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Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

I live in the Apple ecosystem and I know HP does a lot of consumer-hostile stuff but I bought my HP laser from Costco (who refuse to sell subscription printers) mostly because of it's support for AirPrint with no additional software.

And it works, the quality is great, and I'm happy. Didn't have to install anything.

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HP laser printers are not on the subscription model? I sought out a Brother laser printer specifically due to several bad experiences with lockout on HP printers.

Some are. Some aren't. Some try to trick you. Costco only sell subscription-free models.

If you go to Amazon and look up Brother laser printers you'll see that most of those now also come with subscription plans called "Refresh", so, you can't win.

HP printers with a model number ending in "e" require a subscription. If you avoid the "e" models, you'll get a normal printer.

Costco does not sell printers that require subscriptions. I believe they get custom models from the manufacturer.

Also, the exercise equipment they sell don't require an internet account for basic functionality, and I believe this goes for the TVs sold at Costco as well.

I also have a brother printer that I specifically paid a premium for for out of box eSCL scanner support on linux (airscan). Unfortunately, the scanners still need a proprietary driver as eSCL only supports some fixed resolutions. The proprietary scanner has better/more functionality.

Did you turn off the HP "DIRECT" wifi AP that screams at the top of its lungs and hogs valuable wifi spectrum? I live in a fairly low density townhouse, and 3 of my neighbors' printers are visible..

It's not broadcasting that, so either I did turn it off (and then forgot), or it was off by default.

That's funny though. Can you connect to them and print them a message asking them to turn it off?

Thats a good idea! I just printed a google search "how to disable wifi direct"

On my printer (MFP M479dw), you can trivially log into the web interface and disable wifi direct.

Yes, easy to turn off. This post prompted me to turn that off, I had neglected to do so last week when I set it up.

- Network, Advanced, WiFi Direct, off.

I upgraded from a my little Brother home b&w printer with scanner to an HP laser as well. I was starting to do more than my home printer and it's very low <$100 price tag should ever be expected to do. I went with a printer suggested by the vendor of a very specific medium I was going to be using in a hobby++ product labeling. It was 4x more expensive, but it works. It's connected to an air gapped computer, so I'm unawares if it suffers from the infamous user-hostile stuff. I works for what I need, and the state of the printing world means I'm happy with it

I have a bog standard M28p that works without installing all the HP stuff, but it still earned the network name "That HP piece of s**".

"Baseball bat fodder" would be more apt.

That Office Space scene deeply resonated with the entire industry.

Bought a used HP M203dw off Craigslist for IIRC $80. Using it from a mix of Macs, iPads and iPhones. It’s been fantastic.

AirPrint isn't magic. It's just PostScript with DNS-SD bolted on top.

It’s not Postscript. AirPrint supports a few different formats/PDLs including its own raster format and Postscript is notably not an option.

I don't care how it works, I only care that it does work.

Except when it doesn't. I've had versions of Mac OS fail with AirPrint printers (spits out pages of garbage) that required manual tweaking and setup.

The bug was in Mac OS not the printer.

If you've ever had to install printer drivers and fight their bundled software/adware/spyware that comes along, *and* the huge headache of getting networked printing set up (looking at you Windows), AirPrint is magic. Especially being able to print from your phone.

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