I have an old brother laser I’ve refilled by hand a couple times. But when it dies I might just use the 5¢ printer at the library for the few print jobs I need.
A lot of libraries have free printing now. It’s great
Luckily here in Kansas City the library does b&w printing for free.
Fuck HP. I bought a printer at the start of quarantine and HP bricked it when I opted out of their ink subscription service, so yeah, I’ll just use my tax-funded printer instead.
The part of this that really makes me mad is that brother use to be the chosen one but they pushed a firmware update and now I have to pry the chips of first party toner and glue them into generic.
Once they get a taste of that market share it’s hard for them to give it up. So they’ll start doing this shit to keep people in their ecosystem. They make nothing on their printers and hope to make it up with ink/toner sales. So they want you on their brand.
Fuck printers, fuck print drivers, fuck toner and definitely fuck fax machines. Watching a nurse print something to fax it somewhere else, then for that person to scan it back in. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. All they do is generate waste.
honestly one of the things I had no idea about was how fucked up windows printer drivers were. I used to think it was just because they were all crap, but then I fully moved to linux and discovered that Microsoft is the issue! Printers just work in linux.
Yeah I remember being super confused that my printer just worked without any extra effort the first time I tried Linux!
I’m interested, because I’m having the opposite experience. I can not for the life of me get my HP network printer to work with Debian. I’ve added it through CUPS, and it works well for a bit, but then after a few restarts I have to add it again.
I’ve never owned a wifi printer which may be the difference - with all of the ones I’ve used in the past I just plugged them in via USB and they just worked!
Their bottle printers are bad?
Hmm my 4-year-old $100 Brother printer is due for its first toner swap. Generic ones are $20 but Brother owns are like $75. I’m gonna have to see if this applies to mine.
The older Brother printers are amazing and exactly what is needed in a printer. Nothing more or other BS. Unfortunately, recently changed of course.
Does anyone else think there might be a market for open-hardware, “not-enshittified” printers?
Clearly not, or it would have caught on by now. I’ve been using Linux for almost 20 years now, I’ve tried open hardware phones and e-readers. Not bragging, just saying I would be the target demographic here, but I’ve never even heard of a serious open hardware printer effort.
What do you think hinders the open source community to develop a printer.
that there’s already an established oligopoly that sells their machines at a loss
Hm yeah, competing with such loss leader printers would be difficult. But how come I’ve never heard of anyone making things such as bootleg printer ink? Or does the police barge into the doors of anyone who tries?
there is bootleg printer ink, and the OEMs hate it so they put chips and sensors to only make printers take “genuine” ink
You can find plenty of bootleg printer ink around, you just have to ensure you have a printer that isn’t locked to the manufacturers ink.
The thing about printers, is that unlike most other common modern computer peripherals, they’re mechanically complex, and with precise tolerances at that, given that they have to be able to feed paper through the system with pure friction.
A daisy wheel or other character-based impact printer could probably be produced in a few months’ steady work by a sufficiently stubborn and enthusiastic DIY type, but almost no one would buy or build one because it’s a step backward in terms of output results—text output in the font face and point size on the daisy wheel only. There might be a niche for them as ruggedized, easy-to-repair printers in developing countries or other awkward situations.
A laser printer would probably take a couple of years of development to reach reasonable feature parity with current closed-source offerings, and then you’d have to set up a production line. The problem there is likely to be funding: you’re going to have a hard time finding an investor to dump money into creating something that already exists, and it’s difficult to spin “open hardware” as a selling point to businessmen. So you’d need to be independently wealthy, or convince someone who is to back the project.
Inkjets? Not a prayer, I don’t think. Too much expensive-to-produce microminiaturized equipment involved in the ink-spraying. It’s also the newest of the technologies, so the most likely to have a patent minefield lying in wait for the unwary. And existing ones are usually sold below cost, so it would be difficult for such a project to break even.
I would love it if there was a smaller company like Framework or System76 that made printers that weren’t enshittified. Something with open firmware and hardware that also could be easily repaired. Or at the very least an open standard that existed for printers to use. I know companies like HP or Epson wouldn’t buy in, but maybe some smaller players could join in with that if there was.
I’ve been using a Samsung black and white laser printer for quite a few years now and I’ve been happy with it. I put in a third party toner cartridge two or three years ago and it’s still going strong.
I have a Samsung as well. It’s quite old and in order to print I have to:
- press print
- wait for it to try and fail
- turn it off and then on
- press print again
- push the paper in right as it’s trying to grab (otherwise it won’t grab any).
If I don’t follow all these steps it won’t print. I bought a 2 pack of toner, though, so I am not allowed to get a new one until I use it all, which will take forever since I rarely print because it’s such a pain.
I’m not american and i can pretty much live without any printer.
Anyone have thoughts on a color laser printer? I’ve got a high schooler with the occasional need to print in color, but I’m not sure if it’s worth getting a color laser or just going somewhere to print for those odd jobs, and just getting a regular laser printer.
I have a color laser but usually not printing color unless printing pictures.(usually because there are materials my son needs to use with BI, those print with color will be more helpful.)
I agree though we should be able to move to a more digital style. But paper are also still pretty good material to draw/write/play around with. (sometimes I print out the plans for paper craft or paper plane, and it’s fun to do with kids.)
If the color printing is only for school works, then doing it in a printing shop cost less in the long run. (toner is expensive for laser printer as well. )
I have a black and white laser but am considering color for crafting purposes. But the B/W laser has done well for years and rarely needs toner.
Unless you’re printing in color every day, you are absolutely better off getting a black & white laser and having the color prints done at a print shop.
When people expect to get A LOT for very little, this is to be expected 🤷.
Buy a second hand HP 1100 1200, 1300, 4200, they’ll last you a life time, but… nobody listens 🤷.
My first IT job, we literally had a team who got paid to fix the 4250 swingplate assembly. They wore down that frequently.
My old canon printer is still going strong. 3rd party cartridges are very cheap.
Cool… But I am not sure how this adds value to the issue at hand?
With time old printers will break and people will be forced into these clown “ecosystems”
I just got a cheap brother laser printer and the toner seems to last forever.
Since 1999 I’m only on my second Brother Laser printer. They are champs and 3rd party toner is inexpensive.
Don’t update the firmware. In 2022 they released firmware that blocks non genuine toner.
