Why Do Printers Still Suck? (wired.com) 287
Just when we need them the most, with print shops locked down, online schooling in session, and everyone working from home, they fail to step up. From a column: Printers have been my enemy ever since I can remember. My first office job involved an evil printer that suffered daily paper jams. Tasked with fixing it, I suffered frequent burns and paper cuts. It had a door you had to close just so, or it would immediately break again with the dreaded phantom paper jam. It tormented me for months, completely indifferent to my cries. There isn't even any paper in it! More than two decades later, printers haven't improved at all. It feels like printer companies stopped innovating sometime in the '90s when sales stopped climbing. In fact, it's almost as if they've regressed. Manufacturers tempt with unbelievably cheap deals on printers and then nail you on expensive ink. To make sure they get their pound of flesh, they focus an inordinate effort on making sure printers only work with proprietary ink cartridges.
[...] Three years and a couple of printers later, sick of being gouged for ink cartridges that always seem to run out at the worst moment, I optimistically signed up for a printing subscription plan. The idea is you are charged a flat fee based on how many pages you print each month, and the printer automatically orders ink refills when it's running low. Reading this back, I can only cringe at my naivety. Things were fine for the first few weeks. Then I made the mistake of turning the printer off. It doesn't like to be turned off. It started emailing me, insisting that it needs to be turned on and connected to the internet so the subscription plan can work properly. Every time I turn it on, it prints an ink-heavy test page. It is incredibly good at printing test pages -- it just won't print the document you want. Things got worse when I made the mistake of changing my internet service provider. I forgot about the printer for a while. Then I suddenly needed it. I didn't have time to set up the Wi-Fi, so I plugged directly into the printer with a good old-fashioned cable. It refused to print. I refused to connect it to the internet, so it refused to print for me. To get it working again I had to completely uninstall everything related to the printer, update my drivers, install three separate programs, carry it to another room to plug directly into my desktop, carry it back again, hold down the correct button sequence at the stroke of midnight, spin around three times, and recite the printer incantation into a mirror. It's finally connected and working ... for now. But I know it's only a matter of time before it betrays me again.
[...] Three years and a couple of printers later, sick of being gouged for ink cartridges that always seem to run out at the worst moment, I optimistically signed up for a printing subscription plan. The idea is you are charged a flat fee based on how many pages you print each month, and the printer automatically orders ink refills when it's running low. Reading this back, I can only cringe at my naivety. Things were fine for the first few weeks. Then I made the mistake of turning the printer off. It doesn't like to be turned off. It started emailing me, insisting that it needs to be turned on and connected to the internet so the subscription plan can work properly. Every time I turn it on, it prints an ink-heavy test page. It is incredibly good at printing test pages -- it just won't print the document you want. Things got worse when I made the mistake of changing my internet service provider. I forgot about the printer for a while. Then I suddenly needed it. I didn't have time to set up the Wi-Fi, so I plugged directly into the printer with a good old-fashioned cable. It refused to print. I refused to connect it to the internet, so it refused to print for me. To get it working again I had to completely uninstall everything related to the printer, update my drivers, install three separate programs, carry it to another room to plug directly into my desktop, carry it back again, hold down the correct button sequence at the stroke of midnight, spin around three times, and recite the printer incantation into a mirror. It's finally connected and working ... for now. But I know it's only a matter of time before it betrays me again.
Stop buying shit printers (Score:5, Insightful)
Good quality printers are fine, shit printers are shit.
Re:Stop buying shit printers (Score:5, Insightful)
I want a high quality printer that has toner and image drum cartridges that lasts for years. But I'm not willing to spend more than $129 for it.
Re:Stop buying shit printers (Score:5, Insightful)
I want a high quality printer that has toner and image drum cartridges that lasts for years. But I'm not willing to spend more than $129 for it.
Find used office equipment on Craiglist.
I scored a HP4100 with a fresh toner cartridge and two paper trays for $100. I've been using it for 10 years on the same toner.
