CT scan shows there's still lots of toner left in an “empty” cartridge
lumafield.com
lumafield.com
From what I can tell this is due to a rubber blade that cleans the toner cartridge's "drum" wearing out, which can sometimes (but not very easily) be replaceable. My guess is that while there's some encouragement of new cartridges going on, the print count is also at a lower number to prevent issues like it from cropping up.
I've also heard that as the cartridge goes through toner, some printers will increase voltage on the drums proportionally, which can be thrown off by resetting the toner level.
From a toner remanufacturing document: "When the printer senses a new toner cartridge, the bias voltage is set to a high voltage. As the cartridge is used, the bias voltage is reduced gradually down. This process is necessary because according to Brother, a new toner cartridge has a tendency to print light. As the cartridge is used, the density increases. To keep the density level even throughout its life, the density bias voltage is reduced accordingly. Each time a new cartridge is installed, the bias voltage is reset to the high voltage point, and the cartridge page count is reset to zero." [1]
Here's a visual of the blades if you're curious. https://youtu.be/UlB832MOUtQ?t=7
[1]http://www.uninetimaging.com/downloads/technical/TecArtWebAd...
My printer has no number pad. It has a horrible menu system you navigate with arrow-keys. The cartridge it came with was tiny - it lasted for less than a ream. But the replacement I bought is still going strong (I don't print more than a couple of pages a week, which is why I didn't want an ink-jet).
The printer works but paper feeder rollers seem to struggle now. I'm afraid that once it gets broken beyond any repair I'll have to get new which will chain me to official supplies.
ghacks.net [1] has published a news about Epson ending the laser printers production while focusing more on inkjet segment from now on, which as they claim are more eco than laser ones. One of the users in the comments says HP already region-locks their cartridges
[1] - https://www.ghacks.net/2022/11/29/epson-announces-end-of-las...
E.g., for Epson, that is epsonpfu.ebz.epson.net
Had a Brother laser since then (HL-3170CDW) no complaints, just works, toner lasts forever.
But I second Brother lasers - I have two for over 10 years, and they soldier on like on day 1.
You can reset it with some faintly annoying incantations, and I'd suggest doing so until you notice actual print quality issues. Especially on black.
The logic is... reasonably sound from a print quality perspective. "We know the cartridge can print XXXX pages of reasonable coverage without any fading/dropouts/etc. If the user replaces it at that point, they will never have any print issues." If your goal is "flawless printing," it's a reasonable enough path. It's just not particularly cost effective for the end user. It is, however, cheaper and more profitable than actual toner level sensor/mixing device/etc.
But, yes, there's a hidden menu to reset the toner counter on Brother, and in my experience, there's at least another 50% of rated capacity pages lurking in the cartridges unless you print very toner-heavy pages.
But you may also get a little toner on you or the floor, so beware.
It's exceedingly unreasonable for something like a small office printer to have people constantly reprinting things because the toner is almost, but not entirely out, so please remove the cartridge, shake it gently, etc. Remember, the paper you're spending on partial prints and the toner you're applying isn't free either, and people's time isn't, either. Neither is the carpet cleaning of the toner spot in front of the printer from people trying to stretch it.
I'll reset the counter on mine, give it a shake, and run it until I see any impact on printing, but as soon as I notice any streaking, I just replace the cartridge. It's not worth the hassle to fight for 100 pages of toner to me at this point in my life.
I know that Brother includes a starter cartridge that usually includes less than even a standard size replacement. They have high yield cartridges and I have only ever seen the bigger size in third party replacements.
The model I have is the 2270dw which was purchased years and years ago. The bigger replacements are rated at 2600 pages and standard are 1200. The drum unit can do up to 12000 and I don't think we've replaced that yet. I did reset it a couple times to get past the toner warning, it continued printing well into faded pages without issue. All it took was holding a button on the front while turning it on and then pressing the same button a specific number of times after initializing. The third party replacements are priced reasonably well in my opinion.
Annoying is sleep mode that cannot be changed. Printer won't turn on when I send print task to it. I have to turn on printer manually every time before print.
Do you think that applies to the Neverstop models? They have an internal toner tank that refills with syringes, so this kind of nonsense isn't really possible.
My HP LaserJet Pro 400 series m401n will keep printing even as the print quality fades, presumably due to actually low toner.
(This is running with CUPS and open source PCL drivers on the client, talking TCP to network passthrough to printer's USB, no HP-written software used off-printer.)
