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Comment by milkthefat | Hacker News Reader

I’ve reduced 99% of tech calls from elderly family(60s-80s) by moving them to either ChromeOS/Android or MacOS/IOS and all printers to Brother lasers. If they spend money on phones I lean toward Apple ecosystem. If they penny pinch - Google is king with all second hand Samsung galaxy/books, Dell enterprise chromebooks, or chromeboxes - making sure to verify years of support. It also makes it significantly easier to not mix ecosystems. I then set updates to automatic and make ublockorigin default in the browser. The last 7 years nearly every issue was resolved with a restart.

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How fucking great are Brother laser printers? The UX is shit, but you very rarely have to interact with it because they just fucking do their job.

Mine was in the closet for a couple years once and I took it out, plugged it in, and just printed what I want through WiFi.

I remember dealing with HP drivers on Windows back in the day…

Yes. Installed a Brother printer myself the other day, was expecting a half-day affair, but it all just worked in 5 minutes.

Contrast this with an HP printer I bought. I had to:

- manually install sketchy HP software on my mac

- use that sketchy software, through a USB cable to update the firmware on the HP printer

- somehow figure out how to get the HP printer to connect to Wifi

- get it working, and never touch it again

The popular "just buy this printer" Verge article recommends the Brother HL-L2305W. But Brother appears to have gone the subscription route and replaced that model with the HL-L2405W, which is "Amazon Dash Replenishment Ready" and whose product description says "Requires enrollment in a monthly billed Brother Refresh EZ Print Subscription service plan based on monthly printed page allotments."

The older model is no longer available new from Amazon.

Is Brother still a good recommendation? This subscription pivot gives the company all the wrong incentives.

I'm looking at the Best Buy page for the printer, and I can see where it would be confusing.

> Choose Brother Genuine TN830 Standard or TN830XL High Yield replacement cartridges. And with Refresh EZ Print Subscription Service, you’ll never worry about running out of toner again and you’ll enjoy savings up to 50%. (3) Get started today with a Free Trial. (4)

> (4) Requires enrollment in a monthly billed Brother Refresh EZ Print Subscription service plan based on monthly printed page allotments. Unused pages roll over, limitations apply. Additional page set charges and taxes apply during trial.

It's just saying that the free trial of their subscription requires enrolling in the subscription. The subscription isn't required to use the printer.

Excellent, thanks for the parsing help. :) I didn't find anyone lamenting that Brother had turned to the dark side, so I remained hopeful.

Just ditched my HP for a Brother a couple months back, after having continual issues with individual colors running out and eventually it refused to recognize a single color cartridge slot, I never used color anyway. So went to a Brother monochrome. Been smooth since.

another vouch for brother printers. not optimum but i just plopped one connected to wifi only and it can print with minimal config and also scanning through mac's image capture app.

Relevant link:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/2/24117976/best-printer-2024...

"After a full year of not thinking about printers, the best printer is still whatever random Brother laser printer that’s on sale."

They are the only printers the Just Fucking Work™.

Kinda sad, in a way.

Your comment makes me forget that sometimes it's an inside job.

Yes, sometimes it's not sketchysite.com or the "make money fast" email, it is the printer manufacturer that's installing the garbage.

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