Well don't buy inkjet printers.
Although manufacturers might pick up on that and start doing the same for laser printers...
Never buy Epson printers
121–130 of 170 posts
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#122This isn't just consumer grade printers. At work we have a number of large scale plotters and they all stink. Our main is a HP DesignJet T1300 44-inch wide plotter. Even it refuses to print if any of the 6 inks are too low or the heads are 'needing to be replaced'.
The software on it is absolutely brutal too, it has a resistive touch screen as it's primary input and it's incredibly slow to page through. On top of that, if you try to speed things along (for example, pre-opening the paper roll cover before manually paging through to the 'replace paper' menu link) it will complain and refuse to do what you ask until you start back at the beginning.
I have had nothing but trouble, and these are multi-thousand dollar printers.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#123I 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…
The Brother color lasers also are happy to print without color toner cartridges present. By contrast, HP's cheaper color lasers require the cartridges to be present, and if they run out and are left in the machine, they cause banding over your printouts. This is due to their integrated drums wearing out, so you have to replace the color toners even if they're not being used (or hack around with transferring chips ont…
This is not true, I owned a 700$ multifunction printer scanner, copier, everythinger and it required me to hack the cartridges to print black, it always put shitty yellow tracking dots on all printouts. Don't send more business to Brother.
They have the worst software (on printer and in driver) of any printer company I have come across. Their driver installers download random bits from IP addresses in Japan with zero encryption. The hardware is stellar, the software is cringe worthy.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Brother color lasers also are happy to print without color toner cartridges present. By contrast, HP's cheaper color lasers require the cartridges to be present, and if they run out and are left in the machine, they cause banding over your printouts. This is due to their integrated drums wearing out, so you have to replace the color toners even if they're not being used (or hack around with transferring chips ont…
This is not true, I owned a 700$ multifunction printer scanner, copier, everythinger and it required me to hack the cartridges to print black, it always put shitty yellow tracking dots on all printouts. Don't send more business to Brother. They have the worst software (on printer and in driver) of any printer company I have come across. Their driver installers download random bits from IP addresses in Japan with zero…
I'm assuming this is on Windows? Because I've never had to install anything on a Mac for it to work with a brother printer...
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#125I 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…
I've never had anything but plug and play it just works with HP network/wireless printers. The Linux stuff works far more reliably than the Windows drivers.
For $100, you get a wireless/ethernet dual sided printer that can also has a sheet fed scanner.
The main downside of the HPs is the cartridge cost, along with the DRM and the annoying "this cartridge is expired" messages you need to click through.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#126We're all getting trolled by the printer companies. Look at this thread.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#127Honest question: Why printers are so stuck in time? Why no great innovations? Why there is no product out there that "Just work" and won the Market? I never heard of startups making printers, not even those dreamy kickstart projects. Why we have this product that annoy People for ages and no one fix it? Anyone could give me any insight?
How much do people still use printers? It's gotta have declined lately—I honestly can't remember the last time I printed physically.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not true, I owned a 700$ multifunction printer scanner, copier, everythinger and it required me to hack the cartridges to print black, it always put shitty yellow tracking dots on all printouts. Don't send more business to Brother. They have the worst software (on printer and in driver) of any printer company I have come across. Their driver installers download random bits from IP addresses in Japan with zero…
I'm assuming this is on Windows? Because I've never had to install anything on a Mac for it to work with a brother printer...
This is on a Mac. I wanted to see if the firmware bugs would be fixed by using their firmware update tool. The printer itself times out when attempting an on-device firmware upgrade. The downloaded update utility just attempts to grab a new firmware image from an IP which is non-responsive.
It can't scan over AirPrint if it has gone to sleep, it only can accept print jobs via IPP if you want it to WOL. So I have two printers configured, one via AirPrint for scanning and another via IPP for printing. There are so many low hanging firmware bugs that it makes me think the same folks wrote healthcare.gov
This is par for the course in brother firmware, https://gist.github.com/seanjensengrey/4223dc23d1f7cc95a157
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know why people still bother with inkjets. It's like the companies are actively punishing you for buying these models of printers. If they are necessary for work, then MAYBE. But even then, if you're buying commercial hardware you're not dealing with this junk either. It also used to be that laser was incredibly expensive in comparison, now they're about the same price if you compare color inkjet to black and…
Nozzle jams were the bane of my existence with the 3 HP inkjets I inherited/bought during my college years. I also switched to a Brother B/W laser printer last year (HL-L2380DW) and it works over my network, I can print to it from a phone/tablet/desktop (win/OSX/linux/iOS/android), and on each platform it "just works", printer/scanner/copier. We have printed hundreds of pages thus far and have yet to replace the cart…
My last HP multifunction was complete garbage. The sheet feeder was unreliable. The scanner insisted on adding a black vertical line about 2 inches from the left margin of every scanned page. Scans resulted in massive file sizes even though quality was sub-par.
Print quality was fair, but cartridges went dry super fast. Frequently replaced cartridges for drying vs usage. Software was also sub-par. Network printing wasn't exactly reliable, as the printer would go unreachable.
Switched to a Canon MX512 and it was a much better experience on all points above. I'm sure there are better units to be had, but for light duty printing and scanning, it gets the job done.
Re: Never buy Epson printers
#130Having owned more printers than I can remember, including Epson, Brother, Ricoh, Tektronix, HP, using laser, inkjet, and even other technologies, I think there are a few conclusions to draw:
+ For printing documents laser printers are by far the best choice for reliability, economy and quality of output. Color lasers have become quite reasonably priced, so if color printing is needed, no need to get something less.
+ For photos, nothing beats a high-quality pigment inkjet printer, but they can be expensive, especially large-format models.
About 12 years ago I bought an Epson Pro 4000, with 17x22in capability, it was at the time used leading edge tech. It required 8 ink cartridges. I preferred the 220 ml size, but those cost ~$100 each. The main problem with the 4000 was the heads clogging easily, a big annoyance and costly too.
But the Pro 4000 made absolutely gorgeous prints. Now it needs to be replaced, though spending >$2000 is not a pleasant prospect. Newer machines no doubt have much better print heads, probably lower TCO.
AS many here point out, small desktop inkjets can be expensive to operate and document output quality is often poor vs. laser.
+ It's been pretty consistent, printers and printer drivers cause 90% of system admin problems. Windows has always been by far the worst on this score. Amazingly, I had tremendous issues with a 6 year old Ricoh under Windows, but absolutely no driver problems with Linux. The customary Postscript-based printing in the Unix world is a predictable standard and usually easy to work with.
Many laser printers have built-in Postscript emulation, though a PS option for high-end printers or plotters can cost upward of $1000. Still might be worth it to avoid the Windows printer driver hell.