BTW, I’ve had my Brother laser MFP for 11 years and still on the original toner.
If any representative from Brother is reading this, hear me.
DON’T ENSHITTIFY! You see this? You can own the market if you just LEAVE IT ALONE.
Exactly. You can join the club of “Do Nothing and Win” club along with Gabe Newell
They have started chipping their toners, or so I’ve read. They’re still the least shitty printer manufacturer, AFAIK, though.
Let’s hope it’s just for quality of life and not to bully their customers…
Unfortunately, I don’t think it is. I used to use knock-off toner, but after a firmware update, the printer would no longer recognize those cartridges. Luckily, I had bought them on Amazon, so I just explained the problem to customer service and got a full refund. I still love the printer though.
Bruh
I honestly don’t remember my printer brand. And that’s a good sign. I bought it years ago, and it now lives under my basement stairs on a static IP via wifi, accepting the on average bimonthly print job that I need from it. Then I walk down, fetch the print, and close the door on it again. I should name it Harry Potter.
Harry Printer
I hope it’s at least in standby mode, and not always on.
A “printer”? Oh right, those things we used to spray ink on dead trees back in the 20th century.
Come to Germany, the only country in the EU where paper usage is still going UP.
99% of the usage my printer sees is German government bureaucracy, the rest is some other bureaucracy.
At least they dont need color.
If you are a casual printer user, just use the local print shop. It’s cheaper that way.
The last printer I got cost 40€. Print shops charge 10ct per copy. That’s 400 prints just to amortize the cheapest garbage printer you could buy 10 years ago. And the ink doesn’t last 400 prints. Owning a printer just doesn’t make sense.
You pay for the convenience.
I don’t often need to print something, but when I do, it’s usually outside of the opening hours of a print shop and I’m in a hurry.
(95% of my printing are fantasy RPG floor plans that I’ve downloaded literally 5 minutes before the players show up.)Toner in laser printers is powder. Can’t dry out what’s already dry. If you get a brother laser printer, it will last forever.
It is hard to clean all the dust off your printer for the once every 3 years you might need it though without also blowing the toner everywhere.
Thats why I just leave the dust on top lol.
Paid 55€ for my old used laser printer a few years ago and some toner for 20€, both will last me well over 700 pages, not to mention the time saved by not having to go to a print shop and I can print whenever I want, even on sunday (Germans know what I mean).
If I need to print something in color I could do it at work or at my fathers place, but that didnt even happen yet.
In fairness you should do this on Windows as well.
95% of home printing needs can be handled by a mono laser. If you need a photo, usually cheaper to print it online or at a supermarket. Only for larger prints might it be cheaper to do it at home, and you’d better be sure to use it often because most inkjets clog like a motherfucker when not in use.
Yup, bought an old office mono laser printer (its from OKI) for pretty cheap, I got one that can do duplex scanning and printing with a document feeder because I dont want to scan every page individually.
Put new cheapo toner in it after a bit because it only came with a little bit and with that new cartridge it will probably last at least 10 years with my print frequency.
If I would have bought a new ink printer with those features I would have paid much more (investment and running costs) and I would probably need to unclog it every time I want to print something.
Ironically, the last time i needed a Windows PC was to set up my Brother laser printer. You needed to do it with some utility that was only available for Windows.
That’s weird. I didn’t have that issue with mine (though I’ve seen Canon and HP printers require something like that – or a smartphone app).
Mine is an old 2013 model with ethernet and wifi. You could find it’s DHCP address from the panel and configure everything through its web UI. It even lets you enter the wifi SSID/password on a very tiny, awkward onscreen keyboard lol
Yes, mine has one of those. I tried to set up the WiFi with that but that just drove me nuts.
Interestingly a Lemmy user in another thread has a very negative view of Brother because he only uses Brother cutting machines (for craft projects) and it’s filled with DRM and HP style lock in.
We need to lobotomize our “smart” devices …
I use a canon… so yeah… better get a brother
Incredibly I’ve had two printers I’ve never really had issues with.
- The brother laser my sister uses with Ubuntu without a hitch since forever
- The canon inkjet printer/scanner that is wifi connected in my flatshare
