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It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

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Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#231

Post by rm445 »

coopsmoss wrote: post #127
Waterluvian wrote: post #2

A lot of good thoughts in here. The one I personally want everyone to take away is that most plastics are not recycled. Unless it’s glass, fibre, or aluminum, you are lying to yourself if it’s going into the blue bin. Glass-contained milk delivery seems great. Someone needs to start a company. Sure it won’t be sexy or use AI but it’s useful. I have a local co-op that delivers local produce. It’s amazing to see a pile…

It used to be the norm. Why did the "milk man industry" go under? Could it not compete with bulk buying milk once refrigeration became the norm?

It was undercut by supermarkets. In the transitional years when milk float services were still around, they were the more expensive option.

Refrigeration makes sense as the underlying driver - freshness and locality became less important. Then the supermarkets didn't have the cost of the distribution network, and exercised more centralised buying power on the suppliers.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#232

Post by d0gsg0w00f »

NortySpock wrote: post #21
dsr_ wrote: post #16

Printers. Yeah. Herewith, my standard advice. Buy a Brother monochrome laser with duplex, an ethernet port, and BRScript/3 (their PostScript clone). Even if you're sure you will never need one or more of those features, get them all. Wifi and Bluetooth and NFC are strictly optional, and probably not worthwhile. If you need color printing, send it to a printing company. There might even be a local one. It will be done…

Great advice, and I echo 95% of it. My observation is that I have found Wifi useful when I need the printer in an odd location in the house, and color is useful for non-professional usage like "the kids need to print out their report for school" and "the med school student needs anatomy diagrams in color" My trusty color Brother laser HL-3170CDW cost ~$300 at the time and has been trucking along for 7+ years now with…

+1 to the wifi. But without it, I've got a Google Wifi extender puck that has an ethernet port on it that can act as a wifi bridge. The puck is velcro'd to the laser printer so it will always be on the network. This has worked well for us for a few years.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#233

Post by Macha »

coopsmoss wrote: post #127
Waterluvian wrote: post #2

A lot of good thoughts in here. The one I personally want everyone to take away is that most plastics are not recycled. Unless it’s glass, fibre, or aluminum, you are lying to yourself if it’s going into the blue bin. Glass-contained milk delivery seems great. Someone needs to start a company. Sure it won’t be sexy or use AI but it’s useful. I have a local co-op that delivers local produce. It’s amazing to see a pile…

It used to be the norm. Why did the "milk man industry" go under? Could it not compete with bulk buying milk once refrigeration became the norm?

You're going to the supermarket or having the groceries delivered anyway, so at that point it's easier for most people to have control at purchase time over quantity and expiry dates etc.

Also the usual issues with delivering to apartments and other such living accommodation.

Also delivery by milkmen was ~2x more expensive.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#234

Post by frosted-flakes »

ludocode wrote: post #29
NortySpock wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great advice, and I echo 95% of it. My observation is that I have found Wifi useful when I need the printer in an odd location in the house, and color is useful for non-professional usage like "the kids need to print out their report for school" and "the med school student needs anatomy diagrams in color" My trusty color Brother laser HL-3170CDW cost ~$300 at the time and has been trucking along for 7+ years now with…

Even for those non-professional uses it's probably better to put the PDF on a flash drive, walk into Staples and print it on their machines. For anyone who hasn't done it, it's incredibly streamlined. You don't have to talk to anyone and you don't have to wait in line. You just walk up to one of the many printers, put in your flash drive, tap your credit card and collect your printouts. I'm just not convinced that ha…

It is not reasonable to drive 20 minutes there and back every time I need something printed. Colour printers are extremely useful, and I'm unlikely to go back to a monochrome one anytime soon.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#235

Post by ianai »

habosa wrote: post #226

There should be a law that states for any subscription product I should be allowed to buy a fixed-term version with no auto-renewal. In the past two days I've had the following experiences: * Wanted to buy a Font Awesome "Pro" license for their icons. The only way to do this is a 99/year subscription. Reading the fine print says that I can buy it and cancel it the next day and still have lifetime access to the versio…

Agree. Wish there were more backlash on this.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#236

Post by pmoleri »

snuxoll wrote: post #88
pmoleri wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for brother laser +1 for duplex I actually find Wifi useful. Question, what's the deal with the toner cartridges plastic? It looks like a lot of thick plastic. I get to buy a new one and throw the old one, or refill one with the "not recommended non-original toner". Does the manufacturer offer some other environment friendly option?

Brother offers free recycling for all their cartridges. https://www.brother-usa.com/supplies/toner-ink-recycling Go here, print a label, put old cartridge in the box your new one was in and drop it off at the post office or have your postal driver pick it up.

