71–80 of 170 posts
I 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…
How hard would it be to hack an open source printer hardware, say using some standard black toner cartriges (any brand), and make a Kickstarter out of it?
Cheaper prices? I doubt it, you're not going to be at the same scale as the big players and will pay a ton more for parts. Not to mention you're going to have major upfront costs for tooling, molds, etc. unless this thing is going to look like an erector set.
Higher quality? Again doubtful, unless you've been researching inkjet technology for years and have some incredible breakthough. If you're asking how hard it is to make a printer I doubt you have some special tech ready to revolutionize the industry (no offense).
Cheaper ink? If you want to cheap out you can already refill ink cartridges or even buy recycled / dirt cheap ink for most printers. There are plenty of knockoff cartridges and even brick and mortar stores (look at any mall) that sell those cheap cartridges. Or just go laser and never worry about stupid cartridges again.
Better support? Not on a Kickstarter project budget. Have fun dealing with crazy customers freaking out that their 15 year old Windows 2000 box won't use your printer.
I 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…
Over the past few months: * Printing tax forms (even if you do them electronically it is much easier to have a file folder of all your info should you get a query from the government) * Printing homework or practice questions for my kids * Printing registration forms for the many places that aren't computerized * Faxed identification for various purposes * Faxed contracts for real estate * Scanned documents and ident…
I store them as PDFs and put them on a NAS that with backups to S3
> Printing registration forms for the many places that aren't computerized
Generally have found I can fill out the PDF and stamp a signature on it and it's fine.
> Faxed contracts for real estate
Same as above.
> Scanned *
Not a printer, I just use a phone app for 'scanning' documents.
I think the guts of it are actually Lexmark.
I have to hack the driver for it on new versions of OS X, but it runs fine without it.
It's just to control some of the optional print features.
I 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 was pretty surprised when network scanning worked out of the box on Macs. I scan about as much as I print. AirPrint works on the newest ones, too, from iPhone/iPad.
I 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…
How hard would that be to hack together some printer harware and make it a Kickstarter?
I pretty much exclusively buy Epson XP-420's nowadays. What other all-in-one option is there that meets the following criteria? 1. Complete and free Linux support 2. Wireless 3. Affordable - remember, we are competing with a printer that regularly retails for $40 and whose cartridges cost around $10 per set. "Just buy the $200 Brother with $40 a set toner" isn't satisfactory to the people I recommend printers to. HP…
Since most folks only print black and white for occasional stuff (forms, taxes, resumes, etc), something like the Brother HL-L2320D mono laser printer is a good bet. Works with Linux (rpm and deb available from their site), wireless, affordable. It's under $90 and toner is $30 for 1200 pages (2.5 cents per page) or $49 for 2600 pages (1.9 cents per page). Compare that to $13 for 175 pages (7.4 cents per page) with th…
In many cases, it is hard enough to get them even remember what the print icon looks like, how to use ctrl-p, or that the word "Print" is in the file menu. Trying to get the tech illiterate to not only manage two printers, but also replace ink and toner for both of them, is crazy.
And the thing is nobody in this is printing often. Frequent printers should always buy laser, we know that, that is established. But we are talking about the once a week printers who just want everything for cheap. What better alternatives are there for that use case than an Epson 420?