My wife wanted a color printer. Brother Color Laser, full or toner, for $200.
I just bought a flatbed/sheet-fed 32-bit color scanner for $10.
Re: Stop buying shit printers (Score:5, Informative)
I have a 30 year old LaserJet 4L. Has always worked perfectly. Refill cartridge is cheap $15.
Re: Stop buying shit printers (Score:5, Interesting)
This. The old LaserJets are absolute beasts. I have a Brother now since my (now deceased!)* cat broke the manual feed tray on my LaserJet 5mp. It's hard to complain about a decade of use on a used printer that only required paper and toner until its accidental death.
*Correlation is not causation
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LaserJets are damn near immortal.
Re: Stop buying shit printers (Score:4, Interesting)
Any time I've had compatibility issues with a printer my solution has been to run the job through a PDF creator and then print from Acrobat as an image. Haven't run into a printer yet that had an issue printing the raster graphics.
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Beat me to it. Office equipment, when new, costs a fortune, but is built to last and has cheap consumables. So you buy it second-hand for a tenth or hundredth of the original price and get a good-quality printer for the price of a crap one. I've got a 15-year-old Kyocera that takes 5,000 page toner cartridges costing around $50, and for which you can still get current drivers because Kyocera seem to support their hardware indefinitely.
My neighbour in contrast has some crap Canon "home office" printer w
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Re: Stop buying shit printers (Score:4, Interesting)
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Second that. I'm on my second brother laser in 15 years. This one is color, but less than $50 in toner tends to last me 2-3 years, at least.
The last time I moved I actually had a use-case for wireless printing. I figured that after 12+ years I could justify buying a new one.
Re: Stop buying shit printers (Score:4, Informative)
I'm on year 12 of my HL-4040CN, and it's still going strong.
My only complaint is that they weigh 4 tons, but they're indestructible. I used to use mine as a step stool in my old apartment. Then it sat in my freezing garage through two winters before I decided to hook it up, and it turned on like it was never off.
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Something like 20 years ago I bought a Dell 3100cn 4-color Laser. Great honkin' beast of a thing that probably cost a mint just to ship, but Dell was running a special, so it was something like $300 with free shipping. The idea was that the toner cartridges (it has 4) were proprietary and only available from Dell. Except I don't print much, so in the 20 years, I've gone through exactly three black toner cartridges and one drum, and now the carts are available third party. Except for the envelope feeder
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I got a Samsung color Laser as an Amazon Warehouse deal. $109. I've had the stupid thing for about eight years and I'm still on the original toner.
I switched my office printers to Brother and I have to say they've been solid all the way around. Even the more expensive of their Inkjets are surprising for being not-terrible. I haven't had to put up with so much as a clogged print head in the last three years.
I'm only talking about maybe 40 printers in service, total, but after two decades of putting up with w
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I've had nothing but bad luck with Samsung printers. I've had two; a color and a B&W and both were just pains in the asses. A lot depends on the volume your printing too. To some extent I imagine higher end lasers are a lot more heat tolerant, so you can print a couple of hundred pages in a shot and it will handle the temperatures. I think heat is responsible for the problems in a lot of low-end lasers; that and the shitty parts that wear very quickly
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Samsung printers don't have a great reputation, though I think they are now Dell, or vice versa?
Years ago I got a CLX-2160 from my first job, and at the time it worked well and I never had any issues with jams or print quality. I used it for a bit but left it at my parent's place when I moved out. When the corona lockdowns started, I thought it would be great to have my own printer at home. Unfortunately all the toner distribution cartridges were all jammed and caked with toner and I had to clean them. But
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I had a C300. I liked it except the paper had a tendency to jam. I didn't use color that much anyways, so I gave it to a friend who needed a color printer.
Warned him about the jamming, so that was that.
The other issue with low end Samsung lasers is the drivers. A lot of them were GDI printers.