It's not like printer tech has improved much in recent years. I suspect a lot of what they're charging me for is R&D into how to prevent customers from using 3rd-party cartridges and a big profit hike to congratulate themselves for doing so successfully.
You just gotta make sure you get the right kit for your printer, as most have a chip in them that acts as a page counter. You typically have to replace the chip when you refill.
Some models like mine require you to melt a hole into the cartridge, there's no external access to the toner tank. Make sure to do your research and don't buy the cheapest kit you find. The quality of the toner does matter and will greatly affect print quality.
They basically all (but I will leave room for the possibility of a non-evil printer vendor) suck in a myriad of different ways from poor quality, to all the various dark/anti-patterns in both the original sale and the subsequent consumable sales.
If it is low and the page is faint that's fine for my home printing. I don't need HP to tell me to replace the cartridge. Caveat to that is that it is "only" black and white but then I've never needed to print colour.
They also support Linux so all the computers in the house work fine with it.
Over a decade in on my B&W Brother HL-something-or-other-im-away-from-the-desk. No shenanigans, just good printing.
Perhaps it’s generational but for me they’re in the same package as landline phones, it’s been years since the last time I’ve seen one.
I like to print out tickets sometimes - there's no battery anxiety that way.
I use it for shipping labels, notices to put up, government forms as they are not very digital here. Sometimes a hardcopy of something I'm organizing and want to scribble on.
Also tickets and boarding passes as backup for the electronic version.
I'm still on the toner that came with the printer (which is half empty to begin with!) years after buying it. I use laser because it doesn't run when it gets wet and because there is no ink to dry out with low usage.
For work we use QuickBooks Enterprise and it’s oriented to paper checks.
More interesting, some tasks are _faster_ when you use a paper print. I’m thinking of processing payrolls. You should verify before authorizing the processor to complete the run. I prefer to not waste paper and routinely verify the PDF on screen. But if things go sideways and I’m under pressure, a hard copy is the way to go.
Finally, I do my own vehicle maintenance, and a hard copy of the service manual page is good to have on hand.
I could go to Staples for the service manual pages, but for work that’s just a waste of time.
Then you just wait for the streaks to appear to know when you’re out. You can shake it to extend the life once that occurs. I’ve printed hundreds of pages after the printer said I was out of toner.
There’s probably some small quality loss but for text you don’t really notice if it’s not streaking.
As a consumer, naturally, you can almost always ignore the warning and use the toner until you can't even read granny's apple pie recipe anymore.
I spent some time maintaining a fleet of printers, among other things. Toner cartridges streak when they are near empty, and can be restored by shaking them, for a time. Shaking them more and more as they near the end. I can understand why you’d want a cartridge to report “empty” before it starts streaking.
I don’t really care about a bit of wasted toner, though. What I really want are more durable mechanical parts (gears, etc) and a ready supply of replacement parts like fusers.
I also wonder how the printer counts its toner “empty”. If it’s just a page count, surely it wouldn’t be accurate. I know that you can measure page coverage, but I wonder if they actually do it.
I’m also sure that they have no incentive to make the “empty” threshold more accurate.
The developer has fine metal particulates inside that "charge" the toner, enabling the toner to be pulled off of the drum, and onto the page.
Larger copiers have the Developer, and toner separate. However, the cartridge pictured is the full process unit.
When it does run out, I don't think it's due to wear or the metal particles being 'used up' in any way, but instead because a layer of dirt has stuck to the surface of the roller, so it is no longer any good at transferring toner.
Every laser copier/printer still uses developer. If you can show me a model of laser printer that does not, I'm all ears.
There is also a transfer roller in each copier, maybe that's what you're talking about?
I could be mistaken, but as recently as 2020, every commercial copier I worked on, still uses developer. I have never worked on, or heard of a laser copier without developer.
Magnetic printers, with magnetic toner, have been built [1] but never really caught on. It was one of those dead ends from the early years of trying to build a faster printer.
Somehow I managed to encounter, early in my career, the first CRT phototypesetter prototype (Harris-Intertype), the first electrostatic liquid printer prototype (Clevite-Brush), the Data Interface Magnetic Printer, the Teletype Inktronic (swept a beam of ink dots with deflection plates, like a CRT), and a Corning Glass display that used photochromic glass (write with UV, view in green, erase with IR).
None were successful products, although for a decade or so, electrostatic liquid printers from Versatek [2] were a thing. They used "dark juice", toner particles in a liquid suspension. A row of electrodes charged the paper, which passed over a liquid surface where the paper picked up toner particles. Then a heating station fused the toner and evaporated the liquid. Required special paper. Print quality was mediocre, but the devices were quiet and fast.
