Why do printers still suck?

https://www.wired.com/story/why-do-printers-still-suck/

by harha • 6 years ago

484 503 6 years ago

makach• 6 years ago

Printers are amazing technological devices with many moving parts. It equally amazes me every time I see a print complete.

That said, I've seen IT professional break down in frustration of not getting their printers to work as intended.

Also, it seems cheaper and easier to just replace the printer than it is to replace toner. I am ashamed.

gjvc3• 6 years ago

The 1990s saw "peak printer" with the arrival of the HP LaserJet 4 series; perhaps the ultimate laser printer, considering the time in which it was created.

Realising that they were cannibalising future sales by having people buy one for life, HP soon decreased the quality of their printers to increase faults and improve the predictability of upcoming quarter's earnings. Other manufacturers were either too clever to ever create a reliable printer which would never need replacing, or they soon followed suit.

Buy your equipment second-hand where you can to help reduce e-waste.

troydavis• 6 years ago

I owned a LaserJet 4L in about 1994 and, yes, it was amazing. It was also about $550 in 1994 dollars, or something like $900 now. That was the smallest LJ model, targeted at individuals and home offices, and one of the least expensive printers on the market other than dot matrix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slor0f3LJIU

I don’t think I’ve spent a total of $900 on printers since then.

If one is willing to use a laser instead of an ink jet, quality still exists. I have a Brother MFC-L2750DW now (https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1371537-REG/brother_m...). It’s wonderful and works flawlessly, including duplex scanning to macOS. It’s a far better price:quality mix than the LJ 4 was. It was $250, though, not $50, and as an inexpensive laser, it only prints in monochrome. If one is willing to spend $200+ and accept monochrome, good printers still exist. Today’s $900 printer will shine your shoes.

sjg0072• 6 years ago

Ooh duplex scanning. I need that.

elorant2• 6 years ago

I bought a Lexmark e232 back in 2006 for a mere €120. Fifteen years later and the damn thing works like a charm. It's not just HP that made high quality products.

tanseydavid• 6 years ago

I got 22 years out of a HP4000.

I bought two other HP printers later in that timeframe and they were both garbage in comparison to the HP4000.

I was big fan of HP at one time but have refused to even try any of their products for more than 10 years now -- their quality across-the-board dropped too low for my tastes.

tonyedgecombe• 6 years ago

Perhaps that was because HP didn’t make the print engine for that printer. It was made by Canon, HP added their own controller.

CydeWeys5• 6 years ago

I had a LaserJet 4 too, and I think there's some rose-colored glasses effect going on here. I have a Brother DCPL2550DW that I got for $130 when the pandemic started and it's been better than the LaserJet 4 ever was in the following ways: more reliable (not a single jam), duplex printing out of the box, much cheaper, built-in networking (both Ethernet and WiFi), uses a modern interface (USB) that modern computers actually have ports for, built-in combo flatbed/feed tray scanner, better/more intuitive buttons on the printer, faster printer speed, and high enough data throughput to max out its print speed even for complicated pages. For a bit more money you can get a version of this that does duplex feed scanning as well (it wasn't worth it for me but it was for troydavis in one of the sibling comments).

The LaserJet 4 was fine for its time but it doesn't compare to decent modern printers. Substantial improvements have been made over the past few decades.

developer2• 6 years ago

I think there's some rose-colored glasses effect going on here

That may be anecdotal based on brand and model. I can agree with you in this case because I've got the Brother DCP-L2540DW. I got it on sale for $99 CAD (~$75 USD) when it was still the newest model available. I'm using the stock cartridge still, though I have a refill purchased and ready to go in case it's not possible to buy one when the original powder runs out.

This line of Brother printers is indeed good. It's impossible to say whether this applies generally to any laser printer, or to any Brother laser printer, or if we were simply lucky to have picked up these particular models.

GekkePrutser• 6 years ago

Yeah the LJ4s jammed a lot. And they were real ozone generators. And would hold up the queue every time someone specified the wrong paper type "INSERT LETTER"

But I loved them because you could send a message to their screen with a PCL command. Even many of the matter models can still do this. I had so much fun with that.

gjvc3• 6 years ago

The LaserJet 4 was fine for its time but it doesn't compare to decent modern printers. Substantial improvements have been made over the past few decades.

...which is why I wrote "considering the time in which it was created"

macjohnmcc• 6 years ago

I have a Brother duplex color laser printer connected to the network here at home and it's been reliable but I don't use it heavily so I don't know if moderate use would have broken it by now or not.

kinkrtyavimoodh• 6 years ago

HP soon decreased the quality of their printers to increase faults

I often hear such claims of planned obsolescence and while I won't put it past companies to do it, they feel a bit too conspiratorial to me. Are there any documented cases / exposes of companies doing this, as opposed to just making lower quality stuff because it is cheap?

I am talking of deliberate planned obsolescence, and not of things like the iPhone battery scandal where Apple throttled the speed of devices to prevent sudden shut-offs.

euanc• 6 years ago

"The Phoebus cartel existed to control the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs. "

"The cartel lowered operational costs and worked to standardize the life expectancy of light bulbs at 1,000 hours[6] (down from 2,500 hours),[6] and raised prices without fear of competition. The cartel tested their bulbs and fined manufacturers for bulbs that lasted more than 1,000 hours. A 1929 table listed the amount of Swiss francs paid that depended on the exceeding hours of lifetime.[8]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Phoebus_cartel&ol...

blacksmith_tb• 6 years ago

My impression is that it's just guesswork, extrapolation from the already-dubious DRMed inkjet refills and toner cartridges.

sly010• 6 years ago

Making batteries hard to replace by gluing them in is obviously a conscious decision, not some sort of cost saving.

toyg3• 6 years ago

In some cases the effect is indirect but equally likely to be achieved somewhat on purpose. If I am under pressure to cut costs and I fire my QE team, I didn’t do it explicitly to achieve planned obsolescence, but I’ll get that result anyway. There won’t be anything on paper saying “we want quality to go down”, but everyone involved will just know what the game is.

RhysU• 6 years ago

Old monochrome duplex network-attached laser printers are hands down the best. So long as one can find a source of good toner cartridges.

jayofdoom• 6 years ago

I think, based on the other comments here, and my experience with my own Brother printers... I think they are the "less clever" people building reliable printers.

dsr_• 6 years ago

The key is to buy a Brother with all of:

- ethernet

- BR/Script3 (their PostScript clone)

- duplex

This advice has been good for the last 12 years or so. I never install their drivers; I just tell CUPS that there's a Brother in PS mode with a duplexer at a particular IP address, and then there's no further issue.

jrs235• 6 years ago

I still have an HP Laserjet 4 series printer with network card. I bought it 10+ years ago on Craigslist for $40 which included toner in it. I love it! Has two 500 page (1 ream) trays. That toner lasted a few years. Bought more toner that lasted 5+ more years. Bought another toner cartridge. Finally starting to look at replacing it with a multi function color laser printer.

kevin_thibedeau• 6 years ago

Get a 4050n for bulk printing without tracking dots and a multifunction inkjet for everything else.

sickcodebruh• 6 years ago

Back when I used to do IT work, close to ten years ago, the HP LaserJet 4 and I want to say both the 3000 and 4000 were always the printers I was happiest to see when I walked into a new client’s office. They seemed to last forever, they broke the least frequently, their drivers were the easiest to install and the most stable. It’s both wild to me and not totally unsurprising that so many people have fond memories for them. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people were still squeezing life out of theirs!

bsder• 6 years ago

HP Laserjet 4's were great--except that they could trip you local power substation offline when the powered up and the ozone was overbearing.

Great to use in a corporate environment with lots of ventilation and power--home environment, not so much.

throwaway_dcnt• 6 years ago

My nearly a decade old hp laser printer is chugging along nicely and in addition to my work related printing, has handled multiple kids going through middle, high school and college including snapchat picture wall phases!! On first set of toner cartridges.

agumonkey2• 6 years ago

I find the planned fault business model near conspiracy theory. It makes sense but I find it hard that it was a bullet point on a chart:

- failure rate: 50% per year to ensure sales

what's next ?

- > 300MB driver install with at least 5 annoying 3rd party crap

Now I can be wrong ..

moltar2• 6 years ago

The Phoebus cartel existed to control the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs. They appropriated market territories and fixed the useful life of such bulbs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

fedorareis• 6 years ago

My parents still have an HP LaserJet 4 series printer. As long as you are just printing text that thing generally works great (some PDFs seem to max out the buffer and take forever to print). It will be interesting to see how long their much newer HP all in one laserJet lasts in comparison.

daniellarusso3• 6 years ago

Ha! I literally replaced my Laserjet 4P at the beginning of this year.

I now have a multifunction Officejet Laser, so scanning multiple pages over wifi is an added bonus.

vt240• 6 years ago

Still running our LaserJet 5si on the network for 11x17 pages. Been out of service (maintenance contract) for years, but it's still working fine with some light cleaning.

dehrmann2• 6 years ago

I know someone still using a LaserJet 1100. Looks like it might be from 2002? She can still find toner for it, and adding a PCIe parallel port was enough to get the printer working in Windows 10.

cortesoft2• 6 years ago

You seem to be saying contradictory things... if printer quality has decreased so that printers now break quickly, wouldn't that make a second-hand one a really bad idea?

gjvc3• 6 years ago

No.

Buy a second-hand older, simpler, more reliable device rather than a newer, not-as-well-made, less reliable device, second-hand or not.

lstodd• 6 years ago

Buy your equipment second-hand where you can to help reduce e-waste.

This. It's amazing what can be found if one takes a look.

I got an Epson C8600 for free (A3 color laser with duplex and all from 2006 or maybe 2008?) complete with spare cartridge set. Someone was throwing out old office stuff.

The only problem was the pagecounter chip on the photodrum that had to be replaced, that was something like $5. And I had to reinforce the ikea table it sits on.