Re:Stop buying shit printers (Score:5, Interesting)
Perfectly functional 'e-waste' from my dad's office ~ 10k pages on it, ~20 years ago - $0
Used laser head was something like $30 ~10 years ago
Used HV power board was ~$25
Feed roller kit ~$20
Toner usually goes bad and starts clumping before I can use it all - ~$40 for a reman cartridge every 2-3 years. The printer still works fine, and is now over 26 years old. Just duplexed something around 400 sheets of paper through it a couple months ago, with no jams.
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I had a LaserJet 4si MX for my university career. Big honking 123lb beast, that doubled as a whole-house heater... but it was just a baby, with only 400,000 pages on the engine. That said, printers like this aren't practical for those of us living in small environments. I gave it to a charity, where it's still chugging along, a good 15 years after I acquired it.
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Spend a couple hundred or so more for decent Canon color laser printer. Not having to maintain or fight with a printer is worth every penny.
Re:Stop buying shit printers (Score:5, Informative)
This. The key word is "laser". Inkjet printers suck. Unless you're printing photos on a regular basis (like daily), they don't make sense cost-wise or reliability-wise.
In my experience, Konica Minolta and Canon look amazing and are generally rock-solid. Brother looks decent, if a bit bold, and is generally rock-solid. Samsung looks like dung, but folks say that they are solid. HP looks like crap (banding problems) and tends to have reliability problems, in my experience. Stay far away. Everybody else? Stay away.
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Brother SOHO Inkjets do this thing where they suck all the ink out of the cartridge into an internal tank. I don't know if my company just has some magical print volume where we just don't have issues, but have a dozen of them and ever never had anyone complain about so much as paper jam or clogged print head in the last ~3 years. I'm surprised how well they've worked for my co-workers.
I moved all my company's printers to Brother stuff over the last five years and in five years we haven't had to talk to pri
Re: Stop buying shit printers (Score:2)
Re:Stop buying shit printers (Score:5, Insightful)
Well... Shit.
You want a high quality, expensive thing for cheap. Don't know what to say man.
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The thing is, there's no need for them to be expensive, it's just a series of market failures. Every once in a while a manufacturer screws up and lets a quality product slip out for cheap and their attempts to lock in the supply of ink or toner fail and for a brief moment the market gets a good product for a low price that remains profitable for the manufacturer. Then they correct the "error".
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The thing is, there's no need for them to be expensive, it's just a series of market failures.
Depends on what you mean by "expensive".
Have you looked inside a modern printer? They are a marvel of low cost high precision manufacturing. Even a decent colour laser is cheaper in real terms than a good dot matrix from the 1980s. And much harder to make. Handling non fanfold sheets at speed is really really hard.
Unless you do enough printing that you know more than some random asshole on slahdot, get yourself a
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No problem. I bought a Ricoh colour laser on sale for about that much. Works great, has done for 10 years.
It's not got WiFi but it has Ethernet and USB.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Yep, Lexmark laser printer here. No printer problems.
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Found a B&W Samsung laser printer at Walmart many years ago (maybe 8) for about $60. Been using it every since. Only had to change the toner cartridge twice. Works perfectly fine with no-name toner cartridges from Amazon that costs $20 and lasts for years.
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Let me guess. Samsung ML-1520. Had one for years, then donated it and bought a Brother HL-2270dw. I wanted duplex and networking.
Go Big (Score:3)
About ten years ago I splurged and bought a Xerox Phaser 6500 on sale for $280. This is a large color office printer with four toner cartridges and a 500 sheet paper tray, with a built-in ethernet print server. It has worked perfectly over the past 10 years. I've put cheapo toner cartridges in it with no problems. It's jammed once or twice, nothing that blasting the paper path with compressed air didn't fix.
What I don't understand, and find somewhat inexcusable, is that people are complaining about $50 prin
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A lot of those shitty printers also have to get the CPU to do a lot of the rendering, which means the drivers are basically executables, and not just definition files. Even if they last, you risk not being able to find the drivers over time, and having to put up with older or mismatched drivers with all the bugs that come along with them.