[1] http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/DataInterf...
[2] https://archive.org/details/TNM_Electrostatic_Printers__Plot...
In classic xerography, yes, the toner is moved around electrostatically. But it also needs to have magnetic properties (either intrinsically or by means of developer) to form a magnetic “brush” which is presented to the drum. Think of iron filings mixed with toner on a piece of paper and a magnet on the other side. The right static charge will be able to pull the toner out while leaving the iron filings behind.
PS
Blame/thank Canon. It's their mechanism and cartridge in the HP printers. Also some utilize Samsung print engines for A3 paper.
PPS
It's a testament to ink vs toner that it can remain functional after 10 years.
When we get a Toner Low message it'll then do about 500 pages before it reports Toner Out, after that print will rapidly fade. We can probably scrape 1-200 pages on Toner Out, but it's not good enough quality to send out.
Basically their Low and Out warnings seem pretty accurate in my experience.
Source: several years ago I was a teacher and a stupid student had the brilliant idea to open a toner in the classroom, took us forever to clean it.
Before I even started to use the thing I knew what to expect. Sure enough it starts to glow red after a ridiculously short period of time of using a brand new filter cartridge.
I’ve been ignoring it for a few weeks now and checking for any difference in taste of the filtered water but haven’t detected anything yet. I’d recently been wondering about how to verify the filter’s effectiveness somehow as I’m sure this indicator is less than useless and essentially setup to “lie” for profit.
There should be laws against this sort of thing. Any indicator that tells you when a consumable needs to be replaced should have to meet some level of accuracy in order to be legal.
So I just reset it and tell it there is a new one and it stops beeping at me.
Depends on your tank, see "how do I read and reset" https://www.brita.com/support/faqs/replacement-filters/
So for a filter, either 24/7 use or one time use then letting it sit (whichever is worse).
I'm not a fan of the blinking reminders either, but it's not a monitor it's just a flashing version of the "remind me in the months" wheel or whatever.
The problem they face is a hard one. There are really two timelines you care about, one is how long it stays effective, the second is how long it is safe.
The first one especially is highly affected by both usage patterns and the water quality you are starting with. With an inline system I'd sort of hope to have reasonable monitoring, but Brita filters are fundamentally passive devices, to do this "properly" your going to 10x-100x your costs, maybe worse.
A less cynical (than pure profit motive) take on the timing would be that the lifteimes are all based on some sort of average case for usage and (bad?) test case for hardness and water quality. I suspect they have to be careful in what they say about how best to adjust this without opening themselves up to liability, so they don't.
But given what we see the printer industry blatantly doing - I’m still cynical!
So using a counter until 64 would tell me to refill. All you need is a plus sign and some way to reset.
Now that I've done the math I might start writing this on a pad next to my refrigerator because I never have any idea when to switch the filter. Paper is preferable to electronics in my life.
What you really want is to measure the volume through the filter, but I can't think of a way to do that cheaply and mechanical only.
I don't recall whether it came with the pitcher or as a bonus item included in a filter-multipack. It just counted one "tick" on a ratchet per fill/empty cycle, no attempt to measure volume or fractional fills.
But it also assumes you go fill-to-empty. In my limited experience they are often refilled from partially empty, whenever convenient. If you are doing this on paper, maybe you should count output instead of input? More work though.
But, the better solution is effective Right To Repair laws that coerce a minimum level of standards and open design.
For example, if Brita were required to publish the parameters of that part, you would be able to more easily make an informed decision regarding replacing that part (either by repairing it, cleaning it, refurbishing it, or replacing it with one from another maker) without the tedious guesswork and reverse engineering.
Most of those folks make their money on consumables anyway, so then the manufacturers would Jack up the price on the main product and blame the legislators.
iirc Brita advertises the tracker monitors how long the pitcher is being tilted for, so there's some verbiage about avoiding doing certain things with it etc in the installation guide/manual.
I'm using these jugs for 10 years already and the quality of these dropped significantly. The older Elemaris line (with "probes") had more durable plastic while the newer Style (with silicone lid handle) already broke twice during washing. At leas the rounded sensor is more waterproof than the "probe" - that one I had to replace twice and luckily the local distributor send these for free.
https://www.brita.com/support/faqs/replacement-filters/
Brita® pitchers and dispensers have three different styles of filter indicators—Pitchers WITH Max Fill Line, Pitchers WITHOUT Max Fill Line, and sticker filter indicators.
