Requiring ink to scan a document–yet another insult from the printer industry
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
[0] https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-...
Scans from my Brother something-or-other with no apps or drivers whatsoever directly to PDF, over Wi-Fi. Perfect.
The only real problem I have with it is that it wants to do a preview scan first if you used the scanner bed last (as opposed to the document feeder) and it freezes it's interface while that's happening.
I have no affiliation with any of the products I've mentioned above, just a user.
[0] https://thegrizzlylabs.com/enterprise/
[1] NB: my use case does not involve a significant amount of scanning high page count documents.
I bought a stand-alone Brother feed scanner that I’m also happy with, but for occasional scanning, phone apps do quite well these days.
If I want to print something in color, I’ll go to a print shop.
If a driver like that is available for your model it could be a way to revive it.
Running your car at a very low fuel level is hard on the fuel pump - it has to work hard to slurp up what few drops are left - and on many newer models if you actually run it dry the consequences can range from having to re-prime the pump to the pump grenading and sending shrapnel into the injectors, ruining them TOO.
It's still probably going to take a few years before they reach HP level of suckage but apparently it's coming.
I bought a recent Brother and have been pleased with it, though I haven't yet tried to replace toner. I'm a bit worried because I've heard they do some firmware tricks with non-standard toner. I sure hope that's not true.
-edit- You can still (for now) get around the Toner DRM. The drm chip is pretty easy to remove and it just slots into a little spot on the toner. It's about a ~5 minute operation. So make sure to keep your OEM cartridge for now:
My 7-year-old Brother printer works well with third-party toner, I paid $29 for two refills and each lasts for 3 years or so. The printer itself was like $50 back then :) I bought it because it was cheaper than buying ink for my previous HP inkjet.
Also a networked printer is a lot less faff if you have a lot of Linux machines at home, from a drivers perspective.
A more useful recommendation is: buy when they are making their money from the razor, not the blades.
Most (all?) printer companies now have a range printers models where that's true. HP calls theirs a "Smart Tank" printer, Brother names them INKvestment printers. Epson was first with their EcoTank printers. I have one of them, but I know other people with other brands, and we all swear by them.
That's possibly because they aren't cheap upfront, so they tend to load them with features so you feel like you are getting something for all that money aside from the privilege of getting ripped off on ink. For example they often come with 10's of thousands of pages of ink in the box and are typically warrantied for years and have a build quality to match.
In principle, I'm fine with them offering the razor model - even "you can't scan if you haven't paid the ink tax". In practice, they never spell out on the box the Faustian bargain you are signing entering into. So once again we have big corp exploiting the "oh you didn't read the fine print" power imbalance between them and the consumer.
Most manufacturers don't have the expertise in dealing with retail and don't care to build it up. They stick to what they're good at, which is manufacturing, and let the retailer stick to what they're good at, which is dealing with the whole host of other issues that arise in retail commerce.
In a related current development, traditional automakers like Ford are angling to sell directly to the consumer, like Tesla does. People are generally on board with this because dealership experiences do suck often. But once dealers are all driven out of business, it's a good bet that the automaker will benefit from that surplus, not the consumer. It'll be interesting to see.
- Margins for selling collected consumer data may be higher than than margins for ink. Ink has materials, production, and inventory cost that data storage does not, though this assumes cloud storage remains cheap.
- Renting storage space for consumer documents is recurring revenue versus the non-recurring revenue of selling ink (HP is trying to get people on ink subscription plans, maybe it'll work).
- Unique value-adds: E.g. Get people to store their personal documents online and they'll be sticky recurring revenue, because moving them is hard. Extra revenue opportunities by offering integration with other services for extra $$$. E.g. store your personal documents and use our integrated DocuSign like service.
- Abolish paper to save the forests. Printed matter soon becomes a hipster fad, then disappears. Though you do have to keep some around for faxes, which are never going away.
I do like craigslist.org
Of course, I don't know for a fact that someone can't make a living making boutique printers like this. But I don't know that there would be an adequate return on the capital required for such an enterprise.
1. People who print frequently due to work or other business needs. These folks know that investing in a decent laser printer will pay itself off extremely quickly given the obscene charges for ink, and lasers are much better for larger print volumes anyway.
2. People who only print every now and then due to some external need. These people may be tempted to buy an inkjet originally for their lower prices, but due to their infrequent use, they are also much more likely to hit printer malfunctions due to ink drying up, or some other reason that inkjets seem to want to die if left idle for more than a month or two.
Inkjet (at least the consumer version of it) is just a technology that deserves the "PC Load Letter" treatment from Office Space.
0 - https://www.xerox.com/en-vc/office/multifunction-printers/wo...
I am glad to see this news story. It means the pendulum is swinging back towards stopping predatory marketing practices.
Amazingly narrow update.
I even made it wireless with a Raspberry Pi Zero.
...I give myself the benefit of doubt as not technically a native speaker... but "Envy"? Really?
I still have my HP LaserJet P<numbers> I got when I was a student, many lives ago, and I got it to the point where the power button - the only button - is mostly dead. I had pondered "opening it up" and just running bare wires out - hacker style! - but... This whole consumer-printer-industry-situation is still so sad I'm happy I need a printer only slightly more than once a month.
And I've seen videos of teletypes from a freaking half a century ago working fine today.
Apologies. I have also an inkjet-scanner box from an _even earlier life_ that I keep around because a) it has a space to be in, b) it still scans (!!).
It is a very odd name. Maybe it's because people who own those envy people who don't.
At least I had that back in the day at college. Now I got a Brother color laserjet L8850CDW! It's got wireless and it duplexes and it's got scanning as well. Supposedly it does faxing but I don't have a hard line to try it out on. It's got this touchscreen display, and each cartridge has about 4,000 page!
...people will brag about anything. If you're in the industry, whichever industry it is, if you've got the best (along whichever metric is appropriate), and you want people to know, you'll brag about it.
The underlying problem here is the patent system. The Shenzhen Market would be glad to sell you a $3 printer/scanner that doesn't require proprietary cartridges, I'm sure.
This article is about an inkjet, but I've owned laser multi-function devices that will not print if the toner is out. The problem is linking the scanner working with the printer having filled consumables. I've also had devices where the printer failed, and you could not scan or fax because the printer failed self-testing.
> still on my second, generic, toner cartridge
There's a whole other can of worms around chipping cartridges in an effort to prevent refilling and competition. With newer printers, this may not be possible as cartridges "expire" often before the ink or toner is gone.