I bought a Brother monochrome laser printer (with built in scanner) for £250 and it was bundled with 6 spare toner cartridges. That was two years ago, we’re still on the first cartridge. The printer before that was also a monochrome laser printer and that lasted nearly a decade (only got rid of it because it didn’t support wireless and I couldn’t be bothered running cables anymore). Basically, I think monochrome lase…
See linked, also from The Verge > Best printer 2023: just buy this Brother laser printer everyone has, it’s fine > The Brother whatever-it-is will print return labels for online shopping, never run out of toner, and generally be a printer instead of the physical instantiation of a business model. https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-...
How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps
131–140 of 208 posts
Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article opens with a hint at another possible course of action: buy a cheap Brother laser printer, which currently go for about $129 in the US. Read the beginning of the article for the testimony, which many people have found for themselves. What you actually need to avoid are manufacturers like HP, unless the idea of an “ink subscription” appeals to you. It’s also best to avoid ink jets both because of ink costs…
I happen to have an HP inkjet printer which I use every three or so months, and never had the dried ink problem. Always works reliably, including the display ink level function. I think this "the ink dries up!" mantra is either outdated, doesn't affect HP anymore, or I got extremely lucky with my HP printers since 2014
Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
A friend of mine also bought a monochrome laser Brother. It was about half of what you paid; but it came with one toner, and it was only half-capacity. Already a bad start. The stock toner only lasted for a year or about 200 pages. A replacement toner costs 50€, more than a single black ink cartridge would cost, and the toner is rated for 1k pages only while the 44€ ink cartridge is rated for 2.2k. (!) In fact, for e…
Page count ratings aside, the issue I've always had with Inkjet printers is that I print rarely - so nearly every time I go to print, I need to buy new cartridges! It isn't very fun to spend $60 on ink so I can print 3 pages because my last cartridges dried/clogged up in the last 3 months. My laser printer will sit there quietly out of the way indefinitely. Then I surprise it with a print job and it just does what I…
Wait, do you know that most printers have the ability to clean these clogs (by wasting a large chunk of the ink)? You don't really need to throw the cartridge away. This is why I say that printing the rated amount of pages is difficult, since these cleanup operations waste a large chunk of the ink.
In my experience, an installed cartridge does not become unusably dry even after 1 year of total lack of use. That's because I've had all 4 colors installed for almost a year and they're still printing, and they were open & already close to the expiration date by the time I bought them (amazon warehouse stuff)...
Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps
#134I actually have no idea how printers (things that have been around for ever) are _still_ just so bad. I do get cheap printers tbf... but sometimes they just flat out do not work or can't connect or get jobs stuck in the queue, etc. I never experience this when buying other "cheap" peripherals, yet, printers just seem to consistently suck in almost every way.
They are required by law to do certain things. You can't print black if yellow is out because the tracking microdots won't print. The region is extremely important not to be changed because different regions have different requirements. You can't even create a printer startup and fix the issues because it's all basically regulatory.
Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps
#135I bought a Brother monochrome laser printer (with built in scanner) for £250 and it was bundled with 6 spare toner cartridges. That was two years ago, we’re still on the first cartridge. The printer before that was also a monochrome laser printer and that lasted nearly a decade (only got rid of it because it didn’t support wireless and I couldn’t be bothered running cables anymore). Basically, I think monochrome lase…
Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps
#136I bought a Brother monochrome laser printer (with built in scanner) for £250 and it was bundled with 6 spare toner cartridges. That was two years ago, we’re still on the first cartridge. The printer before that was also a monochrome laser printer and that lasted nearly a decade (only got rid of it because it didn’t support wireless and I couldn’t be bothered running cables anymore). Basically, I think monochrome lase…
Instead of supporting HP’s printer business, I buy third party toner cartridges on Amazon for 25% the price.
The official supplies are generally inferior.
I’m not sure how much this applies to brother, but it means I pay $5-10 per year for toner. We use multiple reams of paper a year.
Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
A friend of mine also bought a monochrome laser Brother. It was about half of what you paid; but it came with one toner, and it was only half-capacity. Already a bad start. The stock toner only lasted for a year or about 200 pages. A replacement toner costs 50€, more than a single black ink cartridge would cost, and the toner is rated for 1k pages only while the 44€ ink cartridge is rated for 2.2k. (!) In fact, for e…
So with infrequent use you use about 1% of the cartridge just cleaning. I typically print 1-3 pages when I print something. So your ink cartridge would give me about 200 pages.
Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought this too! Then I saw the light. Get the cheap Brother laser printer "that everybody has" in the article that is linked from the linked article (the linked linked article?) https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-... Seriously. It's so stupid simple. It rules. It juuuuuust prints. No DRM, no nothing. No apps to install. (I think it has apps, but you don't need them. I certainly didn't ins…
I have the wired version of this - the HL-L2300D - and it has been fine too. The one issue with the wired version is that there are no good Linux drivers, brlaser [0] kind of works - but fails with certain documents. [0] - https://github.com/pdewacht/brlaser
Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps
#139I actually have no idea how printers (things that have been around for ever) are _still_ just so bad. I do get cheap printers tbf... but sometimes they just flat out do not work or can't connect or get jobs stuck in the queue, etc. I never experience this when buying other "cheap" peripherals, yet, printers just seem to consistently suck in almost every way.
They are required by law to do certain things. You can't print black if yellow is out because the tracking microdots won't print. The region is extremely important not to be changed because different regions have different requirements. You can't even create a printer startup and fix the issues because it's all basically regulatory.
Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are required by law to do certain things. You can't print black if yellow is out because the tracking microdots won't print. The region is extremely important not to be changed because different regions have different requirements. You can't even create a printer startup and fix the issues because it's all basically regulatory.
Am fascinated by the consumer regulatory angle here. Got any examples/text to read over?
https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d...