Otherwise a great machine, if a bit slow to start up.

verpeteren• 6 years ago

The HP8150DN was also awesome. It had extra's that could tack, sort, duplex, multiple trays for odd papersizes and a massive, massive 3000 (?) page bay.

fsflover2• 6 years ago

Because of the nonfree software (forcing the monopoly) and complexity of the hardware. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24786721.

chrisseaton4• 6 years ago

forcing the monopoly

Which of the many printer manufacturers has a monopoly?

fsflover2• 6 years ago

Maybe it's a wrong word, but they all seem to have some agreement:

https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14501894)

Some of the documents that we previously received through FOIA suggested that all major manufacturers of color laser printers entered a secret agreement with governments to ensure that the output of those printers is forensically traceable.

m-p-3• 6 years ago

Hardware is notoriously hard and there are so many moving parts where something can go wrong.

The real world is also messy and so many variables can lead to a failure. It's astonishing that we can print so easily most of the time, let alone send someone in space unharmed.

brudgers5• 6 years ago

It's step four.

Forget about the printer for weeks until I need it again

Inkjets work reliably when used regularly. And tend not to when they aren't. And this is even more the case when the inkjet is unplugged because of those annoying maintenance cycles in the middle of the night. Or in the middle of the day that result in an empty ink message despite not printing anything.

I went through the same thing for years. A cycle of dread where I avoided printing because half time printing seemed to mean a trip to the office supply store and twenty or sixty dollars in ink cartridges with the anticipation I would have a similar experience next time.

Now I print regularly because I know it's ok and have had zero issues since April of 2018. It's killer feature is third party ink support - cartridges can be reset and refilled and inks that are good enough can be bought in bulk.

When it runs out of ink, I can reset and refill the empties, top off the non-empties, swap out the cartridges, and put everything away and clean up the sink in about twenty minutes. Less time than going to the store and back. Since I have two full sets of cartridges, I can do the swap out before the refill and empties hold me up less than five minutes in practice.

Sure, there's a big part of me that doesn't feel that any of this should be necessary because...well it's a computer. On the other hand, I can't just use my laptop and close the lid without plugging it in. YMMV.

rustyminnow• 6 years ago

What printer do you use that supports third party ink?

brudgers5• 6 years ago

It's step four.

Forget about the printer for weeks until I need it again

Now I print regularly because I know it's ok and have had zero issues since April of 2018 when I realized "oh fuck, I bought another printer." But it's killer feature is third party ink support - OEM cartridges can be reset and refilled with inks that are good enough and the inks can be bought in bulk...where bulk means 100ml at a time for as little as $2/oz (or ~$0.07/ml).

harha3• 6 years ago

If that is the only problem, wouldn't laser printers have fixed it? There's a ton of other things that don't work, e.g. paper jams. With the multi-function devices this gets even worse.

Not using a device all the time should be a use-case that is accounted for. Imagine having to service a car every time it stands still for a few weeks, nobody living in a city would have a car.

Of course, there's a lot of complexity and moving parts involved, but it just seems like a problem that could have been fixed by now. The rise of home office makes it very annoying, before that most people I know would just print everything at the office where someone manages the printer, also some places have a 7/11 around the corner with one of those big printers, so that really helps.

It would be nice if someone could make a "fair printer" at a reasonable premium, with good (open source) drivers, cartridges for different use-cases, replaceable and easy to clean parts and thinking of the biggest problems, e.g., an easy way to understand and fix paper jams. I doubt the way financing or corporations work we'll see that happening.

brudgers5• 6 years ago

Paper jams are also related to use. Paper is dimensionally unstable. It swells and shrinks with changes in humidity. In a stack of paper the exposed top sheet will change more than the sheet below it. The edges of each sheet will change more than the center. Additionally paper has a grain structure and expands more in one axis than the others. Humidity also changes the thickness of paper.

That’s the nature of paper. Most people, and for a long time I was one of them don’t have a good working model of paper as a material. In part because mechanical printing was not common until thirty years ago. In part because in the first part of the PC revolution printing was more an everyday thing since online publishing was rarely a viable alternative.

After I wrote my previous comment, I fleshed out an idea it touches on tangentially.

Printers are not computational artifacts. Little more so than a dishwasher with a microprocessor. Though we tend to think of them as part of a computer, they act directly in meat space. Directly on paper with ink or toner.

Laser printers are less reliable because we print less. The old workhorse printers were workhorse printers because they were used so heavily that paper didn’t have much time to swell in bad ways.

There are printing methods that are good for infrequent use. Fanfold paper tractor fed through an impact printer is nearly bulletproof and dies gracefully as the ribbon ink depletes. But they are noisy, bulky, slow, feature poor, and inflexible. However most understand ESC2 and writing control software is accessible from any language that can send bytes to a port.

magicalhippo• 6 years ago

Inkjets work reliably when used regularly.

My dad had a HP Deskjet 720 and after several years of using it, it had been sitting for at least 2 years without a single print or maintenance. Then one day I needed it for a school project, with all its colors due to some graphs.

Printed a simple test page with some colors twice, then the colors were back in action. Successfully printed 20 or so color pages after that without issue.

So clearly inkjets that doesn't dry out was a solved problem, however I realize that doesn't exactly drive ink or printer sales so yeah.

These days I just have a monochrome laser printer at home for the two-three times a year I need it. Always just works, no fuzz.

tasty_freeze• 6 years ago

I have a brother MFC-J6520DW scanner/printer. It is inexpensive and I bought it mainly for its large format scanning capability.

Problem #1: I don't use it much. But every night (or two?) it does a self cleaning cycle which uses up some ink apparently. Despite saying the ink cartridges saying "500 prints", I might actually make 50 pages before it runs out of ink after a few months.

Problem #2: I only ever need it for black and white, yet I have to buy expensive color cartridge sets as it refuses to print B&W pages if it is out of color. And it runs out of color despite my not using it because of problem #1 above.

Problem #3: After it gives the ink low warning, if I ignore it for a while until it actually starts making splotchy prints, when I put the new ink cartridges in, I have to literally print dozens of test pages before the quality is acceptable again. I have no idea what is going on there. By that time the B&W cartridge will report it is at 60% capacity.

Once this set runs out in a few months, I've already decided to get a monochrome laser printer, and regret not doing it long ago.

brudgers5• 6 years ago

The copyright on the 750c manual is 1997. It was a different era. The printer market was in a different place. And HP was a different company. Occasional home use is not the market segment it was twenty plus years ago. My 550c didn’t clog either.

One of the the big changes is inks print and dry faster. Those early inkjet inks needed thirty seconds or so to dry and similar times to print...at best - a full page of color in the 1990’s was minutes per page.

mark-r6• 6 years ago

I had a Deskjet 722 I think? Worked flawlessly until one day the drive belt just shredded. Decided it was a total loss at that point.

qes2• 6 years ago

Probably the increase in dpi. 90's era inkjets didn't have nearly the troubles with disuse as later ones do.

rutledge87• 6 years ago

Razor-blade economies. It's most consumers who suck because they didn't wise-up to DRM, giveaway printers, ink drying-up, and expensive ink and instead get a used flagship laser printer. Convenience store vs. Costco or Staples Business Advantage.

Crosseye_Jack2• 6 years ago

From my own experience (my own history with printers and of those of the people around me who I've done pc clean ups for in the past) I fell that it's all down to the fact that consumer grade printers are built down to a price, often to the point where the profit lies in the ink refills and with inkjet printers consumer printers are not used enough to prevent them from drying out in between prints.

About 10 years ago I purchased a 2nd hand mono laser printer (A Kyocera FS-1010, had over 65k pages on it at time of purchase) because I was fabing my own PCB's at home and it is still "mainly" working just as good as it was the day I got it. (I say mainly because the front pull down paper feed isn't fully working, but that is my fault I damaged it, not the printers fault)

I've put another ~15k prints on it in the time I've had it, Its still going, Sure its big and bulky but its a work horse thats just keeps going and going.

Tomte2• 6 years ago

Kyocera FS-1010

Oh my god. I bought that model years ago after reading reviews that all agreed it was a great machine. And it printed well.

The reviews also mentioned a persistent clicking noise from the power supply. I dismissed that, I'm not terribly sensitive to things like that.

Was I wrong! It was maddening. I always pulled the plug the instant my printing was done.

Crosseye_Jack2• 6 years ago

Yeah it does click when in standby / low power mode. I do the same and just power it down when its not in use. These days its only used once in a blue moon so its not really a bother to me. But yeah if someone was going to have it on 24/7 so its ready to go at a moments notice, I would recommend rigging up some kind of remote power management for the power supply (Not that I recommend any buying a 17 year old printer model).

barnabees• 6 years ago

Do they really? I can't remember the last time I had a printer problem, and I print a lot. Printer hardware and software have gotten a lot better since 10 years ago.

avmich• 6 years ago

and I print a lot

Exactly. Try to print every other month, and very different tasks - scanned images of cashier's receipts, color pictures a toddler drew in MS Paint, pages 87-112 from SICP, Bing Maps directions, an ASCII text from from a flash drive and the likes.

Sometimes you have to reset printer (with a button). Sometimes to cycle power off-on. Sometimes to download whatever's needed from a browser in a form of a PDF. Sometimes nothing works, and only by pure luck you can do something - not always - when completely misremembering steps which led to the printing.

And that's without ink problems.

sharadov2• 6 years ago

I have a Brother entry level laser printer, first printer in years that I've liked. Will never buy an inkjet again, there is something inherently flawed with that technology.

the_unknown• 6 years ago

I was about to say the same thing... It is really completely amazing how wide the gap is between standard, cheap ink jet and cheap Brother laser. Seriously do yourself a favour and just switch. Your sanity will thank you.

WrtCdEvrydy3• 6 years ago

It's that Japanese engineering shit... my Brother label makers were a gift from a hackathon and one of them was a used on that had like 30,000 pages run through it. Powered it up, paired it through bluetooth, ran a perfect page through it.

lotsofpulp• 6 years ago

I have used Brother MFC laser printers for over 10 years and I don’t hesitate to recommend them. Cheap enough to throwaway if they break, but otherwise the software stays out of your way.