Re:Stop buying shit printers (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheap, fast, light - pick two
For printers it should probably be
Cheap, small, reliable - pick two
You can't have all three, don't bother asking.
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A long time ago I was in need of a printer away from home. Bought the cheapest laser on Amazon. Was a "Pantum" brand if I recall, but Samsung do really cheap ones too.
Anyway it was fine, actually quite nice print quality. Gave it to my brother, it's still going strong.
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Good quality printers are fine, shit printers are shit.
Yeah, I haven't had much problems with printers for at least a decade. Just buy one with good reviews and don't expect it to be dirt cheap. Also, you need to accept that this industry is similar to the gaming industry where the consoles are cheap and they make up for it with games. Printer ink/toner is where they make their money. Accept it. Or at least research the cost of ink/toner for your chosen printer to see if there is a big difference between brands. My guess is there isn't.
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Just as importantly, good quality printers usually have a very long period of time where you can buy replacement parts. What makes the old HP Laserjets just so darned great is you can keep those puppies running for decades, not to mention the drivers are easy to implement and thus don't suffer the driver senility that buggers up so many budget and mid-range printers. Some of the Ricohs are like that. We have 15 year old Ricoh multifunctions that you can still buy parts for. Of course, those beasts were $300
Re:Stop buying shit printers (Score:5, Interesting)
Tell that to the 50+ HP Laserjet 2035 printers we had to get rid of recently just because HP won't write new drivers for any version of Windows 10 since 2015. They were great printers, they were not cheap, and now they are bricks.
Re: Stop buying shit printers (Score:5, Insightful)
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I work in state government. That's just not going to happen here, hehe.
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So instead of finding a Win7 laptop for 50 bucks on Craigslist and updating the BIOSs of your 50+ printers, you just decided to dump them all instead.
Here's a big FUCK YOU for you to chew on.
Signed,
TAXPAYERS
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Why don't you be smart and hook the things up to a linux print server and use a generic postcript driver on windows?
It always amazes me how many people, especially IT people don't realize that that piece of hardware that no longer works on windows still works fine on Linux and likely will forever.
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Want a good monochrome printer, laser ones are $500 upfront plus supplies.
Want a good color laser printer, these are $2500 upfront plus supplies. (Yes there are ones for $1000-1500 but they have too many corners cut.)
The supplies for laser printers are not much per page, but you should use the printer manufacturer's brand. Cheap third-party ones cause quality problems.
Anything below these price points won't get you a reliable and fast machine that will do the job and not waste your time. This is my own expe
Short answer (Score:4, Insightful)
They are complex mechanical devices. But car motors are too, and they don't fail so much.
They are complex mechanical devices, and cheap. I suppose that's it.
Re:Short answer (Score:5, Interesting)
We need Benjamin Franklin (Score:2)
I could have written that comment. Maybe not in detail, but the broad outline and lots of details.
But I would have included the joke "There hasn't been a good printer since Ben Franklin passed away."
Office Space (Score:2, Funny)
Sounds like poor decision making skills to me (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sounds like poor decision making skills to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Agree. I've been a Brother fan since the early 2000s. They Just Work
Yes, you pay more up front, but the print quality is better than inkjet, the printer doesn't break like an inkjet, and the toner lasts a long time and doesn't dry out when you're not using it, and there's no DRM.
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Yeah brother fan too. It was expensive for the class, and probably not the top print quality, but the darn thing just works.
Re:Sounds like poor decision making skills to me (Score:5, Informative)
I got a Brother laser printer and it is awesome in every way. It now costs about twice what I paid for it a year or two ago, but that is probably because people have realized that it is awesome. It lets you reset the empty toner message, so you can just keep right on using that toner that is getting lighter, but still is plenty good for every day use. There are no DRM plans in place to stop third party cartridges either. Just a great printer that works the way you want it to.
