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HP fails to derail claims that it bricks scanners on printers when ink runs low

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Re: HP fails to derail claims that it bricks scanners on printers when ink runs low

#121
post #82

Even if you only print things once a month, a laser printer is far less wasteful in time, money, and bullshit than ink that's perpetually dry or consumed. Rather than an entry-level laser printer that cannot be economically repaired, a used mid-level enterprise printer is often the cheapest option long term and saves useful electronics from becoming e-waste. Office furniture rental/repo places and secondary markets l…

In the 1990s HP was a great brand. Nowadays it's a nightmare. My neighbor asked me to troubleshoot one. Obviously the whole printer cannot be used without WiFi and a connection to HP cloud nonsense. Only that the cloud and Windows driver could not agree whether the printer had been set up or not. And the neighbor could not remember their HP account. It took me 2 hours to figure out how to do a factory reset. 1990 a p…

Buy their corporate line of printers, which work as you expect (at least the ones I've seen).

Re: HP fails to derail claims that it bricks scanners on printers when ink runs low

#122
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which brother do you have / recommend? I have been quiet happy with my OKI but the phone connection is the only letdown so far and I might change for a brother in the future.

Not a Brother printer but I would like to recommend the Canon MF240. I bought it at Walmart for $99 - and it feels like I practically stole it with how good it's been to me. Has both Wifi & ethernet, automatically wakes when sent a print job, scanner works great, etc. Works perfect with generic toner cartridges from Amazon, no funny business with DRM. Canon in general have been good printers in my experience. I recen…

Canon business printers and scanners are also super solid. Every business line Canon I've encountered has been great.

Re: HP fails to derail claims that it bricks scanners on printers when ink runs low

#123

Even if you only print things once a month, a laser printer is far less wasteful in time, money, and bullshit than ink that's perpetually dry or consumed. Rather than an entry-level laser printer that cannot be economically repaired, a used mid-level enterprise printer is often the cheapest option long term and saves useful electronics from becoming e-waste. Office furniture rental/repo places and secondary markets l…

>Even if you only print things once a month, a laser printer is far less wasteful in time, money, and bullshit than ink that's perpetually dry or consumed

Especially if you only print things once a month a laser printer is better, otherwise as you said your ink will dry out or you'll consume more ink in cleaning cycles than in printing.

My wife has an office size inkjet printer that she uses nearly daily (prints ~500 - 1000 pages/month for work) and it works flawlessly, ink is cheaper than toner for her old laser printer. If she was only printing once a month, I'm sure the inkjet would be less reliable or economical.

Re: HP fails to derail claims that it bricks scanners on printers when ink runs low

#124
post #82

Even if you only print things once a month, a laser printer is far less wasteful in time, money, and bullshit than ink that's perpetually dry or consumed. Rather than an entry-level laser printer that cannot be economically repaired, a used mid-level enterprise printer is often the cheapest option long term and saves useful electronics from becoming e-waste. Office furniture rental/repo places and secondary markets l…

In the 1990s HP was a great brand. Nowadays it's a nightmare. My neighbor asked me to troubleshoot one. Obviously the whole printer cannot be used without WiFi and a connection to HP cloud nonsense. Only that the cloud and Windows driver could not agree whether the printer had been set up or not. And the neighbor could not remember their HP account. It took me 2 hours to figure out how to do a factory reset. 1990 a p…

> 1990 a printer was a peripheral and if you had a driver it worked.

LOL no.

Printing and scanning have ALWAYS been terrible. A fortune cookie somewhere: "GNU is a printer driver gone horribly wrong".

I have a theory that printer drivers are somehow produced by aliens, who are hellbent on destroying the Earth's infrastructure.

Re: HP fails to derail claims that it bricks scanners on printers when ink runs low

#125
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By not lasting very long I mean I’ve seen 3 die between 2-3 years of heavy use. I have heard they last longer with moderate use, but that suggests a lifetime page limit. Honestly, I don’t have high quality sources which is why I was interested in the first place.

If you've seen it first hand, then fair enough. It just doesn't agree with the consensus I have seen online, so I find that confusing. As I've said previously, I have the most basic laser printer at home, and rarely use it. I just happen to have done a ton of research into printers lately because I've thought about getting a photo printer, and I really like what the ET-8550 has to offer. But, for the time being, I've…

Yeah, I'd highly recommend doing a comparison to even getting online prints mailed. When I did the math on a number of prints including all material costs the savings per print from a lot of local printing services was only a few pennies per page. A few pennies per page versus a several hundred dollar upfront cost to get the same quality meant tons of prints before I broke even and even experienced any savings.

Re: HP fails to derail claims that it bricks scanners on printers when ink runs low

#126

Even if you only print things once a month, a laser printer is far less wasteful in time, money, and bullshit than ink that's perpetually dry or consumed. Rather than an entry-level laser printer that cannot be economically repaired, a used mid-level enterprise printer is often the cheapest option long term and saves useful electronics from becoming e-waste. Office furniture rental/repo places and secondary markets l…

Consider standby power consumption though if you aren't going to manually turn it on and off. The old printers may be very expensive in that regard.

I was annoyed to find that a laser printer I've had for a decade used 30 watts just to keep the network link up, while the manual claimed it used 0.5 watts while on standby.

30 watts over 10 years is about $500 where I'm at...

Re: HP fails to derail claims that it bricks scanners on printers when ink runs low

#127

I have an Epson flatbed scanner for my photography, a V600. It's a lovely little device. Crapware-free functionality. Granted, it seems like the bundled software hasn't been updated since the stone age, but that might be a good thing. My HP inkjet, on the other hand, is a wreck. I had to install an app on my phone, pair over bluetooth, connect it to wi-fi, and create an account just to get a damn test page. No USB ca…

Scanning is the only thing that Brother has let me down on the whole working without extra software idea. Scanning in Windows without their software stack just can't get the same quality scans. It's limited to 600dpi, it doesn't have as crisp quality, and it doesn't natively do PDF. Installing the drivers and software stack, it'll do multipage PDF at 1200dpi looking crisp no problem.

Re: HP fails to derail claims that it bricks scanners on printers when ink runs low

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HP laser keys are still difficult to replace the transfer belt. Go brother if you want a laser. All the consumables are easily replaceable.

There's no belt in a Laser Jet, at least not modern ones.

Oh? What’s modern?

Re: HP fails to derail claims that it bricks scanners on printers when ink runs low

#129
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no sadder story in American capitalism than the decline of HP from a wonderful equipment engineering company to a racket for selling tiny little tubs of overpriced ink. Think a young Steve Jobs would be excited to get a job there now?

Boeing, perhaps. The same thing happened there, as I understand it. There’s also a strong argument for post-Jobs Apple being an even more tragic arc (that’s earlier on the curve). Time will tell. These things happen on the order of decades, not years. Brain drain is real.

What's this about Boeing?

Re: HP fails to derail claims that it bricks scanners on printers when ink runs low

#130
post #42

I'm surprised how many people are writing about their solutions for printing. I thought by now most people had done what I've done and just set things up not to need to print. Xournal allows me to fill out anything I could print from PDF with a stylus on my touch screen. If I want to read and highlight something, I convert it to PDF and read it in Logseq with the same stylus. I can highlight in four colors and it aut…

I am a musician and need to print sheet music for the ensembles that I play with. I personally like reading off of an iPad, but there are plenty of situations where that is difficult or impossible.

I've also printed a lot of maps for climbing/ hiking/ mountaineering.

There are a lot of situations where having a printed copy of something can be critical, either for performance or safety. I like virtual reality, but a lot of us are still operating in meat space.

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