The built in brother webconnect capability is nice to scan an OCR’d pdf directly to your dropbox/drive/box/one drive account. Too bad it doesn’t work with iCloud.

fennecfoxen• 6 years ago

I have an Epson P900. Inkjet. 17x22” archival pigment prints at 1440 dpi. Paper feed isn’t the best ever but it’s usually not a problem. Inkjet is sublime and amazing.

For photos. It’s a pretty crap document printer.

kayodelycaon2• 6 years ago

I have a Canon Pixma Pro-100. Not quite as fancy but it does an amazing job. I've been using cheap matte photo paper for the few color documents I need and that works pretty well. It uses far less ink than I expected. It's cheaper to run than the terrible Epson photo printer it replaced.

Not cheap to acquire though.

zrail• 6 years ago

I recently picked up a Canon PIXMA IP8720 which isn't quite as fancy as the P900 but still pretty fancy as these things go. It prints amazing photos.

emmelaich• 6 years ago

Same, I have a Brother B+W printer, it's excellent.

If I need colour, I'll go for a Brother colour laser.

Have a Canon inkjet, it's ok but expensive.

CydeWeys5• 6 years ago

There's nothing inherently flawed with inkjet printers. There are very good ones out there; look up something like the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1000. You're using an overly broad brush to unfairly tar the entire technology based on your experience with the very worst cash-grab implementations of it. It'd be like saying smartphones as a technology suck because a $50 piece of junk Chinese Android performs terribly.

sharadov2• 6 years ago

That "Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1000" is way out of budget for me. $1300? Thought this thread related to home office printers.

mark-r6• 6 years ago

No, inkjets are an inherently flawed technology. The nozzles dry out and clog up. If you use them infrequently, you'll use more ink for cleaning than you do for printing.

II2II• 6 years ago

There have been so many horror stories about inkjet printers that I went directly from dot matrix printers to lasers in the mid-1990's. I have never been disappointed.

The last printer I purchased was a Brother. Some people criticize them for the quality, but they seem to be fine for home and small office use. They don't play games with toner and are reasonably compatible with whatever you throw them on to.

Yet you do have to be careful when choosing lasers. Some vendors seem to use the same approach as inkjet printers when it comes to supplies, and it affects both consumer and corporate models. I also recall doing a fair bit of research on Brother printers to ensure I ended up with a good (but inexpensive) model. That being said, at least there are options.

EDIT: negation in the wrong place.

dragontamer• 6 years ago

High-end ink is fine, just expensive. Both for the printer, AND for the inks.

You cannot reproduce photo-quality prints with just 4 colors (cmyk). Your high-end photo-level printers use 10 or 12 inks, with far higher resolution than a typical $200 Brother printer.

But if you're only doing office work / text / etc. etc., laser is great. Even mild graphics (diagrams mainly) work out fine with laser prints.

--------

The typical $200 ink printer however, is complete garbage.

Twirrim• 6 years ago

I found we just went through ink like nobodies business. We don't print all the time (typically 3-4 times a year), and it would be sufficient gap that between prints we'd find the ink cartridges had dried up or just stopped working. No amount of cleaning runs would get it to flow smoothly again. It was getting stupid expensive to keep buying ink.

I bought a multi-function HP Laser printer a couple of years ago and haven't looked back (although we started having to print more and more frequently as our kids have got older). It's one of those devices that "just works" now. Even Linux automatically detects it on the network and configures itself for printing.

iwaslensis• 6 years ago

To add my voice to this, sure it’s nowhere near the quality of the super fancy laser printer at work, but for home use the brother laser printer I got (entry level) has been absolutely fantastic. At this point literally the only printer I’m not scared to recommend to friends when they ask.

Edit: for documents and such, not photos.

jungletime• 6 years ago

Brother Laser Printers...its the apple of printers. Just works!

apricot• 6 years ago

Home printers suck because home computer buyers will always buy the cheapest printer, so it's a race to the bottom.

Spivak• 6 years ago

That explains cheap hardware but doesn't explain why the software is as bad as it is. Amortized over any large hardware vendor's product line the per-unit cost of investment in the software has got to be nothing.

pixl97• 6 years ago

The software can only be explained by attempting to sell printers to, well, idiots. Looks pretty, doesn't work worth a crap.

HP, please, just give me an 'enterprise' driver and nothing else, that's all I need.

mark-r6• 6 years ago

My experience is that hardware companies are almost universally bad at software. I can only guess it's because the hardware guys are treated like rockstars and the software guys are treated like a necessary evil.

Nextgrid• 6 years ago

This applies to pretty much any other computer-related thing sold to non-tech people. They either don't care or don't have the skills to judge the quality, so a better quality but more expensive product will always lose in favour of the cheapest crap.

neonate• 6 years ago

https://archive.is/gv0SZ

GreenWatermelon• 6 years ago

Thank you.

I hate pay walls.

Austin_Conlon• 6 years ago

Maybe this satirical article should become real: "New Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'I'm Thinking Printers'" https://www.theonion.com/new-apple-ceo-tim-cook-im-thinking-....

paxys2• 6 years ago

There is no incentive to improve printers now simply because it is clear that they are on their way out. I haven't printed anything in years, and don't think I ever will again.

rxhernandez• 6 years ago

You probably will if you need to RMA anything in the US. Just had to RMA to Lenovo and Amazon recently and both required me to print out a shipping label.

paxys2• 6 years ago

The UPS store (where I drop off return packages) prints them for free.

dhritzkiv• 6 years ago

The public library is another option for the rare occasion you need to print something.

sneak2• 6 years ago

Amazon RMAs these days can optionally involve carrier pickup, and the carrier brings a premade thermal label with them. You just need to put it back in the box it came in.

criddell• 6 years ago

Plus, they are mostly good enough.

Last year I bought an HP OfficeJet 8720 and it's a pretty amazing bit of hardware for $300. Yes, ink is expensive but I don't have to print that often so it's not a big deal.

reaperducer2• 6 years ago

I use a printer less and less, but I don't think I'll ever not need one in my lifetime.

I haven't printed anything in years, and don't think I ever will again.

So between today and the end of your life, you will never sell anything online? Or never for the rest of your life send something you already own to someone else? You need a printer to print shipping labels, unless you take the item somewhere to be professionally packed and shipped.

I moved recently, and printed out the USPS form to change my address so that I didn't have to pay the fee to do it online.

I also had to print and mail a form to get a ballot mailed to me for today's election. In my state, this can only be done with a signed document, not online.

I don't limit my life experience to things that are online, so about once a month I use a printer to print envelopes to send checks for things that I buy over the phone. Sent one out today to a store in Seattle that deals in a specialty good my wife likes, but has no online presence.

According to the New York Times, there are top-end restaurants that only take reservations by letter. Not via an app. Not online. Not even via telephone.

I know interesting people who live in places beyond the reach of the internet. I write letters to them a couple of times a year.

Four of the last six property purchases I've made in the last few years involved printing and mailing forms. Not every government office in every county in every state is online. And very often legal forms have to be notarized. You can't do that online.

If you choose to live a simple life, you may never need a printer. If you choose to do more, then it's good to have one stashed away for when you need it.

syshum• 6 years ago

Th better questions is "Why do we still have printers"

chrisseaton4• 6 years ago

Sometimes I'm taking notes into the field or something and don't have any reliable power and can't carry any extra weight.

analog31• 6 years ago

While their use is hopefully dwindling, I expect there will be a long tail.

In my household, the printer gets used for a couple of things. The first is sheet music. Musicians are starting to use a big tablet screen, with a foot pedal to turn the pages, but adoption will be slow. Musicians seem innately impatient with technologies that don't just work instantly when you pull them out of the box.

The other thing is documents to read for school, which is still more ergonomic when done with paper.

At the office, I suspect nobody needs to print any more, because nobody reads any more. I can't count the number of times I've hit "send" on a report that I was supposed to write, and a manager will be in my cube a few minutes later asking me if I could just summarize it for them. The first paragraph in the report is a summary.

ioseph• 6 years ago

Tablets are well and good for reading sheet music, but I can't imagine scribbling rehearsal notes / markings on a tablet in a way that's not infuriating.

kome• 6 years ago

I like to read on paper...

ben5092• 6 years ago

TBH, I don't, on the rare occasions I need to print, I just order a print via Fedex and pick it up in the store.

It's usually stuff like an insurance card or temporary registration for my car.

Tomte2• 6 years ago

Get a monochrome laser or LED printer, if you can. Brother (my current favorite), Kyocera, whatever. They are generally quite good if you can limit your printing to text and b/w diagrams.

The problems start when you want to print color and photos.

projektfu2• 6 years ago

Brother printers always suck in weird ways. I had one that had a thousand settings for things but not one controlled the volume, duration or existence of a loud, long beep when you opened the paper tray. That would be fine but single feed sheets never came up straight, so checks had to go in the tray each time.

beervirus2• 6 years ago

That's a pretty specific and minor gripe...

askyc12345• 6 years ago

Since I bought a laser printer, I don't have any issues anymore. One cartridge is enough to print thousands of pages.

unixhero• 6 years ago

Business laser printers doesn't suck.

Cheap inkjets, or in fact all inkjet printers suck.

jsnell• 6 years ago

I had to buy the first printer I’d ever owned this year due to switching to wfh indefinitely. Got the Brother HL-1110 just since it was the cheapest laser printer available here. It is a ridiculously austere and brutalist design, it really feels like they were optimizing out every penny on the BOM. It should be utter trash. In practice it prints fast, with good quality, and I have not had any trouble with it. It’s like the Citroen 2CV of printers.

