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Comment by wongarsu | Hacker News Reader

Or buy a laser printer. They cost a bit more upfront, but a single toner cartridge lasts ages (and won't dry out or get used up in cleaning cycles), the printers are generally much more robust and longer lasting, and because laser printing isn't as patent-encumbered there's more actual competition and less outright user-hostile behavior.

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I use a Brother laser with non-oem cartridge. That is what Brother is known for.

I learned to hate HP inkjets. I decided never to buy HP again.

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.

Same here. I would never ever buy anything from HP, but now my Samsung printer gets its support from HP. I feel betrayed.

And I don't know if it's related, but my Samsung wireless network printer does not print from the network anymore.

My Samsung printer does not support networking. If I want to put it on the network, I need to put it behind a print host.

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:

https://inkchip.net/laser/

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. :/

I was not aware of any of this. Thank you! I've just been buying on- or off-brand toner cartridges for way more money than this. (The off-brand ones work fine, the on-brand ones are certainly not perfect; this thing is terrible at photos.)

I buy authentic Brother toner cartridges out of gratitude. I was so happy after years of HP's bad treatment.

They started cracking down on that a year or two ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/s9b2eg/brother_mf...

Lasers printers that use cartridges have similar DRM.

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.

I would like to vouch for Xerox laser printers. Not only they don't identify your printouts with tiny yellow markings/serial number, but also they gladly accept off-market toners, and places like Amazon have many different brands that race to the bottom of price making it easy to try out what works for you. I am on my third Xerox laser printer and couldn't be happier.

Their low end models are just rebadged Lexmark printers while their high models are rebadged Samsung printers (the same IP that is now owned by HP).

It is a shame that they stopped developing their own models.

OH wow. So Xerox dont make laser any more? I always thought it was Samsung that buy laser from Xerox, not the other way round.

I bought an awesome Xerox duplex colour laser two years and can confirm. Superb. Way better than the Samsung/HP thing it replaced. About to put more after-market toners in tomorrow

Still avoid HP. I have an HP color laser printer. It worked flawlessly. Then the toner ran out and I replaced it with a 3rd party toner.

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.

Even they're not exempt from being messed with. I had an HP color laser printer which, when purchased, would print on any paper size that would fit in the printer. (Specifically used it to print to US Legal Size.) A firmware update some years back disabled printing to anything larger than US Letter Sized.

I now own a Brother printer that is perfectly happy to print to larger paper.

Lasers also have issues. I had a laser my last printer but had issues with the imgaging drum and other parts. Eventually tonor ended up on some of the rollers and the printer was basically useless at this point.

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.

Exactly this, I've not gone near an inkjet printer since 1992. When Apple released it's first "affordable" $1000 laser printer.

I'm still rocking a Brother DCP-7060D from over a decade ago, using an aftermarket toner I bought from my university tech store.

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