Pitchers WITH Max Fill Line
The filter indicator lets you know when it’s time to replace your filter. It activates when the lid is opened for 5–8 seconds (based on size of reservoir) and measures water use by counting the number of times the reservoir is filled.*
Pitchers WITHOUT Max Fill Line
The filter change indicator lets you know when it’s time to replace your filter. It is activated each time you pour, and measures water use based on 8 fl. oz. pour
For the pitcher equivalent they document that the indicator is simply a count of the number of pours, where they assume each one is exactly 8 oz, and that the filter lasts for exactly 40 gallons. (i.e. turns red after exactly 640 pours).
For that one, they don't actually document how it works. They do seems to indicate they that they are trying to approximate water used though, since they say it turns red "once you reach 40 gallon[s]". It might be a count of activations of the spigot handle or based on timing how long the spigot handle has been open since last reset (e.g. they previously calculated the flow per second, and use that to count up seconds that up until they reach 40 gallons).
One way to test is using a TDS meter to see if over time the amount of dissolved solids increase. This is not a bulletproof test but it may give some indication of when the filter is saturated. Again, the Brite/PUR filters do not do much to begin with.
This video shows how the Brita filters perform compared to others. THey use a TDS meter. I do want to also point out that TDS is not the only metric for how good water is filtered but thats another conversation.
The premium subscription could include indemnity insurance in the event that the onboard-AI detects and auto-reports you for printing any copyrighted material.
Which is pretty much any material. Including material for which you yourself own copyright (but probably never bothered to register it).
During the pandemic it was especially helpful for the kids' school work. I went through 3 or 4 ink cartridges (literally thousands of pages of printing), but the 3rd party cartridges worked fine and not expensive at all.
A contributing factor could be that the best-before date on the bottles is in the past. Though I have no idea how that date would matter for filling up, and no idea how to observe it after the ink is in the printer and the bottles disposed of.
I’m pretty sure my Canon inkjet uses more ink when idle than when I occasionally use it to actually print something. Quite sad.
I do wonder where it all physically goes tho. After years of seeing my cheapo cartridges just “evaporate” whatever reservoir the printer has for cleaning the heads and purging ink must be well and fully saturated at this point?!
Of course you can order things printed online and shipped, but a black-and-white laser covers most of my needs there.
They used to be in some applications (like really big photocopiers). But toner is messy nasty stuff to deal with. Maybe refillable at a shop could work though.
This is the protip my living room wished I knew.
Advantages: waterproof print; very clean; easy to change ink blocks; maintenance was mainly just emptying a tray containing small amounts of waste wax (biodegradable)
Disadvantages: when offline, the printer still used power to keep the wax in a liquid state, otherwise a cold start could take a while; colors were occasionally not as vibrant as regular laser printers
Main disadvantage was the smell when it was warmed up. It had to be kept in a ventilated separate room.
It smells like slightly burnt, melted wax. Very much like a candle, including the smoke...!
I think they were meant for one-off proofs of image-heavy marketing material. The colours were intense and vibrant, in a way that no colour laser or ink-jet ever is. Also, the wax stood a bit proud of the paper, giving an embossed look. But they weren't very permanent - if you folded the printout you'd damage the image; you could even scratch the wax off with a fingernail.
These were expensive printers.
Beware that toner dust is really nasty stuff and gets everywhere, so however careful you are you'll still have clouds of toner dust escape and stick to every surface of your house inside and out...
Top tip:. Never clean toner dust with warm water. It will stick and become permanent.
The best thing for cleanup is a 3M electronics vacuum which has a filter that will trap that stuff securely.
Basically I'd still steer clear of them, but exposing yourself to them isn't a certain death sentence like say organic mercury.
You might also need to adjust the fuser temperature for non-oem toners
However, the internals of the cartridge will break down over time. Typically it's the "blade" that evens out the powdered toner that wears out, leaving too much toner stuck to the page and results in those gray-page prints and streaks/lines.
If you buy refilled cartridges, the blade seems to be the most common failure point long before you run out of toner.
Most times a company will lease several multi-function printers from a manufacturer like Ricoh. These lease agreements come with a certain quantity of toner replacements included or discounted. Most also include service agreements, because they don't want you servicing a unit you do not own yourself.
When you have one of these agreements, you are supposed to send the empty toner back to the manufacturer. I have no doubt at all that they refill these and sell them as brand new units. Honestly, it would be an absurd waste if they didn't.