So I find it hard to believe that printers really suck. Even the worst case was actually quite wonderful.

dnlbtlr• 6 years ago

The space station never had this problem https://mashable.com/2017/11/02/nasa-updates-international-s... "The International Space Station is getting its first printer upgrade in 17 years"

TedShiller• 6 years ago

The key is to buy a laser printer. Mine still works perfectly, bought it in 2005.

nickt• 6 years ago

A great reminder of the New Yorker article from 2018, "Why Paper Jams Persist" [1] and a good discussion here at the time [2]

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/why-paper-jams...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16312501

julienb_sea• 6 years ago

The trick is to buy a laser printer. Inkjet is garbage and cannot handle being left idle for any period of time. Laser does not suffer from this problem.

roland352• 6 years ago

My color laser printer has been working well for years now! Each toner cartridge lasts at least 1000 pages (current winner in my printer is black with 1553 pages). It is a little slow to load big documents but I don't see any need to upgrade any time soon. Wifi was really the latest beneficial technology.

HP CP1525nw

myself2482• 6 years ago

Ditto, I picked up a Samsung CLP-620ND in 2010 and it's still going strong. I get about 5000 pages on a black cartridge, about half that on the colors, and it's time for a transfer belt but I think I can probably clean the old one and get a few more years out of it.

Screw. Inkjets.

mechanicalpulse• 6 years ago

I have the same one. Haven’t had any issues with it. I don’t know when I originally bought it, but according to my records, I purchased toner cartridges in 2012, 2015, and 2020. The usage report says I’ve printed 6,111 pages. It has been a fantastic product.

White_Wolf• 6 years ago

Spot on. Have a laser printer since 2010 and the only thing apart from toner that I had to buy for it was a drum about 2-3 years ago. Not even buying branded toner. Only from Aliexpress.

One thing though - it's slow compared to new models.

Quekid53• 6 years ago

Laser all the way, baby!

... although I was disappointed recently by my usual go-to of the Brother brand. Their Linux/CUPS drivers are some sort of bizarre concoction of Perl scripts and x32 binaries... and still cannot print in duplex :/.

(I believe the duplex problem is probably a typo somewhere in the PPD or Perl script, but I don't know enough about PPDs and/or Perl scripts to be sure. I do know programming, hence my suspicion.)

Lesson is: Research if the EXACT printer you're purchasing is supported by the usual Gutenprint or whatever.

Blackthorn• 6 years ago

Brother drivers are every bit as crap as every other brand.

I have one of their all-in-one office machines. It prints pretty well. The wireless scan is complete garbage. A known issue with their drivers, apparently.

lmm• 6 years ago

Brother's Linux support is notoriously awful. HP are the only manufacturer who treats Linux as first-class; Epson comes close.

ptx• 6 years ago

My recently bought inexpensive Brother printer worked with CUPS without any special drivers, thanks to the IPP support. I just connected it to the network and it's automatically discovered and supported.

yrro• 6 years ago

Try the brlaser driver rather than Brother's official monstrosity

loeg2• 6 years ago

I've always just used IPP with Brother printers and it works great. Is that not an option with this model?

bluGill2• 6 years ago

I had that problem. Then I realized that it is just a generic pcl printer and any driver will work. I do have to manually change the queue from binary_p1 to pcl_p1, but other than that it just works. (there are other queues in the printer for postscript and the like, the printer info page lists them all.

shwoopdiwoop• 6 years ago

Laser printers are better in so many ways. Just make sure that they are not placed too closely next to your desk or in rooms where you spend a lot of time in since they can emit toner dust and volatile compounds that could potentially be harmful to one’s health over a long period of time.

franga20002• 6 years ago

Seriously? If that is true, how have the manufacturers not gotten sued into oblivion?? This seems like the kind of thing that would be easy to prevent and a liability nightmare if you don't, so I doubt the companies would sell that kind of product.

Koliakis2• 6 years ago

I've been looking into this and couldn't find any studies or reports that showed any notable negative effect of particulate emissions by laser printers.

rektide• 6 years ago

I like the suggestion. For most people I think laser printers probably are a huge win.

As someone who mainly wants to print some photos now & then, sometimes in large-ish sizes, I'm not sure if there are offerings that will suit me here. Where-as, when they are running well, there are some very nice many color inkjets.

There have been some neat attempts to make economical better inkjet printers. Epson make a L1800 wide format printer with 6 refillable "ecotank" ink tanks, but it was targeted for non-primary markets & vanished with no replacement. Whether it was any more reliable than the other notoriously finnicky inkjets, and what, exactly, it's quality was, are unknown. But I think it's an interesting example of a product that was willing to break product segmentation boundaries that have been long standing, and deliver a lot of great capabilities- tank based rather than cartridges, many colors, wide format, good specs- at a very competitive price point, many times less expensive than what one would normally have to pay for such a printer. To me, it seems like strong evidence that the problem is markets, markets that don't want to compete, & that are reluctant to deliver better capabilities. Companies would rather raise the limbo bar, allow a little more fat; pushing for better is hard, but also, why do it, if you don't have to? Sell & compete at the next tier up.

ogre_codes3• 6 years ago

If you print less than monthly, you are likely better just taking your print jobs to Kinkos, Costco, FedEx, etc... you'll likely get better quality prints too.

ogre_codes3• 6 years ago

This is almost exactly my reply. I don't print a ton anymore, but I've bought exactly 2 laser printers in the past 25 years, the first I think I replaced because it was less expensive to replace than buy toner. The second I still own. Ink jet never seems to last more than a year.

kayson• 6 years ago

I completely agree. I have a Samsung ML-2510 laser printer that's been going on at least 15 years now. It's old enough that it has a parallel port...

mcv• 6 years ago

There are still many ways for laser printers to suck. My Samsung C460, for example, gets a paper jam just about every other sheet. Or imagines a paper jam, because quite often there's no problem at all, but it complains anyway.

I also suspect that just about any wireless printer will suck when used with Windows. Windows certainly has a lot of trouble finding mine.

abfan1127• 6 years ago

My Canon works pretty seamlessly with my windows and mac computers. I've had it for a while and its reliable.

https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/products/d...

youeseh• 6 years ago

This advice was true 20 years ago, and it is just as true today.

crazygringo2• 6 years ago

Seriously. Brother has sold laser printers under $100 for many years now -- they're reliable and last seemingly forever, and toner is cheap.

Why any average consumer buys inkjets anymore is a mystery to me.

If you need to print documents for personal or basic business use, a B&W laser printer is the way to go. If you need fancier printouts of slides or product info to hand out to clients, a color laser printer is the way to go.

And if you need to print photos, order them online from a professional photo printing service.

I don't actually understand who the market for home inkjet printers is anymore.

(Inkjets have their place for certain niche uses like larger-format photography printing, but that's not really the "home" market anymore, more a professional or at minimum prosumer market.)

simias• 6 years ago

I think many people don't know better and when you go to a store you see ultra-cheap inkjet that can print in color or significantly more expensive B&W laser (or much more significantly expensive color laser, that's still not as good for pictures) and if you don't know any better it's hard to justify going for the laser.

I suspect that they might also be a strange factor that inkjet managed to corner the market by being crap, and not despite of it. People now effectively expect two things about personal printers:

- They're cheap

- They're crap

TFA is an example of this mindset. But then if you go to the store expecting to get a piece of shit printer, you're clearly going for the cheapest available option. Which means that you get a crap inkjet that you'll have to replace in two years, and then you'll buy an other crap cheap inkjet.

But I agree with both of you: after a few iterations of this cycle I finally decided to know better and bought the cheapest Brother B&W laser printer and it's been a joy. It just works.

dmitryminkovsky2• 6 years ago

Agree and second the Brother $100 laser printer. Have several, all work great.

fbelzile• 6 years ago

Why any average consumer buys inkjets anymore is a mystery to me.

Probably because retailers try their best to steer customers to them because of higher profit margins on ink.

tootie• 6 years ago

I bought a refurb Brother for like $90 (black and white) and it was setup and working over WiFi in 15 minutes. My kids use it freely. Print quality is sharp and it hasn't jammed once.

hunta2097• 6 years ago

I went though around 4 crappy unreliable inkjets before getting myself a Brother HL-3150CDW. It's been ultra reliable and fast, even though I only print about 2-3 pages a month.

It has a super low-power standby and is always ready.

js2• 6 years ago

I followed this advice and apparently ended up with the one garbage laser printer that Brother makes. The fuser roller melted and Brother's warranty service was impossible to navigate.

Ended up replacing it with an HP Office Jet that's worked fine for years. I participate in the HP ink hostage program but you know what, it's worth it to me for the hassle it saves.

bluedino• 6 years ago

They are the best options for home users. But I’ve had businesses buy them and they will last about 5,000 pages and then they either fail completely or you spend more money on a new fuser than the printer costs.

Worth it, though. Most will replace it every few months if they are using them to print a lot.

calmworm• 6 years ago

Agreed. Inkjet makes little sense. I’ve had a $60 (on sale) Brother laser printer for 10+ years. I finally had to buy new toner just this year. Still prints like the day I bought it.

jessriedel2• 6 years ago

Over the past five years, I've bought two HP printers (based in part on recommendations from the Wirecutter) and then three Brother printers, and have also read a dozen HN posts like this.

My summary is that Brother is the way to go, period. The HP printers are constantly fighting me by, e.g., demanding internet access to print, failing to print when HP servers temporarily go down, putting up baffling errors, etc. The Brother printers just work.

The fact that Wirecutter recommended HP when Brother is so clearly superior has forever lowered my faith in their recommendations.

TheSpiceIsLife3• 6 years ago

About 12 years ago I stumbled upon second hand Brother laser printers and haven't looked back. They've even worked in Linux using the Windows driver and some sort of wrapper I found just searching online.

I've currently got a Brother HL-2132 I paid $AU30 for sitting on my desk in a dusty metal fabrication workshop. When the printer tells me the toner is low I start looking for another same or similar model just for the toner cartridge. When the drum goes I just switch over to the next second hand one.

The current one has only had two paper jams that needed the printer blowing out with compressed air, despite the dust in the workshop being full of metal particles and grinding disk particles.

sfifs2• 6 years ago

Say you have a kid in elementary school. Say you need to print something for a school project or even a home craft she's doing urgently (because if course kids don't plan long term - else they wouldn't be kids). BW prints look ugly. Color lasers are crazy expensive. Inkjets suck but the come with reasonably priced nice colour and photo paper printing options with a scanner built in. The inks are expensive but you're not printing much anyway. It's a hell of a lot more convenient to just fire a print from the printer at home than check if the nearest print shop is open and mount an expedition

(Source: Switched from laser to inkjet)

bolotye• 6 years ago

Color laser has actually pretty terrible color, especially for photos, prints or any output that requires any sort of vibrancy or color accuracy.

