers printer well over a decade ago that uses toner instead of ink and couldn’t be happier."
So, you seemed (I may have been mistaken, but your statement was far from being clear and explicit) to make quite an apple-to-oranges comparison. First, you were likely comparing products from different price brackets, then, you were comparing products with different technologies.
How does the brand matter? But the first thing you said was "Brothers", as if it was the most important and relevant info. You really seemed to imply that "Brothers" is what matters here.
If you said "I switched from low-end inkjets a decade ago, now I use SOHO laser printers - mine happens to be a Brother one which I find great", that would have been perfectly fine to me. Or even if you said "Canon low-end inkjets are crap - buy low-end Brother inkjets and they're far better!" - all of those are great contributions. Yours wasn't.