So think of it as a "Blue Rhino propane tank" which are notoriously not filled to capacity from the factory either. They don't give a crap how much product is in the container to begin with or when you return it. They only care that you return it as that increases their profit margins.
it’s a shill article for their industrial CT scanners
You saved me from Big Imaging's clutches.
- how much medicine is left in your brown UV medicine bottles?
- where did that sock go in the washing?
- how many grains are really in your ammunition? ...
I'm looking to hang my CT scanner off the side of my apartment building as soon as I get committee approval.
Generically you use the initial equipment purchase as a loss leader and then profit by marking up the required supplies.
I'm surprised no one has disrupted the sad state of affairs in the printer industry yet even though it's slowly dying.
Are we looking for someone to sell an ink-based printer that will cost more up front than its competitors, and then willingly forego the revenue that comes from market ink prices?
but also to say that typically when my toner cartridges start to say "empty" or get a few streaks, all i have to do is pull it out, give it a few firm taps all around (think tapping a nail into drywall) and then give it a few horizontal shakes to redistribute the material across the drum. I get 100s of more pages this way doing it multiple times.
They use ink to clean the heads. They say empty when they’re not. The cartridges that come with the printer aren’t full. There is a constant firmware update war to defeat third party cartridges for obvious reasons.
Buy a tank printer that you fill with ink bottles.
Even the starter Brother laser toner prints for ages.
I did that with an HP inkjet - got me out of trouble until it ran out, then I replaced with a Brother laser that was half of what the ink refills for the HP would have been. Toner for the Brother is like 20 bucks and lasts for a couple of years given my level of usage.
Laser printers are far more cost-effective than ink printers, and there are even color laser printers with very decent color quality for everything except photos. (Ink printers are better for photos but even I think those look terrible compared to professionally-developed photos.)
BTW, a cool modern hack is converting a document to high-res image files and then submitting the images to the Walmart photo printing service or similar. The document will look incredible.
Except fucking Dymo did: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/worst-timeline-printer...
On plus side choosing which brand label printer to buy was very simple...
First you use a copper ring to melt a little hole in exactly the right spot, then scalpel open the bag inside, carefully pour and shake the toner from the bottle, all the while huffing clouds of pink and yellow and blue dust and then you find it’s got everywhere. Then you’ve got to use bathroom sealant around a plug in the hole. Then the plug is sticking out too far and you’ve got fade on one side of the page, so repeat the plugging step a few times.
The refill kit was £65. A new set of carts was £200. I’m still deciding if it was worth it.
My black cartridge is at 0% and has been for a while. The supply status printout says something to the effect of "Just because it says 0% doesn't mean it's empty, keep printing until the quality is unacceptable." I ordered a new cartridge about a year ago, but haven't installed it yet because I'm not seeing any quality problems. I don't print much though, so it'll likely sit there for another year (or more).
Sometimes I think I've singlehandedly kept one paper mill open with my current project.
E: With the submittals I'm preparing this morning, I expect to print just north of a thousand pages of documentation by the end of the day.
He takes stacks of paper. Running a 500 page ream through is a test. If it is something like streaking, which requires hunting down and cleaning up toner leaks and accumulations, he can run many many tests...
Feel not guilt for actual valid use.
Have craft-related hobbies? All the damn time. Patterns, instructions, et c. Despite having a shitload of iPads and extra laptops and such around. Paper's far nicer in many cases, and sometimes cannot be replaced by a screen of any kind.
My SO likes to bake decorated cakes. When decorating she prints out the design, so she can put the cut-out paper pieces on the cake to finalize sizing and composition of the decoration. Be it text, a symbol or something more elaborate.
Just so much easier than trying to imagine what that thing on the tablet would look like draped over the side of the cake.
No use for iPad though...
Sheet music.
Patterns.
Legal documents. There are still places that won't do esign.
That includes building Table of contents/indexes.
I print out pages of source code to do physical cross ref of when I get in some really gnarly code to help me physically reckon through the abstraction spaghetti.
I print invoices, letters, diagrams, books, pamphlets.
I mean, just because you don't do documents or have anything you want on paper, doesn't mean everyone else doesn't.
I've never owned a printer, they're Satan's own gift to the consumer electronics market.
Paper is also annoying to deal with. I've had an e-reader for 10 years but the odd older book isn't available. You'd think based on comments online that a real book is some magical wonderful thing, but they're an ass to use, heavy, large to store. Their only virtue is that they look nice on a shelf. But the other thing that looks nice is something other than a shelf.