Epson makes some excellent inkjet printers. The cartridge based ones are expensive to run, but their eco tank offerings have pretty good output and are cheap enough to run - still no eco tank model is photo print grade, but the 5 ink version isn’t bad and not too expensive.

Ink is a messy, nasty media, but is almost unavoidable if you want good to great color quality.

gitgud• 6 years ago

I've had a black and white fuji-xerox laser printer for 6 years now about $120 new

Used about 6 reams of paper (I don't print that much really) and haven't replaced the ink cartridge once! Still works great.

Here's the printer: https://www.fujixerox.com.mm/en/Products/MM-Printers/DocuPri...

2fast4you• 6 years ago

Brother printers are rock solid, I have never had an issue with mine

nine_k• 6 years ago

Frankly, color laser printers that would print a decent photo cost a lot, and the quality is but decent, not perfect.

An inkjet which can do justice to a photo is also usually not as cheap, its inks cost like French perfume (and sometimes there are 6 of them, not 4), and you also need to use expensive photo-quality paper. This allows you to have really great photos. Using such a device for printing business documents or school handouts is wasting it.

So yes, go with a laser, a color laser if you need, and just take your photo printing to a good lab, they usually have one of these inkjet beasts anyway.

paulmd5• 6 years ago

And the really nice thing about Brother is there's none of this "500mb universal printer driver" shit. Want just the printer driver? 10 mb. Want linux drivers? Here's CUPS drivers. They sell you a printer, here's drivers that work, end of story.

I adore (and have always adored) my Brother B+W lasers and am thinking about one of the color lasers one of these days, especially now that I am living at home instead of having access to a Xerox network copier at work (we are allowed reasonable personal usage of office supplies, no worries).

The Brother fan club is loud and for very good reason.

In contrast (I had a brother B+W at home) I owned an HP color laser for my office at school, and nope, never again, the driver package was fucking terrible and while I could usually get it to work after some finangling, it was constantly a pain. Literally threw it in the trash and got a B+W brother MFC instead even though that was a "step down".

mitchdoogle• 6 years ago

I've only ever considered purchasing an inkjet because of the many special use cases it has out of the box with standard ink: photos, transparencies, stickers, shirt transfers, and more. I know some lasers can do these things, but color laser printers are a lot more expensive and the quality is lacking in my experience.

howlgarnish• 6 years ago

I recently bought a random cheap Canon PIXMA inkjet, and with proper photo paper, the photos it prints are indistinguishable from what you'd get from a regular photo printing service. No smudging, no bleeding, nada. It also uses big refillable ink tanks that are way cheaper and longer-lasting than overpriced HP-style disposable cartridges.

Now I'll admit that from a strict dollars-and-cents perspective, it's probably still more expensive per picture than using a photo service, but it's way more convenient. And it does a fine job with B&W printing too.

AlexTWithBeard• 6 years ago

Brother printers. +1 here

A credit must be given when it's due. They're reliable, reasonably priced and have Linux drivers.

watwut• 6 years ago

Because home users are primary needing printer for those annoying homework projects. And being able to print in color late in the evening for cheap is massive help for that.

I bought color printer for much less then 100$.

xlii• 6 years ago

I just can't praise Brother laser printer high enough. I own one for few years and it is cheap to maintain and never let me down so far. Last Saturday my SO tried to print something but printer refused to work (I thought it finally gave up). She told me to fix it (ugh..), I got to the printer with my computer but then got message from colleague, which I decided to prioritize ;-)

After 4 minutes, with me not touching anything printer decided it'll print and spew out few pieces of neatly arranged printed papers. Looks like it lost wi-fi connectivity but was able to reconnect and do the printout.

Of course I took the praises.

RobinL• 6 years ago

Agree with everything you say.

One thing I have been surprised by is the quality of photo prints from my colour laser (Brother dcp-l8410cdw). Admittedly, my expectations were very low, and it's certainly a long way off high-quality professional printing.

But for something temporary like a photo to pin to the fridge for a few weeks, it's actually good enough.

I think this is relevant for quite a bit of the market. Most people getting photo prints online don't seem to care much about quality - the results vary a lot between companies and many cheap ones are really bad.

I'd say the colour laser get fairly close to bad ones ordered online, and is significantly better in quality to some other photo products (custom birthday cards, that sort of thing).

So I think for many causal users/uses it's pretty viable

tuatoru• 6 years ago

I print on photo paper to make front panels for electronic projects. It's fine under thin acrylic sheet.

Yeah, the toner transfer method[1] produces superior results, but when it's gear for my own use, I cant be bothered with the faffing around.

Sometimes I print photos too, just to have them around. With me it's "out of sight, out of mind", so I like to have the physical object as a reminder of something. Using your own printer on site has much less friction than using an upload-and-wait service.

All that said: yes it's getting to be a niche thing these days.

1. Laser print a reversed image in heavy lines onto an overhead transparency sheet, then use a hot clothes iron to melt the toner onto your shiny aluminium front panel. Three layers, tea towel, OHP, front panel. Then spray your panel with satin or semi-matte clear lacquer--once you've scrubbed off the metal front panel and repeated the printing and ironing often enough to get something that looks OK.

elorant2• 6 years ago

I bought an Epson inktank inkjet b&w printer a few months ago. This thing is a beauty. Printing cost is ridiculously low , way lower than with a laser printer. A bottle of ink costs €10 and lasts for 12k pages. Sure, the speed is nowhere near that of a laser and neither is the functionality, but that just doesn't matter if you can print a 200 page document with less than €1 including the paper.

itsmeamario• 6 years ago

And if you need to print photos, order them online from a professional photo printing service.

If you're in the need (like me right now) to print +300 photos in several formats, even shopping at best prices around me, that's something like 150€ for them. For that kind of price I could get a nice home printer, supplies, and afterwards just keep the printer for the future.

jwr2• 6 years ago

Yes. Get a Brother laser printer, and be done with it.

I've also been using a Lexmark printer for several years now, from the "workgroup" class. These are more expensive, but generally better built and if you print a lot, you can use larger toner cartridges which come out fairly cheap per page. But Lexmark software has weird quirks and you inevitably end up having to reset your printer, because it isn't on WiFi for some reason (have you tried turning it off and on again?).

None of that with Brother. You plug it in, set it up, and you're done, works with all of your devices (including iOS).

yourapostasy• 6 years ago

I'm looking for a Brother duplexing color laser that works with their Mac drivers. I have the HL-3170CDW but it has a known issue with Macs waking up from sleep; it isn't a problem on Windows, Linux, or iOS, but with the latest firmware and latest drivers on the latest macOS patches, freshly power cycled and then allowed to sleep in low-power mode, it will intermittently not power up, though I see the print job spooling down from the flashing LED. Power cycling the printer always kicks the print job out, but I'm not a fan of that much power cycling.

Has anyone else run into this with their Macs in one of the older generation model Brothers and found a later Brother model that permanently fixes this behavior?

Other than that I agree, Brother all the way.

dmayle• 6 years ago

Since 2009, my requirements for a printer has always been: * Color (switched away from laser for this) * Printing and scanning (all-in-one) * Duplex printing and scanning * Automatic Document Feeder * Network print/scan (Wireless and sometimes ethernet)

Before that, I'd been very happy with the Canon Pixma inkjets, and so I upgraded to the Pixma all-in-one (MX860, and later MX870), and I've sworn by this line. Reasonable ink/printing prices, great performance, fantastic network support.

Two years ago, we moved temporarily, so I bought a bargain basement Pixma TR4550 that checked off all of the boxes, but it was terrible. The first time my wife used it, she thought it was garbage. We made do, but I knew I wanted to change.

A year ago (after moving again), I had to add a requirement to the list. My new daily computer was a chromebook, which doesn't have scanning support, so I wanted a printer with some sort of scan-to-cloud solution. I was also eyeing color laser printers, which are now at reasonable prices, since I used to prefer laser printers before color became a requirement.

Enter the Brother MFC-L3750CDW, which I bought for $340. It's a color laser all-in-one with everything I wanted (including ethernet)... and it supports both scan-to-Google Drive and scan-to-email! This printer is nothing short of amazing. I've never printed from my phone before, but my wife and I both do this regularly now. I have two shortcut buttons in the interface, one for scanning directly to my email, one for my wife's. I have never installed a printer driver, every OS I've tried just prints directly to the thing (it's autodiscovered when adding).

In short, Brother laser printers for the win!

MrBuddyCasino• 6 years ago

People think they need color, and they are not aware that it is an immutable law of nature that inkjets suck. Luckily this is easily solvable.

Inkjets suck. You don't need color. Buy a Brother.

leokennis• 6 years ago

I sort of disagree with this article, except the fact that inkjet ink is overpriced.

I have a 5 year old basic consumer grade Canon color inkjet with a scanner built in. It's wireless, I can quickly print a photo on photo paper (no waiting multiple days for a printing service), any BW document I'm likely to print in 2020 (and let's be honest...how many documents do you really need to print in 2020?) come out at 10 pages per minute or so. It prints in duplex. Ink is about €50-€75 per year. I've had one paper jam in 5 years, solved by pulling one handle and removing a crumpled piece of paper.

I have way more issues with my €1500 laptop or my €800 phone than with my €100 inkjet printer.

ghaff• 6 years ago

Yeah, just last weekend, I was checking out various equipment in my office. I have a large format photo quality inkjet but one cartridge is empty and the other two are dried out. Would cost me over $100 to refill it and I just don't use it enough to keep the cartridges fresh. Not worth buying new cartridges for it. My B&W laser is fine for most things, the few photos I want printed are easily done online on choice of media and size, and if I decided I really have to print in color at home, I'd replace my B&W laser with a color laser printer.

vaccinator• 6 years ago

I like the laser printer that I bought a year ago because it is fast but I haven't had issues with the HP PSC 1410 inkjet printer that I bought about 10 years ago...

jjav• 6 years ago

Absolutely. Went through several inkjet printers and all they did was raise my blood pressure.

