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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

Thankfully the demand for printers is fading. This will of course cause printer mfrs to double down on their lockdowns ("Sorry, your toner is too old so you'll have to go out and buy new a new cartridge"). But its their anti-consumer practices that drive people not to print.

My kiddo bought a new printer in 2015 because he had to print something for high school and the toner cartridge was empty. It was cheaper to buy a whole replacement brother with the starter cartridge than to just get a cartridge (and it was delivered for free within the a couple of hours!). I still have it, still use it once in a while, and it's still on that same starter cartridge and maybe the same ream of paper. Two more kids have finished high school using it...hardly at all.

In the past year I can remember two printer jobs, each a single page.

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Love the use of:

“Printer mfrs”

As we all know it isn’t just an abbreviation for “manufacturers”

To save ink in case you print Hacker News for reading.

Not if you print it in dark mode.

> It was cheaper to buy a whole replacement brother with the starter cartridge than to just get a cartridge...

This may not actually be the case, 'starter' cartridges often have significantly less toner than full-size. Also, Brother is among the better actors in the printer space - I believe that Louis Rossmann has one, and talks it up in [1] at around 11:30.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGszSj0BLeg

> This may not actually be the case, 'starter' cartridges often have significantly less toner than full-size.

But it definitely is the case. They still haven't exhausted the starter cartridge.

That they haven't gotten to the bottom of the starter cartridge doesn't mean it isn't cheaper to get cartridges than new printers.

If a new printer costs the same as a new cartridge but the cartridge contains twice the toner, then the new printer is twice as expensive per page. That's true even if they haven't gotten to the bottom of the starter yet. It just means they don't print much.

No one cares about how much ink they have, they care about being able to print what they need to. If the toner expires before you would use it, then it doesn't matter if you're left with a drop or a gallon.

Toner cartridges last for years and years - but even still, a new starter cartridge isn't going to have way way less toner. It will have enough to change the economics. Some brother FAQ pages say like 66%. 1000 pages for starter, 1500 for regular, 2600 for high-capacity. I'd link but it wasn't clear which specific printer this was for vs. the one the OP mentioned, and I didn't spend enough time to look for a trend.

Toner is just a container with little balls of plastic.

Ink, sure, but this conversation was about laser.

> If a new printer costs the same as a new cartridge but the cartridge contains twice the toner, then the new printer is twice as expensive per page. That's true even if they haven't gotten to the bottom of the starter yet.

Who cares? Your bank account can't see your cost per page. It can only see the money you actually spend. Paying additional money for capacity you will never use doesn't save you any money.

Sure assuming you never get to the bottom of a cartridge, but as I mentioned, the difference is about 500 pages. We're talking about buying a new printer + 1000 pages for the same price as buying just 1500 pages. One yields massive quantities of e-waste. The other should be cheaper. If the OP is already at the point of replacing one of these set-ups, then don't they logically print enough to get to the bottom of either a starter cartridge or a full cartridge?! Sorry I'm having trouble following.

Always always research ink costs before buying the printer!

Last time I bought one, Brother was the only brand I would buy, it wasn't even close. I hope they are still as consumer friendly now, because they made me very happy.

I did this for awhile with HP printers. Because I didn't print often enough to use up the starter ink before it dried, it was cheaper to get the $30 printer with starter ink than to spend $20 more on replacement ink. Now I use print services and will be getting a laser printer eventually. And now I also understand the waste problem better.

I print regularly, plenty of stuff requires signatures, and being safe when travelling.

Work stuff requires offline archives for contracts and legal stuff

Regarding travelling, is no fun when something happens trying to show the ticket from an app that for whatever reason decides not to start, or having the phone dying on me. Paper to the rescue.

> I print regularly, plenty of stuff requires signatures, and being safe when travelling.

Lifehack: you can annotate a PDF with a signature and just send it to the receiver.

The only time I couldn't do that was when I needed a notarized document.

> Regarding travelling, is no fun when something happens trying to show the ticket from an app that for whatever reason decides not to start, or having the phone dying on me. Paper to the rescue.

Yup. I save screenshots of barcodes for tickets and other stuff instead. I have a second phone as a backup :)

> Lifehack: you can annotate a PDF with a signature and just send it to the receiver.

No I cannot, because they won't be accepted by the receivers I work with.

https://pypi.org/project/look-like-scanned/

Where in my comment did I stated the documents had to be given back scanned?

Why the negativity? Why not just say that you need to provide original paper documents?

The previous comment was just trying to be helpful.

Had I explicitly mentioned scanning, I would have welcomed, I didn't.

A more polite, charitable response might have been "My job is _____ and in this field it's required for documents to be delivered by courier." You haven't made it clear why you necessitate printing in your workflow, just that it's required and that anyone who thinks otherwise clearly doesn't understand _your job_ as well as you do.

Nobody thinks you're clever or cool for shutting down someone trying to be helpful.

====> Work stuff requires offline archives for contracts and legal stuff

Easy enough for anyone that decides to read before doing clever comments.

Should we also discuss the semantics of what offline means?

I don't think I'd want to discuss anything with you, actually. You come off as a remarkably sour individual.

Well, a nice way to start is not provide feedback that wasn't asked for.

In Germany we have a word for it, Besserwisser.

That's probably for the better & no they do not.

they stated that they print regularly, then without knowning anything of their use case and needs, came the "ackchyually" like they know it better or the original commenter is an idiot, why is it so unfathomable that they have done their research

I'm searching for something that would stamp a custom date on a PDF, like "Received\n$(date)".

I'm solely printing my stuff to stamp a date and then scanning them back... Haven't found anything yet.

The general trick I’ve found for things like this is the missing step is to first convert the PDF to image files, THEN watermark it with the dynamic date, then convert back to PDF.

Which is a pain in the ass to automate but effective.

wet signatures are a thing.

Wet signatures are also a thing to avoid updating ancient procedures. I looked into the legal requirements for needing a wet signature (in my jurisdiction) and it turns out that they are rarely required. You need one when buying a house, but you need them for very little else.

I told the credit card company that demanded that I mail them letter with a wet signature to just accept a scanned PDF or lose my business and after a few emails back and forth they simply relented (admittedly, this was a few years ago).

I’ve recently come to find out that my wife has been signing documents using Snapchat for years and has evidently never once had a problem.

I agree. I usually have hard copies of all pertinent documents when travelling.

In addition and on long distance trips I upload everything important to Dropbox. So, even if I lose the documentation I'm able to print it from a hotel or Internet Cafe (yes, they still exist)

Starter cartridge can be smaller in volume than the standalone ones you buy though. Unless you are certain they are identical, you can't compare price if a new printer to new cartridge.

Sometimes what you said is true though, because they want to sell you a product that keep you buying their cartridge so selling the printer "at a loss" can be profitable.

>Thankfully the demand for printers is fading.

If that is the case, it is more because of a failing on our part to teach people the benefits of printing than anything else.

I'll hold onto my printer and print language stdlib and API reference docs til the day I die. There's just something about having it in print that helps me navigate the corpus of information more effectively.

Well, double down? When I check the shops here the open ink tank printers are everywhere from every manufacturer. Just pour ink in.

That's a lot more open than they used to be.

Ps: my printing needs are also minimal these days. A boarding pass here, a form there. A couple of pages a month. I have a Brother laser for that reason, no heads to dry out and consumables are cheap.

You seem to have extrapolated from your printing habits to the world's, and that's not a good basis for your claim.

>Thankfully the demand for printers is fading.

Maybe in your little corner of the world, but for the rest of us we need ink (or toner) on paper to just conduct life.

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