Likewise, I've had a Brother HL-3170CDW since 2013. It cost $280 new. It's a duplex color laser printer. It has no DRM. When it warns "low toner" then I press the button to silence the warning. When the ink really does run low then I buy cheap third-party toner cartridges. It's printed 8000 pages so far without problems. I have it connected via ethernet, and I've never had problem with laptops connecting to it, both mine and guests; they always discover the printer just fine.
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I'll third that, same model. Only problem I had was slow printing sometimes, fixed when I plugged in an Ethernet cable. Turns out my cheap wireless router was crap. Who knew?
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I was looking at the Brother laser printers just the other day, and honestly, you may have tipped the scales. It's hard to trust the broader internet for reviews anymore, including (especially?) Amazon. This is excellent to know.
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My wife is a writer and has to do a lot of printing for her drafts. I bought her a Brother HL-2270DW years ago and not once have we had an issue with it. As others have said, it doesn't care if you use 3rd party toner, either.
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I love my HL-2270dw. Great printer, Easy linux compatibility, no muss no fuss.
Bother for me, too. (Score:2)
My current office machine (printer / copier / fax) is a Brother, as was the previous one (which eventually died from too much dust from the pet birds).
I was impressed by the ongoing improvements. Especially in paper handling: The current one Just Works. (The previous one, though not perfect, was a vast improvement on its other-name-brand predecessor.) Company's (closed-source B-b) Linux driver works fine with CUPS. Just got around to doing some Rx Fax (needed a tax form) and that Just Worked too.
Mine's
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Any home office equipment is expensive right now. Partially because factories closed, and partially because people are buying more printers for work at home.
If your printer sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
Postscript or PCL Laser (Score:2)
Still have a black and while from the early 90's that prints just fine. Print spooler powers it up when needed. Will probably work till I can not get replacement toner for it ever decade or so.
Newer color laser is much the same.
Either of them I use a pi as a print spooler/network interface as the built in is trash. Not even expensive as a pi zero works just fine.
Brother (Score:5, Insightful)
Step 1: Buy a Brother laser printer. ...
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit... by getting a really solid, trouble-free printer and not getting gouged on ink/toner
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Maybe if you only run Windows. No Postscript, no printer.
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My cheaper Brother laser worked fine using Linux Mint, also print photos using Turbo Print on my Canon Pro 10 https://www.turboprint.info/ [turboprint.info]
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Wow this thread is full of brother fanbois. And I'm another one.
Brother printers support postscript (they call it BR script). And PCL if you prefer to have gs do the rendering.
Re:Brother (Score:4, Interesting)
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OK, I stand corrected. I gave up on Brother a long time ago due to lack of drivers. I guess it's improved.
Paper is the biggest problem (Score:5, Interesting)
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Worst hassle is Samsung sold most of their printer business to HP, who refuses to update drivers for old machines. The only Mac driver is 32-bit which won't run on the most recent operating system release. On Windows 10, the driver is kind of iffy. Hooked the printer up to a Raspberry Pi and that software has been flawless. Also made it a network printer, which is handy.
Laser printer? (Score:2)
Depends on the business model (Score:2)
The problem starts when the manufacturer considers the printer to be a loss leader to sell you supplies. It feels great to get an high-res, reasonably fast, does-everything printer/copier/fax/scanner for under $200 but that doesn't give them much room to build something solid and reliable.
Any printers delivered under that business model are bound to have weak reliability. They are carriers for $79.95 ink cartridges not printers.
The higher end printers are awesome. My company had a floor-standing Kon
My Brother printer is 12 or 13 years old (Score:2)
One word. Engineers (Score:2)
The people who design these printers don't have a good understanding of how people work, let alone how the printer works. Case in point, a Xerox WorkCentre 6515. When it first turns on you are not presented with a home screen from which to select what options you want to set.
Nope, you are forced to select whether the machine is networked or not. You can't bypass it nor come back to it later. You absolutely, positively must answer the question of how you want it connected before you do anything else. What
Choose wisely (Score:2)
I've personally owned just two printers over the last 23 years and haven't experienced problems as described. An HP Laserjet 5MP monochrome that I bought around 1997 and used until I gave it away to a school chum in 2013 or so, and an HP Color Laserjet CP2025 dn auto-duplex printer that I bought in 2012 or so and still own and use.