Finally wisened up and bought a (Brother) color laser ~9 years ago and it has been flawless.

daniellarusso3• 6 years ago

The reason I prefer HP Laserjets to Brother laser printers, I believe when you replace the cartridge in the HP, it contains the fuser and the toner.

The Brother is a separate fuser that is replaced after some number of toner replacements.

I am not sure if it is still like this for Brothers.

dragonwriter3• 6 years ago

For the brother multifunctions I've used, the fuser is replaced at 100k-120k pages; the large toner cartridges are like 6k pages. So, yeah, you don't replace the fuser with every toner replacement, but I don't see how that's a mark in favor of HP, if they replaced it with the toner (but doing some googling, it looks like HP also uses separate fuser kits.)

vmception• 6 years ago

this doesn't answer everything outside the print capabilities such as:

why can't I scan to the SD card inserted, is there no write capability?

why is this wireless printer looking for a wired computer to scan to?

why can I only scan to Google Drive or Dropbox?

why is it app so slow?

why can't I just tap it with NFC or bluetooth to get this data?

Just like really common frustrations which should be default by now in even the cheapest models.

squarefoot• 6 years ago

Inkjet is garbage and cannot handle being left idle for any period of time.

Modern printers are much better in this context, however what you pointed is true. To avoid heads clogging, when I moved from Laser to Inkjet, I planned a way to save the printer from inactivity by preparing a directory of family photos I already planned to print, but instead of printing lots of them in a single take, I print each of them every two weeks, so the printer heads never get dried. The printer is a Epson WP4515, and of course I use refilled consumables (€3.50 per cartridge). Admittedly from time to time I forgot about printing my photos, nothing that one or two heads cleaning passes couldn't solve. In short, it is definitely possible to have an Inkjet printer, make it print no more than a few hundred photos in years, but never clog a head or have to ditch new cartridges or worse, that is, an extremely low cost of operation. It requires some attention though.

duozerk• 6 years ago

Even assuming you dedicate such time to it, very often the hardware itself is pretty poor and fails you. I recently had to basically take apart an (admittedly cheap) HP inkjet printer in order to reposition part of a hall-effect switch that helped it detect a paper jam - it was detecting a jam continuously because of it.

And because the same printer hadn't been used in 5 months, I also had to clean the clogged head with a syringe afterwards.

ValentineC• 6 years ago

Laser printers aren't excluded from toner DRM.

I have a Samsung CLP-315W, and kept having problems detecting my first-party replacement toner cartridges because there were DRM chips in them [1]. I think a firmware upgrade even made the DRM worse.

This was almost a decade ago. If I had to get a high-volume home printer now, I'd probably consider one with refillable ink tanks.

[1] http://fcartegnie.free.fr/lines/?p=25

jimmaswell• 6 years ago

The cheap laser printer I got on Amazon a while ago has been trouble-free so far.

userbinator• 6 years ago

I suspect you are not in SE Asia or another region with a very humid climate, where the opposite is true.

    In dry climates, inkjet heads will clog.

    In wet climates, laser toner will clump.

Inkjets with CIS mods (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_ink_system ) are extremely popular in SE Asia.

dghughes• 6 years ago

I've had an HP multifunction laser printer for at least 5 years maybe 8 years. In that time I've bought two black toner cartridges and no colour cartridges.

This time period included going back to school, a technical college, where I printed a ton of reports (and many misprints).

pitay• 6 years ago

Try to get a laser with automatic duplex printing if you want to save paper. With manual duplex printing mistakes can cost a significant proportion of paper and may require significant amounts of effort to do correctly.

I currently have a Brother HL-2140 (also has HL-21 model number) and it has 'manual duplex'. This means if I want to save paper I have to mark a corner of the first page before printing and see what orientation it prints compared to that mark (it is not intuitive). I have been printing one page at a time because of this, although now I have written this down I realise I could do better.

gtm1260• 6 years ago

If you read the article, the reason why he cannot print has nothing to do with the type of printer he has :) It's all to do with an idiotic "always connected to the internet" subscription plan.

abrookewood• 6 years ago

Yes, this is the answer. I'm looking at a HP LaserJet 1320N next to my desk that is yellow with age and it still manages to smash out B&W pages at a solid clip. I think it's close to 16 years old and I've bought exactly 3 ink refills.

josh64• 6 years ago

I have this exact printer and I love it. Just bought another toner cartridge (non-Genuine) for it.

jabl• 6 years ago

I had a laserjet 1200 for a very long time, must have been 15 years or so. But it developed a problem where it would often pull multiple sheets at a time, and when the toner ran out I conveniently got my hands on a laserjet P2055dn that my old job was throwing out. Threw in a 3rd party toner cartridge (I guess that model is old enough to not suffer from the DRM crap of newer models) and it was good to go. Been rock solid so far.

That being said, based on what people write every time this topic comes up, whenever this one dies I'll replace it with a Brother.

nogabebop23• 6 years ago

I fear I will jinx my 20-yr-old hp 1200 laser jet that's on maybe it's 4(?) toner and hooked up to our home network via a parallel port to usb adapter. It's yellower than an 8-bit computer but still prints great and fast. One of my best tech purchases ever; I'm glad I resisted the lure of color inkjet and spent 3x much for a b&w laser.

prima-facie• 6 years ago

I have one of the same model but it prints very slow. Did you upgrade the RAM on yours?

angled• 6 years ago

Every person, their dog, and their printer has provided a recommendation thus far, so here are mine:

I have a Brother colour duplex printer for bulk printing (was useful for printing weekly school plans before schools went back a few months ago: https://support.brother.com/g/b/spec.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=... . As noted by others, it only supports 2.4GHz WiFi.

I use this Canon for scanning and photo printing: https://www.canon.co.uk/printers/pixma-ts9150-series/

It seems to be the best of both worlds for the price point and physical space.

zaarn2• 6 years ago

One year ago I bought a Lexmark Laser Printer (Color) for 60€. I've barely printed more than 12 pages but it doesn't care about the long idling (currently working on disconnecting power when not in use). It prints full-duplex pages with no hardware margin in A4. The color is on par with all the color printers I've used in my life.

The replacement toner is 20€. Why would I ever touch anything else?

roel_v3• 6 years ago

" (currently working on disconnecting power when not in use"

Watch out, modern printers run a full OS that doesn't expect power to be fully cut regularly. My Xerox does a full filesystem check every time I turn the power to it on, which takes about 5 mins. For my next printer I will carefully research how this works on it.

ux-app2• 6 years ago

yup 100%. I've been laser now for at least 15 years. The final nail in the coffin for me was when inkjet clearly became a loss leader on the printer made up through exorbitant ink replacement. The final-final nail was when manufacturers started selling all in one cartridges, so that when cyan ran out you could no longer print b/w.

fuck.that.

hellweaver666• 6 years ago

I concur, back in 2011 I bought a Dell 3210 on an amazing deal (buy the toner get the printer free). It has built in networking (wired and wireless). It’s survived four house moves including one international move and works every day. Third party toner cartridges work in it no problem and last forever. I think I’ve bought maybe two sets of toner in the time I’ve owned it. Prints fast and rarely jams. We use online services for photo printing so we almost entirely only use it for documents and for that it’s been flawless.

franga20002• 6 years ago

The problem is that once you start adding features they get absurdly expensive. The bare minimum for me is color (printing colored things as grayscale in 2020 is frankly an embarrassment), built-in networking, automatic duplex printing and a scanner.

But you can't buy just that. The only printers that have those features also have a feeder on the scanner, a fax machine, all kinds of cloud crap, an "app" system (?!?), access control... which drive the price way up the their own - and that's before they slap on the "enterprise" markup because that is no longer considered a SOHO device.

raindropm• 6 years ago

I bought mine (Canon Laser) about what, 10 years ago? I'd say it's one of the best office appliance I bought and I think it can comfortably last my lifetime.

I print some pages about 5 times/year max. The toner that comes with it is nearly running out, but still able to print some greyish image if I want quick physical form of some files. ZERO maintenance.

and it's not even the expensive model, it's the base model, almost the cheapest. Such quality, really.

On another story, I also used to own Brother's multifunction scanner-inkjet printer. It was a nightmare.

traceroute662• 6 years ago

Canon Laser. Fine, unless you forget the admin PIN/Passowrd, then you're screwed. ;-)

112233• 6 years ago

I have a smallish Brother inkjet MFD, that absolutely can be left idle, unless you pull the power plug (clogged a few nozzles by leaving it without power)

It periodically, uh, does that printhead thing, was idle for a few months, no new clogs.

Why it is not common practice for other brands?

hedora2• 6 years ago

I see lots of recommendations for brother laser printers here.

One word of warning: Avoid their inkjets. I had one with permanent heads. Less than 100 sheets in, it jammed (this ream was fine with the printer before and after it).

It failed to put the head back on top of the seal that keeps it from drying out. I didn’t notice the jam, and a few days later it was permanently ruined.

I do recommend the brother ADS line (standalone USB document scanners), with the caveat that the Linux drivers on my old one are x86-only.

Inkjets suck. Don’t even think about it. Dye sublimation is (was?) nice.

We have a Samsung laser, which is great, except there’s a “disable the wifi until you plug me into ethernet” button labeled WPS on the top that the cats like to press.

Also their printer business was acquired by HP, so it’s only a matter of time until HP manages to somehow remote brick it or stop selling consumables.

Koliakis2• 6 years ago

I started up my laser printer after letting it gather dust for a good 4-5 years. It still works as good as new (and it was already 6 years old by then). This thing is unkillable and the toner lasts what feels like forever (while also being absurdly cheap).

EricE3• 6 years ago

And DO NOT buy a multifunction. If you get a printer printer with nothing else Linux, macOS and Windows will probably auto detect and configure it automatically and every time.

