Why do people keep buying printers they hate? | Hacker News Reader

Why do people keep buying printers they hate?

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19 pointsaustinallegro22 comments

+1 for Brother. After being an HP family for decades, they pretty much forced our hand with recent enschittification of their hardware and service. Discovered and purchased various Brother printers and MFCs for myself and 2 other extended family members. All 3 devices print flawlessly, have a simple UI, can use 3rd party toners (hello!), and you aren't forced to swap out a toner just because the "Change Toner" light turns on. (ie you can remove the toner, shake, replace, and keep printing until it's actually all used up, according to you!) Not to mention, the wired and wireless functions work flawlessly. I'll end with this: these are the first printers where everyone in my family can print from whatever device they're using: Windows, Linux, and Android. Honestly, I didn't even know we were at "this level" when it came to home printing.

I have both a Brother B&W photocopier and an HP color laser printer — and I love them both.

The only reason I can tolerate them (after having-owned dozens of printers over several decades) is because they are themselves over a decade old, each.

They never complain about subscription fees nor "genuine" cartridges installed.

For each machine, there is a "manual override" feature which allows you to get the most toner out of each cartridge (with minimal quality sacrifice). For the color machine, Amazon toner knock-offs cost about 1/8th (no exaggeration) as OEM-genuines. As I immediately laminate most color print-outs, I am not worried about toner quality issues (i.e. flaking), but so-far have had none.

I've read in another HN thread that Brothers have begun rejecting third-party toner cartridges.

Damn. 3rd party is all I use on them. :-( Memo to self: Don't flash any firmware on my working devices. Ever.

A more important question: is there a printer that can be bought for money that is good, lasts long and is made to actually delight the user?

What delights you?

Get a B&W Brother laser (or LED, nowadays), it'll be good, last long and… I expect it won't delight you because you want to print in colour, or if you don't want that, people will send you things that you need to print and they presume colour.

I replaced my B&W Brother with a colour LED a few years ago, because some documents really need colour. Sigh. MFC-L3770. The colours aren't good but the printer does what I want and without any hassle.

I have a Brother DCP-9020CDW which I've owned for over a decade and which still keeps humming. A bit expensive with four toners and a drum, but that's color laser for you. I'm very happy with it, and I guess I'd be equally happy with any Brother MFC-LxxxxCDW that's one market now.

If one wants an inkjet, I'd go for an Epson EcoTank.

The Brother HLL8350CDW I picked up in 2014 is still rocking along, with cartridges for the color laser being reasonable. My Bride has a brother mfc-l3770cdw, which she has been happy with - that was picked up a few years ago.

Finally bought one of the Epson EcoTank printers last year (ET-3850 to be precise). Yes, they are more expensive, but I find them a delight to use. Printer comes with a full set of ink and even an extra bottle of black ink, which will probably last me for another year (one bottle lasts for ~7000 pages). Pricing of ink is at least not outrageous, given how long it lasts. Zero problems with clogged print heads or similar, but I also print pretty regularly. We use that thing over the network for the whole family, also has Linux drivers which have worked flawlessly for me.

I post this every time I see this recommendation.

You will only find joy with an EcoTank if you print more than once every week or two. If you want a printer you can ignore for 18 months and expect it to Just Work, inkjet is not for you.

Unless you're printing dozens of sheets a month, you will likely waste the vast majority of your refillable ink on cleaning the nozzle.

If you're like most people today and print a dozen pages a year then you want a laser printer. Laser printers will happily sit in the corner neglected forever and will always spit out a clean print when you want it to.

Inkjet, including refillables and EcoTank only makes sense if you're printing frequently and a lot. Inkjet is not suited for infrequent single page jobs. That's the domain of laser printers.

I 100% agree. For very little use, a cheap laser is absolutely the best choice. If you print very little, you'll probably don't even use up the included cartridge in your lifetime. My recommendation was for people who print a lot and who also need color. Why would you shell out 400$ for a printer you hardly use anyway? EcoTanks are small office printers for people who at least print a couple thousand pages a year. Why else would you need a tank that lasts for 7k pages?

You forgot cheap, that's a criteria for most people. People on HN tend to be higher income then most, so money is not as important factor.

The advice of a B&W home laser is on the money. We go months, almost half a year on one toner and the occasional shake to make it think there's more black in there goes on.

And the advantage of older models is the lack of stupid cartridge chip DRM.

The downside, is you can be trapped (like me) behind Canon UFR II which doesnt exist in Linux, and so the printer is next to impossible to turn into a network unit driven from anything other than the Windows-10 host it USB attaches to, which is also refusing to be a shared printer for <reasons>

Just in case someone didn't find it:

https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=313512

If you want to do really insane things, you can install WSL in Windows and share the windows printer from within WSL, as a CUPS printer... this should work, if you can add the local Windows printer as a printer inside WSL first.

something like this might work: sudo lpadmin -p Your_Printer_Name -E -v usb://Your_Printer_URI -m everywhere

Awesome! thanks. I shall now have something to play with.

-G

Why would you share the "windows printer" when you can just share the "printer".

Is it just so your print jobs out of WSL appear in your Windows printer queue and can be managed there?

Nah, just a possible workaround to OPs "which is also refusing to be a shared printer for <reasons>".

(Come to think about, may also need network shenanigans for WSL to be visible on the local network?)

Canon provides a UFR II driver for Linux.

I’ve run my Canon laser off of a Linux print server before. They even have an ARM build.

https://canoncanada.custhelp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_i...

https://archive.is/bZjYG

Sometimes because we aren't the one who bought it (again!).

A few years back, my sister bought a HP scanner/printer, then moved away and left it to me. She always liked it, but I never did. Then, after my mother died, I needed to scan my mother's death certificate for a legal thing with a short deadline. The printer was out of ink. The UI did not want to allow me to access the scanning feature without replacing the ink (I've since learned that there is a non-obvious workaround for this). So, the scanner wouldn't work without ink, and my mom had just died, and I had to get this thing scanned before 5 pm, and...

The scene from Office Space was mild compared to what happened. There were broken pieces all over the room.

I left the room like that for a few days, because I just didn't want to deal with it. My sister came to stay with me for a bit after the funeral, and I had to apologize and tell her that I needed to clean up the guest room (where the printer was located). When she saw what had happened, I explained, and she was a bit worried about my mental state. In an attempt to be helpful, so I wouldn't be without a scanner/printer, she bought me a replacement.

The exact same fucking model.

Her heart was in the right place.

I still have it, and I hate it. But I haven't killed it. Yet.

All the Brother-is-hassle-free praise is surprising to me. I've had endless network issues with mine.

Because they can’t find a printer company who isn’t hateful.

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