Originally published at: Don't buy an inkjet printer from you-know-who. Get a cheap, basic Brother laser printer that won't betray you. | Boing Boing
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Don’t forget the toner is WAY less. High yield (7,000 pages) is cheaper than just one ink jet cartridge. Edit to add do not ever purchase toners from places like stapes.
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Apparently it still needs to be said, because HP ought to have been run out of business years ago. If consumers don’t support companies that still retain some bare minimum level of decency and customer service, greedy, exploitative, contemptuous producers of garbage products will be all that remain.
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Got me thinking that I should buy a backup Brother this year if they’re on sale. I’ve had my scanner/copier/printer for 10 years now, maybe more. would be lost without it.
My aunt keeps buying HP and … have you ever tried to set up a wireless inkjet printer that has only ONE physical button? Custom apps, MUST connected to internet to tell you you don’t have near enough ink. No thanks.
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The more I see of SaaS and HWaaS, the less I want them. I have an Epson tank-style inkjet/scanner and an ancient HP2200D laser. Both are built like tanks and hopefully will outlive me, and I plan to live to a ripe old age.
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THIS.
HP used to make a decent printer, both inkjet and laser. But now? the inkjets are shot through with spyware, DRM, and all the other consumer lock-in techniques that would have instigated a federal level lawsuit by the government in years past. Their laser printers? Not sure about those, I lost interest in them after the 4650 series, but It’s possible that they whine about non-OEM toners as well. And color laser has always been a huge expense with HP- everything on the color lasers barring the printer chassis and formatter was a consumable, from the fuser to the transfer belt, drum, and the toner carts, and any of it could cause poor print quality, and changing out all of the consumables at once was about as much as a brand new printer entirely.
I have a brother MFP that just works. It will note that I’m using a non- OE toner, but it carries right on with no complaints or other user hostile behavior. print quality is passable for business graphics (just don’t print photos on it, you will be disappointed) and spot color, but that’s what I bought it for. Oh, and drivers for it are more or less baked into the OS (windows, at least)- the IOS devices will cheerfully print to it, and I’m pretty sure I was able to print to it from a linux box the last time I tried.
Granted, if I need to replace the OPC/ transfer belt on the brother, it’s going to be expensive, but it’s good for at least a pallet of paper, so that’s not too terrible.
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Can confirm!
I have the most basic Brother laser printer and it just works and works and works.
You can find cheap OEM cartridges online - so you’re not locked into drm hardware.
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“If you absolutely need a color inkjet fork out for the Epson EcoTan ET-85001.”
clicks link to Amazon
I’m sorry, but $500 isn’t forking out, that’s forklifting out.
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Can confirm. I had 2-3 inkjet printers before buying my Brother Laser one and boy have I never looked back.
The best part is that toner doesn’t need to be used several times a week in order to last long… it just does; whereas ink cartridges would dry up quickly if I didn’t use them often (which happened more times than I’m willing to admit).
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Brother printers are great so long as you know the Dragon Eight-Fold Press Heart-Exploding Technique.
When there’s an all-lights-flashing error, turn it off, press and hold the Go button, turn it on, wait, release the Go button, then press it eight times. Error cleared. (Real toner or drum problems may remain.)
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I was going to train with Pai Mei and hopefully learn it, but someone went and poisoned him before I could get to his mountain stronghold. Rats.
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Yeah, but say you are an artist that doesn’t want to give 70% of your print revenue to the likes of Redbubble or some other photo printing service- That printer will fit the bill for doing it in house and not break the bank too badly, especially if you don’t sell prints all that often. (or if you batch print for art shows and such.)
A lot of the higher end Epson inkjet printers (which is where their tank tech originated from, more or less) run over a thousand bucks, but they make their owners money- as in, they run and run and run. And their owners will have a couple of them, or at least a spare to put into service if one needs works. (Epsons are also repairable- I used to work for a company that was the Epson Service Center for the state, so we saw a fair amount of the wide format Stylus Pro models coming through back in the late 90’s / early 00’s.
for a non-dye sub printer, it’s a very good deal. ( Oh, and Epson offers those too, with one model that’s cheaper than this one, but the next ones up get breathtakingly expensive. But those are for print shops and full production setups.)
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Fair points all around.
HP printers have their prolific and well-hated aspects that are commonly cited such as weird networking issues, toner that lasts three pages, self-bricking when you run out of magenta, even if you only want to print b&w, but one of the things that infuriates me the most is their utterly shabby build quality. In the two(!) essentially non-functioning HP desk monsters at our facility, the paper tray does not slide back in properly unless it’s forced and when it does, the frame hits a weird clip thing for envelopes and pops it into the wrong position, forcing me to take the whole damn thing out again and try to find the right micrometer-specific alignment to get the tray in without triggering it. And on top of that, the 8.5 x 11 fill line is about 3/16” too long without a front or rear backstop, so even if I think I’ve loaded it correctly, the paper slides around when I try to close the damn thing. And inevitably, the shitty output flap snaps itself shut and drops prints all over the floor. And if I load in labels or any heavier stock, the rollers don’t seem able to grab correctly and the pages start slipping down and running into multiple pages. It’s like their drm and toner gouging aren’t enough, they have to overthink and ruin basic functionality like a freaking drawer slide.
My home-office Brother, in the other hand has so few issues I consider taking it with me to the facility just to save myself the grief.
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Back in the day, I had an HP Deskjet 500, and I’d routinely go a week or two between printing. Occasionally I had to ungunk the head with a Q-Tip and alcohol, but the high-capacity black cartridge would never suddenly be empty or dried-out. Years down the road, the cartridges changed for the worse.
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Good advice.
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That’s my current printer!
Yes, brother laser is great choice. We have a color one here in the office too.
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I switched to Brother laser printers eons ago and never looked back. I now have a multifunction printer that prints (double-sided!) and scans and copies. It was $200 but will last for years.
What do people use inkjets for, anyway? If it’s photographs, they do a crappy job at that. If you need to print photographs, just go to Walgreens and for 79 cents they’ll print your photograph with a professional photo printer.
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I’m currently using a Canon laser printer that has served me very well and was (and still is) both fairly cheap to buy and reliable, but the toner is nutty. Luckily, the model I have was made about 7 years ago, before they got insane with DRM and off-brand toner is very reasonably priced.
That said, I’m a heavy Brother advocate and always recommend it, especially to less-techy family members. They’re easy to run, simple machines that are designed to print and not milk you like a dairy farm before a milk orgy.
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