Choose your tools wisely.
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Simple - There's No Profit in a Good Printer (Score:2)
Each printer is specifically designed to be no better than mediocre - or, at least, to start off reliable and with good quality and to fade after a period of time so you will buy another one.
Come on... if you buy even a "quality" SOHO printer these days, the chances are that it will cost less than one complete set of replacement ink cartridges. Becau
conversely - I'm good at fixing printers (Score:5, Insightful)
I had a lot of internships and entry level office jobs in the 90's-2000's where I was the least qualified person around. Immediately noticed the printer was a big issue. So I decided to become 'the guy' who took care of the printer. I took care of paper jams, replacing cartridges, and stocking paper. It involved a lot of swearing and getting my hands dirty. Occasionally I'd talk to a real printer repairman from one of the big companies. This really changed people's attitudes towards me... I went from being the new guy or the intern to the person who made problems go away.
My advice: get good at opening all the little flaps and removing jammed paper. Sometimes it's really stuck in there and needs to be yanked out in a controlled way. In an office setting, 90% of problems are people who load paper badly... circumvent this problem by being the only person who loads paper. Trust me, no one else wants to do it. Load an optimum stack (ie the max amount that won't cause jams) first thing in the morning, and if necessary again mid-day. Find out where all the copy paper is kept, and if possible move a box near the printer. Learn how to print unusual sizes (legal, envelopes, mailing stickers) so you can advise others on how to do it.
Over time the people around you will notice that the printer has gone from being a source of problems to something that just works. You'll help your entire workplace function smoother, and over time people will value you more.
Printer in 2020 ? (Score:2)
If you need a print out, you failed.
You had the wrong printer (Score:2)
I had inkjet in the 2000s, too expensive, so-so quality...
I then switched to a Samsung color laser wireless, I have it for almost 10 years now, still works fine, can print from every PC or android devices I have here. I buy toners from time to time.
Buy simple, single function devices (Score:2)
Sounds like a user problem (Score:2)
Yeah, if you have THIS much trouble with multiple printers it's probably a User problem.
The answer is to buy a Brother brand laser printer (Score:2)
If you're still buying ink, that's your problem. I've had my Brother color laser printer for almost 5 years now and not a single malfunction after thousands and thousands of pages.
Headline should be: "Why do inkjet printers suck?" (Score:2)
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Becoming an IoT device (Score:2)
I own a Canon Pixma Pro10 printer (love it) and I ended up on their mailing list. I get a come-on every couple of weeks.
They recently announced a new printer in the same line as the one I own - Pixma Pro200. In the fine print under the description it mentions "requires an Internet connection and a compatible smartphone or tablet".
Say what?
Bullshit.
It's a frikkin' printer. Canon does not need to know the minute-by-minute way I use it. Geez.
Just buy a Brother laser. (Score:2)
From my first HP DeskJet 550C, to various Epsons I used to always fight with my printers, some would stop pulling paper properly, others would try to cheat me out of ink, others had me fiddling with syringes to avoid paying an arm and a leg, at some point, in the early to mid-2000s with the rebates craze I had started buying a new inkjet every time I ran out of ink as that was the least expensive and troublesome thing to do. Until around ~2006 IIRC. I suddenly thought, hey, I hardly ever print color, why am
I get about 6 years out of consumer grade ones (Score:2)
Had a Canon laser print/scan/copy/fax and the printing duplexer failed after about six years. Bought a similar one, which is still running, but the hinge for the top cover, as well as another plastic piece, broke, and now I have to stare at a crooked printer whose lid won't completely shut all day. The toner saver mode in the printer driver quit working with the upgrade to Windows 10, and it doesn't work well when printing from Remote Desktop.
