HP launched a subscription service today that rents people a printer, allots them a specific amount of printed pages, and sends them ink for a monthly fee. HP is framing its service as a way to simplify printing for families and small businesses, but the deal also comes with monitoring and a years-long commitment.
#technology #tech #hardware #computers #printers #subscriptions #hp
Best purchase I ever made was a Brother laser printer back in 2013. Paid $100 for it brand new. Almost 11 years later, I still have it, it prints every time I need it, and I’m still on the toner cartridge that came with it.
I rarely need to print, but when I do, it’s always something important (usually something I have to print, sign, scan, and email back).
Minus the cost of a few reams of paper, $100 has covered my printing needs for over a decade. I rarely, if ever, need a color print, but that’s my only limitation (I think I did a color print at the UPS store a few years ago). For photos, I just have those printed at Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, or just about anywhere.
If you take anything away from this rambling comment, let it be this: Do not buy an inkjet printer, and also don’t buy an HP printer. Laser printers cost a little more upfront, but the long-term costs are much, much less.
The mandatory comment to any printer discussion. Buy a brother laser. Nothing else. Preferably used.
I have an Oki laser printer that I bought for $129. I’ve had it so long I gave it to my kids for university. Duplex, wifi, and I’ve bought two toner cartridges for it in the 8 years we’ve had it.
(Side note: If you go to an airport, you’ll find that the dot matrix printer spewing out the passenger manifest at the gate is often a Okidata Microline-series printer, an updated version of the printer I had in 1992)
Basically, don’t buy an inkjet printer, and don’t buy HP.
Glad to see mention of Oki! Oki is the single most ethical choice. But they pulled out of the US market, sadly enough. The US is no place for ethical products.
Lol, I mean…it’s still solid advice. I know they did eventually start chipping their cartridges, but AFAIK, they’re the least awful manufacturer. If not, please recommend something better as I fear what I’m going to do when this workhorse finally gives up on me.
Yes. We’ve had one Brother for ten years now. Still prints and scans just fine :D
Ive got a brother, but lately Ive resurrected my old HP that I got at Circuit City when they were closing. Just sticking cheapo amazon inks in it. The printer bitches about it, but tough, I’m using that cheap Chinese ink!
The Brother laser printers are awesome honestly. I own one too. Very cheap, and cheap enough to operate. If I want color, I go get it professionally printed (and professional photo printing STILL costs less than inkjets and their cartridges)
Personally I was rather disappointed with my Brother laser printer. Hardware wise, sure, it’s still going after a long time and is still on its first toner cartridge. Software wise, I can’t recommend it. Will not print without first running a printer troubleshooting process on the computer. At least I have a workaround that works 90% of the time, but a printer that will only wake from deep sleep mode when the troubleshooter forces it to isn’t a printer I’d recommend.
Not that I have any better suggestions. Every printer I’ve ever owned has sucked in at least one way. For some reason no manufacturer has ever succeeded in creating a printer that isn’t evil.
I feel ya. If the printer drivers aren’t OS-native and extremely basic, they’re usually a bloated, buggy mess.
I’ve used mine on Linux with CUPS and it works great. Brother actually provides a
.debinstaller for the drivers which is amazing, but I think I successfully used the “universal” HP LaserJet 4200 driver before I installed that (I swear, that driver works for almost everything). Pretty sure I only installed the official driver to get the duplexing option to work.The only major difficulty I had was getting the scanner drives working with SANE. Connecting over USB was easy, but getting it to scan over the network was a bit challenging. A few years ago, I built a scan server as a Docker image that had SANE, the Brother scan drivers, and the proper config. Now I just point SANE on my PC to that and, like magic, it works – don’t even need to install the scan driver locally.
This is my nix config for our brother scanner. Just run any Linux scanner utility and it just works:
https://git.sr.ht/~pimeys/nixos/tree/main/item/core/home-services.nix#L10
I don’t even have that problem, since the computers around my house use various versions of Windows. So it’s not like a lack of OS-native drivers is the issue. It’s just not a very good printer.
My experience is generally that the drivers and software for HP is better, but the hardware and value for money is better with Brother. That said, I also have to give a thumbs up to the third party ink supplier I’ve been using for the HP printer (which I bought because I needed colour printing for the pre-degree course I did last year), who replaced all of my cartridges free of charge after a firmware update snuck in even with auto-update turned off.
I have no complaints about my HP laser printer, although due to the activities at the company at large I will probably not buy one again, assuming this one ever dies and I can find a well supported replacement.
HP has really good Linux support, unfortunately it is better than many companies that “support” Linux, and it is more like their enterprise drivers than the bs they push on consumers. This HP replaced a Brother MFP in fact, because most of the functions did not work in Linux.
Can’t you scan or photograph your signature and insert it in your word processor?
Not where I live. You either need a physical signature on a piece of paper (can be later scanned) or a “Qualified Electronic Signature” to go full digital. The latter costs money it’s not universally supported - small business owners often have no idea how it works.
Those are the only two options that are legally recognised as valid signature
This is also the only reason why I have a printer.
But Admiral Patrick (sorry, I still don’t know how to link/tag users) wrote he has to scan and email the physical signature from the paper, so it is not really physical anymore? Maybe he has to send the physical paper by snail mail in addition to the email.
Yes I have a brother. Mostly good. Does have issues with some PS where I get offending commamd was… Also cannot really update the firmware without windows which sucks. Mine is a multifunction printer but I just scan to my phone or a USB. Never tried to connect scanning to Linux.
Great for you, but capitalism means companies need to make higher profits every year. Brother is still around though so they somehow make it work.