451–460 of 485 posts
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What Apple alternatives have you been using?
Would help if you could be more specific here but aside from hardware (macbook/iPhone) there's alternatives (not just competitive but also plain better ones) to just about every service Apple provides.
Brothers LaserJet. No malware, no adware, no funky drivers; just colored, WiFi, LP-protocol, multi-tray PCL and PS support. Best thing since sliced bread.
> no funky drivers Even on Linux?
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I can't think of any scenario where it would be wise to give an IoT device your credit card.
Realistically, it's highly unlikely that the device itself received and is storing the CC details. Most likely the device pings Canons servers when ordering should be done, and then the backend servers handles the actual order and payment. But, never say never, it wouldn't even be the worst thing i've seen in the IoT world.
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I'm sorry your sister went through this, and that I unintentionally picked at your emotional scab. My PoV is that of a customer, and Brother is relatively less customer-hostile.
I am also sorry for GPs loss. I would point out, though, that in an organization of that size, the people making personnel decisions are likely several degrees removed from the people making product and customer support decisions. Kind of like how I love my Amazon Prime, but I get a little knot in my stomach when I hear about the lives of their fulfillment people.
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Would help if you could be more specific here but aside from hardware (macbook/iPhone) there's alternatives (not just competitive but also plain better ones) to just about every service Apple provides.
The person you replied to asked a question for specific details on what alternative to Apple products are being used. I think tis telling that each reply fails to answer.
Unless you wanted me to write an exhaustive list of alternatives for everything Apple makes.
Not to be meant snarky, but I think the office world should strive to print much less at all. Working at a University it is mind boggling to me how much paper is waster because someone internally decided they need a real signature. Not all my colleagues are savyy enough to paste a scanned signature into a pdf.
There's plenty of jurisdictions where "pasting a scanned signature into a pdf" doesn't produce a legally valid signature. Germany requires some signing software for pdfs - though printed-signed-scanned documents are also legally valid signatures
The point is that most of these "need a real signature" requirements are arbitrary and inhouse. Not really legal requirements. So the processes could easily be done without.
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I'm sorry your sister went through this, and that I unintentionally picked at your emotional scab. My PoV is that of a customer, and Brother is relatively less customer-hostile.
I am also sorry for GPs loss. I would point out, though, that in an organization of that size, the people making personnel decisions are likely several degrees removed from the people making product and customer support decisions. Kind of like how I love my Amazon Prime, but I get a little knot in my stomach when I hear about the lives of their fulfillment people.
This is morally and ethically wrong. If you run a company it is _your responsibility_ if your employees are mistreated.
More, why exactly is this happening? Do you think the lower-downs make policy like this about healthcare?
No. They are given unrealistic financial targets by management and can choose either to leave, or to grind the workers for every spare penny.
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The people who run these companies take the lions' shares of the profits and yet when their companies deliberately do something horrible, they shrug and say, "Not my fault."
It's simply evil.
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I got my first printer in high school, around 90-91. It was an HP laserjet printer, when they were first going mainstream. I loved it, it always printed well, and the toner seemed to last forever. Of course, it was B/W, but that was all I needed. Fast forward to today, I have never owned an inkjet printer. Over the past 30 years I’ve owned a total of 3 laser printers. The second was in 2005, because I wanted a scanne…
Funny enough I had bought my fair share of inkjets and had been disappointed for the obvious reasons stated here. However one day somewhere around 2005 I found an HP LaserJet III on garbage day near my house and took it home. To my surprise it worked fine and even had toner. I was STILL using it without a toner change 10 years later when I moved cities, and gave it to someone. I could leave it off for a year and prin…
Consumer grade lasers these days aren't quite the same creature as the tanks of old, but I see little reason to own an inkjet. For basic colour a laser does perfectly well, for many photos they do pretty good (inkjets are better for photos but only if you feed them expensive paper - output from a laser is sharp even on cheap bog-standard paper which an inkjet is actually worse on, and unless you print lots or often need hen now it works out better to get things printer elsewhere). Inexpensive lasers can be a minefield (some of the cheap ones are cheap for a reason...) and are more expensive to run than those tanks of old, but get a reasonable one and you'll be happy with it for years and they are a lot cheaper than running a 'jet for any use case.
Last month, my friend's HP Laserjet Pro printer started flashing "SUPPLY PROBLEM" error message and wouldn't print anything. Apparently, all he did was update the firmware after a message popped up on the printer urging him to do so. Well, that firmware update included new DRM checks for non-HP toners. The printer would just refuse to work with 3rd party toner cartridges. I had to help him and had to find an old firm…
HP screwed me the same way a few years ago. I now have a Brother Lazer printer. Fuck HP. Threw that junk in the trash.
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If you print photos, go to a print service. How often do you print photos that you can't?
A photo service is just somebody else who owns printers and charges you a markup. If you print one-off photos of decent quality, probably going to be RA-4, inkjet, or dye sub. This is true whether or not you own the printer yourself.
It's somebody else who owns much hiqher quality printers that you would buy, and who charges everybody for a markup (so it gets spread).
It's usually cheaper to print in such a service than to buy printer+ink+paper and print - and with better results.