301–310 of 485 posts
Brothers LaserJet. No malware, no adware, no funky drivers; just colored, WiFi, LP-protocol, multi-tray PCL and PS support. Best thing since sliced bread.
You know a market is bad when a company can lead the space simply with the platform of "we won't scam you."
Last month, my friend's HP Laserjet Pro printer started flashing "SUPPLY PROBLEM" error message and wouldn't print anything. Apparently, all he did was update the firmware after a message popped up on the printer urging him to do so. Well, that firmware update included new DRM checks for non-HP toners. The printer would just refuse to work with 3rd party toner cartridges. I had to help him and had to find an old firm…
I was fortunate enough to buy a 1990s laser printer. Back then companies were still short sighted enough¹ to build them to last. It's an Apple Laserwiter 12/640PS. It's still chugging along today, with 64Mb of memory no less! [1]: Recurring revenue wise that is.
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I think that not buying printers is the correct answer, difficult to get everyone to do it, but it is the metric most likely to change behavior. Inkjet technology is fine, it was the exploitation of it by HP which lead to copy cats that really made it ridiculous. I've got an HP inkjet wide format plotter (36" wide) that was built both before HP was all in on ink as a profit center and built by a different division (p…
I don't think I've ever seen an inkjet plotter in action. Does the paper go through a single pass? I was always fascinated by pen plotters, especially when drawing diagonal lines or changing pens.
The HP inkjet "plotter" works by rasterizing the plot in the host computer's memory and then sending strips of raster to the plotter. The dot resolution of the print head (replaceable, but not part of the ink system) matches the 0.7mm resolution of the pen plotters it replaced.
I stopped buying inkjet printers. They are a scam, the ink costs a fortune and they are built as cheap as they can, meaning that they will break and you have to throw them away because they are impossible to repair, they are slow and when you need them they don't work because they were not used for too much time. After having 5 broken printers in the garage I said enough, that is a useless waste, and invested some mo…
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Yep. Duty cycle, as an engineering concept, is notoriously misunderstood by the general public. It seems every day that there's some sort of outrage in a blog or article: "Did you know that [large organization] spends $[x] for their [equipment]? Wow, you can buy [consumer version] at Walmart for 1/100th of that price!" No, outraged taxpayer, your school district isn't wasting money by purchasing a $10,000 copier. You…
I am still skeptic, honestly, are some metal gears worth the 20x-10x cost increase? Yes, you can make it more suited for long term use for _some_ cost, but that much? At what point is is actually fleecing customers? Some products surely are just fleecing, but how can you tell? Usually, you can't.
https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-deskjet-2755e-all-in-on...
... this:
https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-laserjet-enterprise-mfp...
... and this:
https://www.office.xerox.com/en-us/multifunction-printers/al...
... is not some metal gears.
All three of those are machines with fundamentally different functions and capabilities.
I have (long ago) supported consumer grade printers in an enterprise environment. They're so bad as to be unusable. You spend way more than the $10,000 on the nice copier in lost productivity due to poor reliability and additional IT labor required to fix a fleet of inkjets.
With a $10,000 copier, you push out an group policy to install it on everyone's PC and it runs pretty smoothly and can take the load. If you put $100 inkjets on 80 different desks, you end up having to hire another FTE just to manage the cartridge replacements, driver installations, head cleanings, paper jams, etc. And the experience is worse for the end users too. If they need 250 handouts printed in the next 10 minutes, they simply can't do it.
I stopped buying inkjet printers. They are a scam, the ink costs a fortune and they are built as cheap as they can, meaning that they will break and you have to throw them away because they are impossible to repair, they are slow and when you need them they don't work because they were not used for too much time. After having 5 broken printers in the garage I said enough, that is a useless waste, and invested some mo…
Let's not throw the baby with the bathwater. Injket printers have advantages and can be cheap if we dismantle the highway robbery of inks. Just because inks are expensive does not mean that we should get rid of inkjet technology. > I really don't see a reason for inkjet printers to exist, I hope they will disappear from the market. Perhaps you should investigate why they exist. Seems too naive to wish for their disap…
Honest Question: Would inkjets remain cheap if they all accepted $STANDARD bottles available everywhere and compatible with all printers.
Last month, my friend's HP Laserjet Pro printer started flashing "SUPPLY PROBLEM" error message and wouldn't print anything. Apparently, all he did was update the firmware after a message popped up on the printer urging him to do so. Well, that firmware update included new DRM checks for non-HP toners. The printer would just refuse to work with 3rd party toner cartridges. I had to help him and had to find an old firm…
My big question here is: Why aren't companies being found criminally negligent with the CFAA when they force poison-pill "upgrades" that remove stated features from the original device? How is this functionally different than the crypt-ransomware we see in the news?
As many techies will probably always say anytime inkjet product shenanigans come up: just buy a laser printer. And I now add: and don't let it connect to the Internet, and don't install proprietary drivers or software for it on your computers. Also, remember the names of companies doing sketchy things, and do your part to provide negative feedback when you can, and to give positive feedback to better companies. (Exam…
It's Canon/HP/$MANUFATURER shenanigans - nothing inherent to inkjets. I think the better solution is to buy from more ethical printer companies, like Brother.
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I do not understand how the other printer brands are even in business when Brother is an option. I feel like their reputation for being the best in the consumer space would have spread far and wide by now. I have been able to scan all of my documents with their MFC line directly to my Dropbox (or box or drive or onedrive) account for over 6 years now, AND Brother Web Connect automatically OCR’s them.
FWIW I was totally set on picking up a Brother B&W Laser a few months ago to replace my crappy inkjet because I've had great experiences with them in the past. I wanted it now though, and locally could only really find a good deal on a Canon. I'm extremely happy with it, prints great, fast enough for me, can get knockoff toner for cheap on Amazon that hasn't given me any issues, and the wifi networking is rock solid.…
I’m used mine with macOS, iOS, Linux and Windows.
So no multi-gigabyte downloads, no proprietary cloud photo storage and no telemetry.
I’ve had that in the past with both Epson and Canon inkjets.
Is the Canon laser any better?
I’m so sold on Brother now I don’t think I’d trust Canon again.