zlacker

Buying a black/white only brother laser printer solved all my printing problems.

Cartridges last for thousand of pages; no strange cloud requirements; the FritzBox registers the printer immediately and all devices in the local net can print.

Non of this was the case for my previous HP or Epson printers…

>>nieman+(OP)
It worked surprisingly well for my Epson so. Connect to WiFi, all devices find it, including Linux ones, without additional drivers or software.

Additional software is needed for photo prints (color management and stuff like that) and (maybe?) scanning. I didn't try scanning without additional software, as I installed it with the photo print software. And since that software inly works under Windows anyway, I never bothered with scanning under Linux.

Printing works just fine so.

>>nieman+(OP)
Cartridges that you can get from cheapinkcartridges.ru and they work just fine.

>>nieman+(OP)
I think people forget that ink is a liquid which dries up and leaves a sticky mess. They think of the printer as a magic technology box that somehow is supposed to deal with that mess perfectly, without issues or waste.

Well it doesn’t work! Ink needs to be flushed to keep the lines clear. Inkjet printers need to print regularly for optimal performance and low waste. If you need a printer to sit on the shelf for 4 months between print jobs, laser is the only game in town. Toner is a solid powder and it lasts forever without issues. No clogging, no mess.

>>nieman+(OP)
I remember something similar being the case with HP Laserjets a decade ago or so.

People were buying second-hand 1995-era Laserjets in 2010 because they were simply better than anything you could buy new. They... Just Worked.

>>nieman+(OP)
Buying a black/white brother laser printer gave me just a single consistent issue that was entirely my own fault. It didn’t print in color.

So now I bought a color laser instead, and I couldn’t be happier.

>>nieman+(OP)
Which model do you have?

>>Loughl+Iy
I bought a black and white laser printer (Brother HL-L2350DW) because paying a little extra for laser up front results in much total lower cost of ownership due to the cartridges lasting much longer than ink jet. I have had it almost 5 years and I've only replaced the cartridge once.

>>crote+Cn
The only problem with these ancient and durable HP Lasterjets - I used to use a 4L - is that they were slow. My modernish Brother HL2270DW - which I got for free at a garage sale because the toner cartridge was missing so they couldn't test it - is much faster and can print double-sided. And has a $20 aftermarket toner cartridge in it.

>>crote+Cn
I used to maintain/repair a couple of LaserJet IIIs (circa 1990), up until about 2010, when I got tired of the printer's footprint being so large, and retired my last computer with a parallel port. The LaserJet III was the VW Bug of laser printers in terms of being easy to repair.

>>nieman+(OP)
My exact experience. It just works and it's fast. In the rare occasion I need a fancy color print, there's a store close by where I can order some nice prints with a few clicks.

Had an HP color inkjet before that. With that I felt like I did not have a printer.

>>hef198+04
GNOME ships a scanner app that can scan from many (newish) networked scanners without a driver. The UI is, ahem, about as minimal as you would expect from a GNOME app, but it works.

(Seriously, GNOME, whether to scan one side or two sides is actually important and the desired mode changes all the time. Would it kill you to dedicate some screen real estate to it, instead of filling everything with empty post-modern white space?)

>>nieman+(OP)
To be fair I have the same experience with my HP LaserJet Pro (M148).

Consumer garbage printers are consumer garbage printers.

>>chongl+Pl
Shouldn’t a liquid not dry up if it’s sealed properly?

>>soared+FQ1
The container has to have holes through which to squirt the ink onto the page, and when ink is dispensed it is replaced in the container with air.

>>stonog+MU1
You could make one that doesn't have an air hole. Put a membrane between the air and the ink. Consider a standard reverse osmosis water tank--inside there's basically a big bag, pressurized air on the outside, water on the inside. The outside should stay dry, the inside shouldn't contact the air.

You still have the problem at the print head, though.

>>chongl+Pl
We don't forget this, we don't care. We buy a printer and it should print.

>>crote+Cn
We used old HP Laserjets in a warehouse up until about a year ago. Towards the end, we had to repair and replace them with increasing frequency due to the beige plastic becoming very brittle. As a result, the printers became hard to service and more prone to damage during regular use. Replaced with a cheap Brother laser.

>>Markus+qI
> The only problem with these ancient and durable HP Lasterjets - I used to use a 4L - is that they were slow.

That's not completely true.

Those printers sucked so much power you could brown out your local substation.

And the amount of ozone they kicked off could be smelled in a cube farm--I don't want to think what they would do to you in a home office.

>>soared+FQ1
Sure. But no seal is 100%. Have you ever saved an opened glue or epoxy container? It'll eventually dry out.