Did you know Brother makes really good printers that are inexpensive and live a long, happy, life? And their drivers aren't user hostile?
This is one of those really good "vote with your wallets" situations.
This is one of those really good "vote with your wallets" situations.
When I eventually gave up on inkjets altogether, I bought a Samsung laser. It didn't cost much more than an inkjet, toner lasts for ages, doesn't dry up, and it works fine. But as soon as I googled the support pages, it turned out Samsung's printer division had been acquired by HP, the website was impossible to navigate, and there wasn't any documentation.
So my one-man boycott failed.
And I don't know if it's related, but my Samsung wireless network printer does not print from the network anymore.
That being said, at least Samsung toner is cheap:
https://www.aaatoner.com/blreto4.html
I can get 1kg of toner for my printer for $35 before shipping. The cartridges only hold 90 grams.
There is even a third party chipless update to disable the chip:
Unfortunately, the imaging drum is integrated with the cartridge, is not meant to last and HP is not making new ones. I do not know how many refills I will get out of it. However, the starter toner cartridge lasted 8 years and I replaced it with a regular cartridge at that time, so it will be a long time before I need to refill its replacement.
That said, I felt betrayed when Samsung sold its printing unit to HP too. :/
https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/s9b2eg/brother_mf...
and won't dry out or get used up in cleaning cycles
On the other hand, if you live in a humid climate, toner can clump. This may explain the popularity of inkjets in Southeast Asia.
It is a shame that they stopped developing their own models.
I now own a Brother printer that is perfectly happy to print to larger paper.
The printer just stopped working from most of my computers. I tried everything.
I was going to replace it, then decided to try a 1st party cartridge again. And it’s been basically flawless again.
Such a scam.
I bought an epson workforce back some years ago. When it had printing issues i was able to do some cleaning runs and reslove. I have used ink quite a bit over time. But probably not nearly as much as the imaging drum, rollers and other parts i ended up swapping trying to stop the darkened prints on my main machine. The original laser was about 400 bucks, inkjet like 89.99. I dont think i spent more on the inkjet, even after the swaps.
This is a really good situation for actual voting, like actual political action to have regulation, instead of pretend voting.
HP probably doesn't give a damn about the HN crowd, it won't affect their business line in the little, so there's no signaling here.
And assuming Brother gets enough of a loyal following, they can now (probably already are) jack the prices and push the envelope of what's acceptable as business practices, until you'll have to start looking around again at who's left to let you escape predatory practices.
The market of HN is small, but the market power is large. Also, I guarantee you people here make large corporate purchases for things like printers, networking equipment - stuff HP cares about.
I have family members ask to _fix_ their printers, never had one actually taking advice before buying one nor follow advice.
And the reason is simple:
- Google has a tremendous positive brand image in most people's mind, Brother means nothing outside of the elderly generation.
- Printers are seen as a commodity and get thrown at people for 30 bucks at the supermarket. They also work well for the first 30~40 prints, and while we'll bitch about printer ink price, regular people will see it as a cost of doing business and pay.
- Brother printers are reliable but actually not that good from a "what features do you have ?" customer standpoint. I ended up having a secundary HP printer for that very reason: it fits in a niche that no other sane printer maker will touch. And come to think of it, my parents bought the same HP printer after seeing use it in vacation, and they never asked about our Xerox in the living room. And yes, they buy HP cartridges (they also didn't ask me before buying...)
Large corporate purchases: nobody "buys" printer or ink. They comes with a lease and a maintenance contract, and are paid by the page. If the technician comes within 3h to fix the printer and it works ok for another 40 days, no office manager will care about what exact printers are set in the buildings.
On the other hand, Brother prevents cartridges from being reused more than once, which likely kills the market for remanufactured toner cartridges.
Ethernet, IPP and Postscript support are requirements.
So that they can work with generic drivers, on a range of platforms, without much setup complexity.
> And their drivers aren't user hostile?
They offer a closed-source Linux and you need to download an installer from them (an i386 binary, which also works on i686 and x86_64); so, not great. The driver is mostly-reliable, although every once in a while it does kind of give out on you and printing fails, possibly until a restart. I suppose on Windows it's better.
> really good printers that are inexpensive and live a long life?
I bought mine about 4.5 years ago; hardware seems fine so far.
> happy life
yeah, so... not so much when it comes to toners. Either the toner capacity is really low, or the MFP becomes disenchanted with toners quickly. I get "Toner Low" extremely quickly - even with only a few hundred pages printed. Granted, I don't print much these days, but still. And I've already experienced a case in which I put in a new toner and was already told it was low.
Other than that no complaints.
Similar experience with their label printers, except they only had a i386 binary, which rather killed my idea of a raspberry pi print server. Also it was generally just terrible and froze after a few labels.
A custom, single-vendor protocol? Hmm. Is it at least license-free and patent-free? ... I doubt it.
No there is no license fee.
This is just like everything else on modern operating system. Apple defines a protocol for printers and if you follow that protocol, Apple guarantees compatibility and the user doesn’t have to worry about printer drivers and the manufacturer doesn’t have to worry about creating a new printer driver when a new operating system is released.
When a Windows user updates to a new OS, they have to often go find a new driver. I connect my Mac or iOS device to my WiFI network and it automatically found all of my of my AirPrint compatible printers.
As a vendor, if I support AirPrint, my addressable market is anyone who has bought an iOS device since 2010 or a Mac since 2012.
That’s a much better system than the malware that comes with most Windows printers.
I've not tried printing to it over USB, but over Ethernet it supports IPP and mDNS so all you need to do to print is connect the printer to the network and CUPS will find it automatically.
At some point in the last ten years, network printing has gone from dark magic to just working, and in my experience working better on Linux than Mac or Windows. Printing from Android took a smidge of manual set up but now also just works when called upon. It's almost disappointing, until I remember that while I quite enjoy tinkering I also bought the printer to actually print stuff.
The scanner? Also just works over the network. Mind blown.
I recently found that there is a setting in printer admin page called "Replace Toner".
By default the printer is set to STOP printing as soon as "Toner Low" status is reached.
But we can set it to "Continue" so that it continues printing with low toner instead of immediately replacing it.
Mine has been printing fine since last 1 year after this. FYI ... I print like 10 pages in a busy month.
It just gives me "Low Toner" / "Replace Toner" warning each time and still prints just fine.
And this cartridge is a cheap $15 toner refill i had bought off Amazon 2-3 years ago.
printer : Brother DCP L2540-DW bought 8 years ago for $100.
other than occassional connectivity issues like once a year that required reinstalling printer drivers on Win 10 ... I have been super happy.
Don't get me wrong, it's still a decent printer, but short of what I would consider "really good".
Also, I read here in another thread that a recent firmware update also blocked third party cartridges.
> Ok now it says 01101101 and I need you to change it to 10001111.
Something to that effect. Ew.
The value proposition is especially relevant if the printers & refills themselves are simple business expenses.
Not saying the company is perfect, but there's a lot of room between the headlines and day-to-day use.
But, given advertising is legal, and HP advertises much more aggressively than Brother, we can't rely on "vote with your wallet" to solve this problem. "Vote with your wallet" doesn't work when one competitor is spending money on making quality products and the other is spending money on advertising.
The entire premise that capitalism brings the best products at the lowest cost is falsified by advertising.