91–100 of 213 posts
But it should not be the only thing; Society requires goods and services for people, and incentives should be aligned to society's goals, not finance's goals.
Toner printers are "less scammy", at least in my experience. I had a HP one and always bought the genuine cartridges. Then I saw those videos about the printing industry scams (which does happen) and tried a third party toner that costs 1/5 of the price. Guess what? After like 10 perfect printed pages, it started leaking some powder, then stopped printing random chunks of the page and turned impossible to use. I went…
> In particular, there is some brand that was praised for consumer friendly practices here on HN that joined the dark side recently too; Brother iirc. What did Brother do to join the "dark side"? I and lots of other folks love our Brother laser printers. I haven't heard of them doing anything evil...
Time for the tech community to declare a code of ethics and refuse to participate in corporate sociopathy.
My Brother black-and-white laser is about ten years old. Pretty low volume of use from me, but it's held up well and is one of the most satisfying technology purchases I've ever made. If it stopped working, I would buy a Brother printer tomorrow without even looking at other brands. The printer industry is horrible, but also HP is toxic at every level and across every product and service. Just avoid.
By doing things like: opting for subscription models, short device lifetime, cross financing the device through asking high prices for commodities like the cartrigdges.
I guess it's just more obvious with printers because you have this duality of the device itself _and_ the need for a steady supply of either toner or ink, which most companies abuse with nasty business models.
I have an almost 20 years old HP b/w home laser printer (guess one of the first with USB, no ethernet). It doesn't copy/scan, it can only print.
I don't use it much and it produces some minor artefacts but mostly works surprisingly well after so many years. The cheap toner costs like 10 USD or so and lasts several years with my usage.
No printer company would design such a device nowadays anymore. Since it has no network access it cannot be updated to stop working.
Many people want to print over network today and if I wanted to I could plug it into our router so I can print over WIFI.
Avoid ink jet and use laser jet instead. This solved most of the frustration for me. The upfront cost is slightly higher, the print quality is slightly decreased but the long term satisfaction is greatly enhanced. Ink jet in any form is dead in my mind.
Who makes a quality color laser?
I recommend looking for "office" instead of "home". The manufacturers seem aware of the fact that business people have low tolerance for unreliable crap.
My Brother black-and-white laser is about ten years old. Pretty low volume of use from me, but it's held up well and is one of the most satisfying technology purchases I've ever made. If it stopped working, I would buy a Brother printer tomorrow without even looking at other brands. The printer industry is horrible, but also HP is toxic at every level and across every product and service. Just avoid.
Don’t have a lot of brand loyalty but nice to see them not shit on their customers.
My Brother black-and-white laser is about ten years old. Pretty low volume of use from me, but it's held up well and is one of the most satisfying technology purchases I've ever made. If it stopped working, I would buy a Brother printer tomorrow without even looking at other brands. The printer industry is horrible, but also HP is toxic at every level and across every product and service. Just avoid.
Their early 90s laserjets are still going. My friend's school was throwing one out a few weeks ago. It was sitting dusty in a closet. I plugged it in and it worked right away. Probably 30 years old.
They stopped making things like that a long time ago. They've got the resources and the public capital to turn the ship around if they wanted to