Also have an Epson inkjet which has a duplex scanner. It's workin
My Printer Experiences (Score:2)
Over the years, I think I have owned 2 dot matrix printers (Seikosha SP-1000 VC, Panasonic KX-P1091i), 2 ink jet printers (HP Deskjet 720c, 970cx), and 4 laser printers (HP Laserjet III, IIIp, 2100 and Canon LBP612cdw). Have they all been problem free? Nope. The fuser went bad on the IIIp and was starting to go bad on the 2100 but that's to be expected when a laser printer gets old. Paper jams and misfeeds have almost never occurred. My current Canon is awesome. I got it on closeout at Staples last year fo
Brother (Score:2)
I have a Brother 5370DW at my shop which as been printing invoices since March 2012 when I started my store. I have replaced the original 1/2 cartridge with Brother one some years ago and now threw in a cheap Mustache brand and two weeks ago finally had to get a new drum. In winter I pay almost $500 a month in heat to heat my store, the cost of the printer is a drop in the bucket for the 1000's of invoices is has printed. Setting it to toner saver get me like 7000+ pages per toner.
Austin McConnell on the Printer Ink Cartridge Scam (Score:2)
Its both enraging and cathartic.
-S
I have an HP MFP M477fdw (Score:2)
It's a multi-color laser printer/scanner/copier that was a bit pricy, but I haven't had to get new color toner cartridges in three years and it hasn't skipped a beat. First rule of printers: "If you buy cheap shit, you get cheap shit."
I use good quality printer paper. Second rule of printers: "Buy good quality paper - see rule 1."
Finally, I make sure my print drivers are up to date. Third rule of printers: "Make sure you software is up to date."
Do all this and you should have no trouble having a trouble-fre
Brother! (Score:3)
I was responding to someone else on another forum about what printer to get and I mentioned Brother. I have a Brother HL-1650(N) that I've had for 19 years. Upgraded the memory, and added a network interface. Over 24K pages and still going strong. Third party toner seems to be fine, but I'm always wary of drums. At least they are separate components. Some other people in my household have problems reaching the printer, but it's been rock solid for me. Drivers are starting to become scarce (I'm concerned about macOS 11 Big Sur), but it can always work as a generic PostScript or PCL printer if necessary.
Why are you printing so much anyway? (Score:2)
I agree about all of the printing issues people like the O.P. are complaining about. But I largely solved this by eliminating my need to print in the first place. Sure, I still have the occasional document I really need to print out. But I've reached a point where my entire printing need can be served well with one of the HP all-in-one units that comes with their "Instant Ink" monthly subscription. I'm on the "200 pages per month" plan that costs me just under $6 a month, and unused pages do roll over to
3 characteristics (Score:2)
I did a study of printers under $500 about 6 years ago when my previous color laser (Xerox engine marketed by Dell) died. I looked along 3 lines:
1. Hardware quality
Here I looked at on-line reviews, how often the printers were reported as breaking, how old they were when they broke
2. Software quality
In particular, did the printer vendor keep drivers, etc, up to date with changes in OS? Since I'm a Mac person, support for Mac OS (and I also looked at support for Linux) was a
Dont buy inkjet buy laser (Score:2)
Less intelligent people keep buying a inkjet every few years, the biggest problem with inkjets is that the heads are built into the printer, when they die the printer is dead. HP builds the heads into the cartridge but they are expensive, and also dry out. Get a laser for general printing, a 300$ printer has a much lower cost per page and good brand will last 10yrs+.
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Ink Jets like to run periodic maintenance to maintain a clean printhead.
Turning them off is a big no no, and without at least a little daily use there can be issues too.
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Some even put the paper upside down....
Most people do not even know paper has two different sides and that it does not work right if you put it in wrong side up in a duplex printer.
It really is so easy: Put paper package on table back side up, open the two flaps, open in the middle at the back, lift paper stack and drop it into printer paper tray _without_ turning it.
Some people consistently screw this process up. At university, I had to tell this every few weeks to a bunch of CS PhD candidates (was one myself back then), because they kept getti