It's not about the text being "real", it's about the UI of printed pages versus screens. You can use the space around you, and leverage spatial reasoning, better with paper. You'd need multiple really big, digital-pen-input-ready, high-res screens, plus some very nice specialized software, to come close to the same experience with computers—and still only kinda, for some situations but not others. Or you can just print a few sheets of paper at pennies per sheet and have a couple pens and highlighters around.
Physical paper is just another UI, and remains better for some things than screens are. Screens do have some advantages—you can't full-text-search the sheets of paper you have splayed over your desk or pinned up on the whiteboard or tackboard, of course, though given how good & fast OCR is getting, we might be able to do exactly that when AR eventually takes off. You can't have animations on a piece of paper. You can't back your paper up in the cloud. But you can also have ten pages visible all at once, with paper, and recall "I think that one part was somewhere to the top-left...". You can fold it. You can doodle on it. You can stuff it between relevant pages in a book. You can bundle related pages together with consistent ordering in a UI I that's quite nice for many purposes (AKA a binder). Put all those together and there are plenty of times printed pages beat screens (though, to emphasize again just to make this entirely clear, not always).
> Paper is also annoying to deal with. I've had an e-reader for 10 years but the odd older book isn't available. You'd think based on comments online that a real book is some magical wonderful thing, but they're an ass to use, heavy, large to store. Their only virtue is that they look nice on a shelf. But the other thing that looks nice is something other than a shelf.
From my perspective e-readers have exactly two killer features: space/weight savings (this one is, to be fair, a huge advantage, and is the only reason I have one), and not needing separate "large print" editions for readers with poor eyesight. The UI of paper books is, in practically every other way, better. Two pages visible at a time is great. Being able to easily hold open a couple different parts of the book at once is great. Full-text search is occasionally nice but a good index is, overall, better (to be fair, being an ebook doesn't rule out having a good index, but I find them far more awkward to use than in physical books). Commentary and notes and annotations and anything that leverages the fixed, physical space of the page, including things like thoughtful typesetting (especially noticeable with poetry) are all better in a real book. Endless customization is obviously nice in a lot of ways, but the flexibility of ebooks harm some use cases—it's no coincidence that a lot of non-fiction struggles with representation in e-book form, without resorting to fixed-size PDF.
IMO ebooks aren't a book replacement, they're a totally new format, and creating content that best suits them won't be identical to creating content that best suits books, and books that are simply format-shifted to ebooks are bound (ha, ha) to suffer in some ways for it. The most apt comparison I can think of is the transition from scrolls to bound volumes. It's not hard to think of ways that scrolls would have been superior to codices, and while ultimately the latter may have been overall-better and certainly did win out, they weren't universally and in all ways better. Ultimately, the space-savings thing may win the day for ebooks (again, it is a huge advantage) and print books may largely vanish, but it won't be because ebooks are strictly superior formats for reading.
For non-fiction I do find it hard to understand how paper is better for you than on a monitor. Open 2 pages at once, yep, side by side is no problem, plus as many other pages as you like open at once with windows or tabs. Full text search AND the index, with clickable links to the places you want to go.
Jotting down notes in the margin - yes, I can see that would be an issue. But if its important I think I'd want to keep it separate anyway. I have one of those e-paper notepad things with a digital pen which I use for note taking or drawing freehand diagrams or music notation (and its nice because it has the templates so I don't have to go and search for the sheet music paper). The only feature I miss from real pens and paper is colour.
Not stuck to a monitor, for one thing. If you are at a desk, you can have like three open at once, two pages each, no problem, on a desk that's not even very big, plus a notebook out, all at once, no swiping between "desktops" or whatever. (admittedly, the huge-screen version of the iPad Pro can solve the "stuck to a desk/laptop" problem for reading textbooks/papers/etc.—it's pretty great at that, actually—but that's $1,000+ dollars and that only lets you have one open at once)
I do think ebooks are a pretty good—and probably, overall, strictly superior—replacement for casual-reading fiction, but I think the which-is-superior question gets murkier past that. Books can have lots of UI/presentation features and ebooks aren't great at matching all of them, especially when you're reading them on a portable device. Though, again, being able to have 10,000 books in your coat pocket is a pretty serious advantage even if everything else is a little to a lot worse.
The revolution has already occurred in some places. If I need a print job there's a printer within five minutes walk from me, I actually have a couple of places I could walk to. It's less than 10 yen for black and white, 50 to 80 yen for color.
And while this sounds like a useless purchase, I printed many thousand pages, but apparently for laser printer that's still not a lot.