I freaking hate multifunction printers.

RIMR• 6 years ago

I've been using the same Brother MFC laser printer for like 10 years without a single issue, and the cartridges are cheap and last an incredible amount of time.

I think the issue is that Inkjet printers suck.

ineedasername• 6 years ago

I've never had that hateful relationship with printers. Sure, the occasional paper jam etc., and experience with the office printer that is beyond it's useful lifetime in terms of lifetime prints or underspec'ed for its monthly duty cycle, and we replace it.

As for ink expense, yeah that's been an issue for decades though it is not due to lack of technical advances, but to vendor lock in. However, most brands now offer printer options slightly more expensive than an entry level ink jet that have ink tanks instead of cartridges. I recently replaced my 6 year old work horse with one: It came with the equivalent of 10 cartridges of ink, and each replacement color is $15, again for the equivalent of 10 cartridges.

hellotomyrars• 6 years ago

The only printer I've ever enjoyed was a short-lived Kodak pigment based printer.

That said, while it worked great and the pigments were reasonably priced, the unit experienced hardware failures every 6-12 months. Kodak support was above and beyond, and they must have shipped me 4 printers as replacements.

It's a shame consumer pigment printers didn't take off but I guess once Kodak realized the price wasn't going to move the needle on consumer habits, they might as well get their slice of the ink cartel pie.

My current HP is maybe the worse printer I've ever owned. It is constantly inaccessible on the network despite being connected and the only solution is to power cycle it. If I hold the power button to power it off, it sits and spins "Preparing to shut down" literally forever. I've left it overnight just so see. So I have to pull the plug every time just to turn it off. It's insane.

myself2482• 6 years ago

Next time I swing by the computer recycling place, I gotta see if they still have that Tektronix Phaser dye-sub printer up front. They've been trying to move it for years, and I think their clientele just doesn't recognize it.

Dye-sub is downright magical. I don't know what I'd do with it, but I just want to own one.

roland352• 6 years ago

I think people underestimate just how difficult it is to design and manufacture a printer! Paper isn't easy to work with, especially when it comes with all sorts of thicknesses and finishes. We expect extreme accuracy and reliability, with no maintenance. It is amazing they work as well as they do!

cmxch• 6 years ago

You aren't kidding.

When I worked with old Xerox form printers, even the brand of paper made a difference. One brand would work well for multi-thousand page jobs while another would get occasionally stuck in the rollers.

While I'd think that things have improved since the era of tag/bus printing, I'd also think that the concern is still there.

haswell• 6 years ago

Are you specifically referring to inkjet printers? Because laser printers are pretty close to "Accurate, reliable, minimal maintenance".

If you're focused on inkjets, if what you're saying is true, it's overshadowed by the predatory practices employed by printer manufacturers. Practices that make it easy to conclude that printer issues are more about planned obsolescence and selling more ink than they are about difficult engineering problems.

amelius3• 6 years ago

Yes, I'd like to see someone here do a DIY color laser printer project :)

mikro2nd• 6 years ago

Even an "open source" monochrome laser would be a win.

sokoloff• 6 years ago

OTOH, I bought an HP 3600N networked color laser printer in Nov 2006. Cost me $574.39 delivered and gives reliable and excellent quality output for about $41/year so far in capex. 3rd party toner cartridges run around $110 for all 4 (they're about half the fill of the genuine HP article for about 1/8th the price).

In home use, I've replaced the cartridges twice, so I'm around $800 plus paper for 14 years of convenient printing at home.

moron4hire• 6 years ago

Saw some comments about scanners here. Anyone else just take a photo of the document, then Photoshop it to be flat and monochrome?

lizknope2• 6 years ago

My university in the mid 90's had HP LaserJet 5 Si MX printers in the computer labs. When I got a job in 1997 I laughed at how bad the printers were in the office. I convinced my manager to buy the same HP LaserJet 5 Si MX. It was $3500 but everyone loved it.

It had a built in PostScript interpreter and was great for printing from our Sun and HP workstations.

jet_32951• 6 years ago

Not my experience at all. When my girlfriend's HP 4L died we looked for a replacement and we both wanted to print color images so I bought a Canon MX870 ("multifunction", inkjet) in 2010.

I still have it and it still impresses me with how robust it is - the fact it's a good document scanner and a fax is gravy. On its strength I bought a PRO-100 and the European analog of the MX870 whose model number I forget.

The PRO-100 sat unused for several years, and when I tried it again, it picked up and worked as though for the first time.

The assertion that inkjet is garbage sure isn't borne out by my three Canon inkjets.

mattkevan• 6 years ago

Made a solemn vow years ago to never ever buy another HP product again when I realised that the inkjet printer I bought in the UK from a major UK retailer was region-locked to US ink. No official HP ink cartridge bought in the UK would work with it and there was nothing official I could do to change it. Had to muck about with refills, blank chips and ink systems for years until the happy day when the thing broke and I threw it as hard as I could into the e-waste skip.

The rot set in with printers when the technology got good enough for there not to be any easy improvements and the mindset changed from building a tool to help people create, to seeing customers as a resource to be exploited.

Every user-hostile bit of nonsense from shoddy software to region-locked, staggeringly overpriced ink stems from there.

MattGaiser• 6 years ago

TIL that ink is treated like television shows for the purposes of geography.

35fbe7d3d5b92• 6 years ago

Today I replaced a HP Laserjet that ran a firmware update. Shame on me for not keeping it from phoning home.

Four toner cartridges inside, 70% filled or higher, and after the update I see "supply error" on the screen. Turns out my aftermarket toner cartridges, which have worked for several hundred prints without problem – and I'm on the fourth purchase of these same aftermarket cartridges – are now DRM locked and will not print.

    block out all from inet 10.10.10.5 to any

I'll not make this mistake with the Brother I'm unboxing now.

WrtCdEvrydy3• 6 years ago

Brother's firmware doesn't do funky stuff like that... but I do only use USB-based ones.

avh02• 6 years ago

for years we bought HP in my family, don't know why. After we got our hands on an Epson it was like seeing the light for the first time.

I took a risk with an ultra-budget Canon more recently and was pleasantly surprised with their linux support (via generic wireless printing and scanning)

coddle-hark• 6 years ago

The rot set in with printers when the technology got good enough for there not to be any easy improvements and the mindset changed from building a tool to help people create, to seeing customers as a resource to be exploited.

Sounds exactly like my experience with a low/mid-tier HP laptop a few years ago. Full of bloatwear, constantly overheating, gave up after a couple of years of light use.

humaniania• 6 years ago

I work in IT. Can confirm that this is a problem for small businesses.

NegativeLatency• 6 years ago

I recently hooked a raspberry pi (as a print server) to my older monochrome laser printer and it's been pretty great.

BOOSTERHIDROGEN• 6 years ago

I've been using for the last 5 years, inkjet with integrated printer cartridge (With this type, the nozzle plate (printhead) is built into the side of the cartridge) no problem so far

dangerboysteve• 6 years ago

I have an old Samsung scx-4626 multi-function laser and its been problem free ever since I purchased it. rock solid device. I also use good paper that does not have all that paper dust from cheaper brands.

b212• 6 years ago

When we were young and poor I got my wife HP 2200D for $40. It was in 2010, the printer was already really old and beat. Since then it has printed roughly 200 000 pages for her and God knows how many before we got it. The C4096A toners are roughly $20 where I live and easily print on average 10 000 pages but some we did almost 20 000, it’s technically impossible (most toners are built for 6000 pages) but it happened. In the meantime my parents changed 3 or 4 XXI century printers and some of them were very expensive. The only trouble with 2200D we have is it won’t run on Windows 8/10, worked flawlessly on 7. I spent days trying to figure out the drivers and surrendered. So we’re just printing on Mac. It’s extremely easy to fix (I personally replaced broken duplex mechanism and it was 100 times easier than changing RAM in Mac Mini) and did nothing else excepting feeding it paper and new toners. I hate printers and am really scared what is going to happen once our old timer breaks for good.

chrysoprace• 6 years ago

I read an article years ago about how high the markup is for ink toner.

Unless I inherently misunderstand something about this industry, it seems like the perfect opportunity for a new startup to swoop in with a new quality printer with affordable toner cartridges. My only conclusion for why this hasn't been done is that it must not be profitable.

mark-r6• 6 years ago

Most people wouldn't buy a printer if they charged proportionally to what they cost to build. The manufacturers universally rely on ink profits to make up the difference.

gandalfian• 6 years ago

I'm cheap. Buy most basic £45 canon with seperate ink cartridges and use dollar a cartridge third party ink. Lasts 3-4 years. Brother inkjets were good till they got too clever at chipping ink cartridges.

Bigger budget get one of the new Epson/canon inkjets with refillable tanks. Even the quality official ink is dirt cheap!

Laser would be nice but finding a cheap one with cheap good toner availability is hard. Colour copying on a multifunction inkjet is nice too.

mauvehaus3• 6 years ago

You have your choice: you can get an inkjet, and all of them suck at the consumer price level.

Or you can get a laser made by a company that got its start making sewing machines and still does, or a company that got its start making test and measurement equipment and spun off that bit of the company (i. e. The good bit) to focus on making crap printers.

amelius3• 6 years ago

Also the interfaces seem stuck in the 90s. We have cheap high resolution touch-screens now. Use them.

ngcc_hk• 6 years ago

The two big fujixerox colour laser printer run my kids to its pre-college and my wife home business. But once boys are gone i immediately switch to the ecoprint version (epson l6190). Slower, but so much cheaper for colour print.

Did worry about the drying but so far so good. Do keep a Hp laser portable mono in case of trouble.

gerdesj• 6 years ago

"Forget about the printer for weeks until I need it again."

Inkjets need near constant use or the ink dries up. OP has described a constraint that points towards a laser.

kaetemi• 6 years ago

Brother inkjet is still running fine on the original ink fill from over 2 years ago.

And we've been doing plenty of full color photo prints on it.

