Reminds me of:
"I am going to spend the rest of my career focusing on the hard problems of computer science: printers, projectors, and screen sharing."
Never buy Epson printers
51–60 of 170 posts
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know why people still bother with inkjets. It's like the companies are actively punishing you for buying these models of printers. If they are necessary for work, then MAYBE. But even then, if you're buying commercial hardware you're not dealing with this junk either. It also used to be that laser was incredibly expensive in comparison, now they're about the same price if you compare color inkjet to black and…
You can't generalize all inkjet printers. I use a Canon Maxify Injket in my company (we print only ~200 pages / month) and it's amazing. There is no laserjet that could compete in price/print.
Sure you can. The difference is in usage pattern. If you use printer rarely, ink will dry out and you will have to clean the head (using lots of ink in process) or replace cartridge. On the other hand with the frequent usage laser printers become cheaper per page quickly. I once had Epson Stylus 800. Sucked big time. Replaced with HP 6L, never owned an inkjet again, never will.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#53I bought a Brother (HL-2170W) laser printer about 8 years ago, and it's still using its original cartridge. I do very little printing, but I do need it from time to time. During my last move, I accidentally tipped a book shelf on top of it. Cracked a few plastic bits, and bent some metal things inside it. I unbent the metal, and glued the plastic, and the thing still prints like it's new out of the box. I've talked m…
I'm equally happy with our Brother HL-2150N. Already using the third cartridge in its fifth (?) year, but a very basic and cheap and capable laser printer.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#54I haven't owned a printer in probably 10 years and I'm not particularly young (32). I get their usefulness in some aspects of business operations but I'm a bit at a loss as to why an individual would purchase one. What are the use cases now? The only two I can think of are printing photos, which I get but it seems better handled either through a photo printer or an outside service or for printing 'offical' documents…
i have a cheap brother b/w laser at home, and use slightly more expensive hp b/w lasers at work because they're faster.
at home i print things like movie and event tickets. i don't like fumbling around on my phone for tickets because sometimes there's no reception and the email or whatever isn't cached. occasionally i will have government paperwork or something to print from home also. i will also print out maps and lists when i know reception will be crappy.
basically, mandatory paperwork and shitty cell reception are my use cases.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#55Multi-function inkjet printers are a Scam. No, I'm serious. 1. The printing functionality is flawed. A cartridge will not last for more than 100 pages. (I tried Epson, HP and Canon). 2. The cartridge will dry and not function after a few weeks only. 3. The original cartridge cost almost as much as a new printer with the cartridge. 4. The printer will not function (Scanner or Fax) without the full cartridges (black an…
I don’t know what kind of printers you buy, but the ones I had – from HP and Canon – solved all those issues:
(a) you can refill cartridges, you know that?
(b) printers will ask you "foreign cartridge detected, accept? yes/no", and it works
(c) refill ink goes for a few cents per liter
(d) the printer works fine without some cartridges, just press "yes" when it asks you "print with just black?"
(e) I print 400 pages university books on one set of cartridges once a semester usually, and have enough left to print another whole semester my homework.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#56Honest question: Why printers are so stuck in time? Why no great innovations? Why there is no product out there that "Just work" and won the Market?
I never heard of startups making printers, not even those dreamy kickstart projects.
Why we have this product that annoy People for ages and no one fix it? Anyone could give me any insight?
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#57Multi-function inkjet printers are a Scam. No, I'm serious. 1. The printing functionality is flawed. A cartridge will not last for more than 100 pages. (I tried Epson, HP and Canon). 2. The cartridge will dry and not function after a few weeks only. 3. The original cartridge cost almost as much as a new printer with the cartridge. 4. The printer will not function (Scanner or Fax) without the full cartridges (black an…
I think they sell the printers at a loss in order to make money from the cartridges.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#58I don't currently have a printer. I think I'd want an economic laser printer. Probably going to print less than 50 pages per month. Needs to work fine under Linux. Any suggestions?
Not colour? Happy to refill yourself?
Have a look on the Open Printing site to see if there's a driver that can be used with CUPS. Then have a look on toner seller sites to see if the carts can be refilled cheaply.
The Open Printing site tends to list any problems some printers / mutli-function devices have.
http://www.openprinting.org/printers
Check the wider www too, because OpenPrinting is user generated and might not be up to date.
The Arch wiki has some nice documentation for CUPS: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CUPS
So does FreeBSD: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/cups/
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#59I only very lately learned that you could attempt some hackish head cleaning with warm purified water. By pouring it in place of colored ink, it's supposed to melt dried stuck ink clogging the head.
I had a Lexmark S605[1], unfortunately the black side of the head got clogged, making it almost useless, unless cheating by printing in blue.
[1] the best AIO wireless printer I had. Solid build, not noisy, consistent throughput. My mother had to buy a quick replacement, a HP envy4500, it's a cheap piece of crap. Even the motors sucks. Slow, noisy, random.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#60Reminds me of: "I am going to spend the rest of my career focusing on the hard problems of computer science: printers, projectors, and screen sharing." https://twitter.com/britt/status/611996866146779136
Printers are my biggest IT nightmare. No piece of modern computer hardware fails so consistently, so ununderstandably or so frequently as a printer.