It's good to know. Unfortunately, in Uruguay we're not part of the 28 countries where Brother has recycling in place [1]. And I don't think we get any real alternative except for rogue refilling of the cartridges, or just recycle it as regular plastic waste.

Still, I consider having recycling in 28 countries to be pretty good.

[1] https://global.brother/en/eco/product/recycling

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#237

Post by dcminter »

dsr_ wrote: post #16

Printers. Yeah. Herewith, my standard advice. Buy a Brother monochrome laser with duplex, an ethernet port, and BRScript/3 (their PostScript clone). Even if you're sure you will never need one or more of those features, get them all. Wifi and Bluetooth and NFC are strictly optional, and probably not worthwhile. If you need color printing, send it to a printing company. There might even be a local one. It will be done…

This is good advice. Laser printer cartridges for office printers last a long time and are priced as a minor (but infrequent) consumable.

Now, if you live in Tibet, have kids who need full-colour printing at 2am, or can't afford biscuits let alone printing supplies - then you know that. Quite why there's a pile-on to diss the advice is beyond me! Particularly the 'not outside US' crowd. Come on! HN has an obvious US bias and it's not interesting to be told that.

By all means let's hear alternative advice, but be interesting.

Apologies for the off-topic. As an info-nugget to compensate, I'm very happy with my HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M281fdw so that may be a good alternative for those who know they need colour. Its drivers (via HPLIP) work well with Ubuntu Linux, including the excellent scanner; the latter has proven to be extremely useful for both mundane form scanning and family photographs (where the colour reproduction is far more faithful than the handful of other scanners I had tried).

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#238

Post by yunohn »

derefr wrote: post #133
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Tasmania's second largest city, Launceston. The closest printing shop with extended hours, which I need because I'm just a lowly blue collar working who needs to work 12 hour days to make ends meet, is Officeworks, and there's exactly one of those here and it's 8 kilometres from my house and shuts at 7pm. I'll just use my second hand Brother colour laser, cheers.

Or, presuming you don’t work 7 day weeks, you could just go during working hours on the weekend. Again, who needs glossy photo prints with a 24 hour deadline? What for?

> glossy photo prints with a 24 hour deadline? What for?

Why do you assume that’s the /only/ thing someone would want printed? Quite odd, considering the declining popularity of print photos.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#239

Post by BiteCode_dev »

dsr_ wrote: post #16

Printers. Yeah. Herewith, my standard advice. Buy a Brother monochrome laser with duplex, an ethernet port, and BRScript/3 (their PostScript clone). Even if you're sure you will never need one or more of those features, get them all. Wifi and Bluetooth and NFC are strictly optional, and probably not worthwhile. If you need color printing, send it to a printing company. There might even be a local one. It will be done…

I would never buy something else than a laser printer again.

The alternatives are unreliable junks with gold priced cartridges that will dry on you at the sightless neglect. The machine will find a way to end up breaking, jamming or printing garbage at some point anyway, after what you end up buying the new one in a moment of panic, which again lasts barely the honeymoon period.

But then, one day I decided to suck up the buying price, and went laser. My brother too. Since then, every page prints, fast, clear, like the first one. No jam, no breaking, just printing. And so many pages, like the cartridge could never end.

One day though it did, so I prepared to bleed to death again, except it was $10 on amazon.

I wish I could take a time machine and sing to my young self the gospel of laser printers.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#240

Post by corobo »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #239
dsr_ wrote: post #16

Printers. Yeah. Herewith, my standard advice. Buy a Brother monochrome laser with duplex, an ethernet port, and BRScript/3 (their PostScript clone). Even if you're sure you will never need one or more of those features, get them all. Wifi and Bluetooth and NFC are strictly optional, and probably not worthwhile. If you need color printing, send it to a printing company. There might even be a local one. It will be done…

I would never buy something else than a laser printer again. The alternatives are unreliable junks with gold priced cartridges that will dry on you at the sightless neglect. The machine will find a way to end up breaking, jamming or printing garbage at some point anyway, after what you end up buying the new one in a moment of panic, which again lasts barely the honeymoon period. But then, one day I decided to suck up…

> I would never buy something else than a laser printer again.

I rarely print anything, but when I do it's things like the entire GDPR. Fully agreed!

No more switching it on after a year wondering if the heads will be able to clean themselves or if they're just completely caked in dry ink and a write-off. Just fire it up, print.

Of course the initial setup was a pain in the arse, it is still a printer after all, but as printers go it's been the least painful printer I've ever had (for ref its a Brother HL-1210W I've got)

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