Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia

Another data point: I have been using a Brother inkjet multifunctional printer with high-capacity ink cartridges for ~five years now, it has no problems with third party ink, and it has worked perfectly from day one. My home office is apparently quite challenging for an inkjet printer, because it's located directly under the roof, so temperatures can get quite high in the summer, which the Epson printer I had before couldn't handle - it constantly had white lines in the printouts. No problem with the Brother.

I can't wrap my head around how the printer market has turned into this absolutely dispicable, foul state that it is in right now.

Decades of innovation that have been invested, not to make a better product, but mostly on how to extract more and more money from their victims, I mean "customers".

I would like to own a printer again, but for printing something like once a month, I just can't financially justify spending several hundred bucks on a device that might, at the whim of the manufacturer, decide that the way I'm using it is not okay anymore, is probably designed to break after two years, requires me to sign up for a subscription service for ink, or whatever BS else the decision makers in this space come up with.

I have an HL2270DW monochrome laser that’s been a workhorse for the last decade for my family. It’s got network support and duplexing.

Brother must have jumped the shark lately.

It had no problems printing on random toner (or I have been lucky), and I have extended its useful lifespan by running CUPS for AirPrint support on a home server. It seemed like one of those legendary products at the time I bought it.

I think companies will bring on star engineers from time-to-time to build brand goodwill, and then let the bean-counters loose that will tie up loose ends.

I have an ecotank monochrome epson, it's been fine for a few years now.

that said, they don't seem to like to sit. if I go for awhile without printing I need to do a cleaning more so than conventional inkjets, but i'm okay with that tradeoff, it's nice just refilling with ink.

also the software/driver package on Windows sucks, but unless you're doing firmware upgrades then why bother installing it, anyway.

I bought one a few months ago, about £200, because of exactly this sort of crap going on here. I didn't want to go the compatibles route, and the cartridges are so small in capacity anyway. It's been good so far, and I've been printing roughly once a week so it has been ok. I have kids so I've been photocopying pages from their colouring books etc for them to colour in and keep the books themselves clean, which means it gets fairly regular use.

I'm tempted to set up something in my home automation to print a "test" page every week or two, just to make sure it doesn't get clogged. Given the couple of feet of tubing between the tanks and the head, I suspect once that gets dried/gunked/blocked, it's game over.