Local model with large refillable ink tanks builtin, though.

lanius• 6 years ago

It took me an embarrassingly long time before I learned I could digitally sign PDFs (literally draw my signature). After this discovery, I've not had any need for a printer.

lvturner2• 6 years ago

Depending on country/jurisdiction this may or may not be 'legal'

newhotelowner• 6 years ago

I use fox it reader. You can paste a signature PNG file in a PDF. I print that PDF again using Microsoft PDF printer as an image with reduce quality. It looks like a scanned page.

bfuclusion• 6 years ago

I like the Xerox Workcenters. Speaks PCL + Postscript, can netcat a job to it. Automatically shows up in CUPS and Windows, and has a full duplex scanner to boot. I got mine for 400$, which considering it's monthly duty cycle is 10x my yearly output I don't really mind.

quickthrower2• 6 years ago

Just buy a decent printer. My brother DCP-9015 colour laser is doing OK, and gets treated a bit rough too!

wstrange• 6 years ago

I have a printer story for you young whipper-snappers.

Back in the day I worked for Sun. They had a laser printer called the SPARCPrinter that did all the rasterization on the workstation - which made the printer very inexpensive, but it bogged down the workstation when printing.

We often played flight simulator after work (ok, sometimes during work) where you could fly an F-15 and go shoot your buddy out of the sky.

There was a sys admin (Keith) who was an absolute ace. If Keith got on your tail you were basically dead. Keith would win all the time.

But Keith had a weakness. The SPARCprinter was attached to his workstation....

So if Keith got on your tail, we discovered that we could send a nice big print job to his workstation. That was usually enough to shake him from your tail and escape.

The virtual equivalent of chaff I suppose

spacemanmatt4• 6 years ago

This reminds me of the BBS equivalent.

When call-waiting was introduced, it would usually destroy a 1200 or 2400 baud connection. So we would just call people we wanted to knock offline. It was pretty handy when a "big" chat board had 8 whole simultaneous connections and they were all busy.

zaphirplane• 6 years ago

How would you call them without disconnecting yourself ? Presumably you had one phone line

EricE3• 6 years ago

When running a BBS the first thing you learned was how to add the codes to disable call waiting to your modem INIT string.

Ah, the good 'ol days. I picked up a cheap fax switch so I could share my dorm line with my BBS. Very cheesy british lady answered the phone "This is the Fax Boss answering your call. To send a fax remain silent, otherwise press 2 to connect" or something like that. I only really remember up to "...to send a fax...". Wish I still had that thing, it was awesome at the time. Of course instead of faxes I was receiving BBS callers but it worked perfectly. Confused my parents constantly.

tpmx2• 6 years ago

I think I may have found this flight simulator. Looks like it's from 86-87.

http://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/sun/games/fltsim.tar.gz

This flight simulator seems to origin with Ed Falk at Sun

Edit: No networking code in this one though, so maybe it's not the one.

marcodiego• 6 years ago

I'd bet it was ACM: https://web.archive.org/web/19981212022158/http://www.websim...

sillysaurusx• 6 years ago

You had me at whipper-snappers. I think more people should write books filled with stories just like yours. Feynman's was basically that.

There's not much knowledge about "what it was like to work for Sun 15 years ago." Stuff like that gets lost with time. It's always seemed like it should be preserved somehow, though I suppose an HN comment is as good a way as any.

It's cool that coworkers were doing LAN parties 15 years ago :) I thought it was mostly a teenager phenomenon, but most phenomenons seem that way to teenagers.

retreatguru• 6 years ago

My favourite times were playing Marathon and Quake during lunch at work. This was mid 90s. Marathon was a cutting edge Mac game made by Bungie. It was the first 3D shooter I played where you could look up and down.

dgacmu• 6 years ago

Longest than that. We were doing lan parties when I was in college - '95 or so. Some Doom, a lot of Marathon in the Mac lab, and Quake a little later.

This sometimes involved hauling our PCs and (large CRT) monitors over to one person's house. And sometimes commandeering the computer labs at school.

brians• 6 years ago

If you like Feynman, you might like You're Stepping On My Cloak and Dagger. The CIA's basically given up trying to suppress its publication by now, and it's hysterical.

13of40• 6 years ago

I think the fun started winding down at Sun after the crash in 2000, so he's probably talking at least 25 years ago.

lordnacho• 6 years ago

When I was at Intel back then there was a demo group which had access to a pile of new machines. You could get some colleagues together on the weekend to just play games. All you needed was pizza delivered.

Wistar• 6 years ago

I remember the Sun flight sim well but it was 1988-89 when I played it.

toyg3• 6 years ago

coworkers were doing LAN parties 15 years ago

I was introduced to Counterstrike after-hours by my colleagues in the year 2001, and we were “just” devs in a large telecom company. The sysadmins (HP on-site outsourcers...), holed up in their windowless cupboard of an office, were on all sorts of FPSs most of the day, and hence basically unbeatable.

bartread3• 6 years ago

It's cool that coworkers were doing LAN parties 15 years ago

LAN parties have been around a lot longer than that. Friend of mine used to play DOOM deathmatch with his housemates at uni back in the 90s.

One of them was really good at designing levels but really terrible at the game, so he'd always hide the BFG somewhere that obviously only he'd know about so that he could go and grab it and then wipe out the other players relatively easily.

The others quickly got wise to this and, of course, DOOM was really easy to mod. For example, changing sound effects was simple: you could just overwrite them with different sound files on disk, I believe. So what they did is replace the sound that played when somebody picked up the BFG with the full length theme from The A-Team. DOOM didn't have the most sophisticated sound engine by today's standards, but it did have directionality, and sounds did get quieter the further away the source, and louder the nearer it was.

So the upshot was you had early warning that the guy had picked up the BFG and could either avoid or sneak up on him as appropriate. Apparently this used to really annoy him.

cyberdrunk• 6 years ago

There's not much knowledge about "what it was like to work for Sun 15 years ago."

Based on these stories, the tech companies from 1990s and before seemed much more fun than career-focused environments of FAANGs today...

gadders• 6 years ago

I used to work for Lotus Support in the UK in '93 - '94 and we used to play games over the office network once we knocked off for the day. First with NetWars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetWars) and then Doom. When you shot a colleague with a rocket launcher for the first time....

//EDIT// We also used to connect to a Lotus FTP server in the US so we could download new WADs that people had built.

bregma• 6 years ago

Try NetTrek on an AppleTalk LAN of Mac IIs in 1988. 15 years ago my butt. Try more than double that, and we were well past being teenagers. You younglings have no respect.

As I recall the experience was enhanced by a goth nightclub that had opened downstairs from the office we were in and was playing the latest releases by the likes of Sisters of Mercy, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, and their ilk. Hmmm, wonder if I can dig out my old Mac from the museum in my garage, throw on some tunes and some all-black clothing, and recreate my misspent young adulthood....

baxtr• 6 years ago

I remember forcing my dad to pack the car with my heavy computer and even heavier monitor back in the late 90s. He would drive me to large gyms where I would play with some other 100 people ego shooters. You had to be very careful back then not share any drives. You’d had instantly 20 people trying to login to you computer to browse your files. Fun times. My dad hated it though.

johnchristopher• 6 years ago

You had me at whipper-snappers.

FWIW, that's where I left.

pimlottc• 6 years ago

Earliest LAN games I remember was playing Snipes on the school Novell network in 1991. Pretty simple game but a lot of fun!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipes_(video_game)

cm277• 6 years ago

Scene: '93 or thereabouts, in a uni computer lab and I am bored. I log on remotely to an ONR Y-MP I have access to for research. Huge-ass machine in its day, but notoriously slow for single-CPU jobs. So I decide to compile xtetris on it, which was surprisingly simple (why did a Cray have X on it? who knows...).

And then I export the display and start playing the slowest game of Tetris, probably ever. Punchline: I was sitting at the console of an SGI Reality Engine at the time, a machine not known for slow graphics... my lab-mates couldn't help but stare and ask "why on earth is xtetris slow on the SGI?", "oh, no that's just a Navy Cray" <grin>.

908B64B197• 6 years ago

Maybe add it to Folklore.org [0]?

[0] https://www.folklore.org/

matt-attack• 6 years ago

LAN parties

My first job out of college in the late 90s was up in SV at a startup. We used to play Duke Nukem in our bullpen (maybe 6 or so engineers) on the LAN. It was a blast. No internet required. Blazing fast game, decent enough graphics, etc. Early Pentium era as I recall.

I was new, and I remember that my PC that I had inherited from an outgoing engineer didn’t have a sound card. That was considered a special feature not everyone deserved. I remember me and a colleague sneaking into some random cube late in the evening with a Philips head screwdriver, prone on our stomach under the desk, to take the sound card out of an unsuspecting colleagues tower. Must have been someone in finance or HR. Fun times :)

Anywho I hope that helps to set the scene of this era.

eschaton• 6 years ago

SPARCprinter was way more than 15 years ago. Try 30…

Waterluvian• 6 years ago

I used to chaff my brother with file transfers when playing Marathon.

cgufus• 6 years ago

That's basically a side-channel attack :-) Thanks for this funny story.

sgtnoodle• 6 years ago

Lol, that reminds me of the time we were playing "Artemis: Spaceship Bridge Simulator" in the two mission control rooms at SpaceX, and an IT person on the opposing team remotely rebooted our commander's workstation mid battle. Good times!

coleca• 6 years ago

Anecdotal evidence of course but I’ve had nothing but success with Brother ink jets. I’ve had my current Brother business class printer for over six years now. It’s huge but it prints on ledger size 11x17 paper (nice for flowcharts). It works great with cheap Amazon generic ink cartridges as well. Even the scanner is reliable. Half the printers I’ve used require all sorts of incantations to get the computer to recognize the scanner but not the Brother.

ggm2• 6 years ago

Until you've used a wet process printer you haven't lived..

Bromides are cool. feeding them the tape of the fonts, super cool: adjusting the hex for minor positioning, extra merit points (I never did that but I know a guy who did)

The Early canon laser was half good, but the size of a fridge. The Benson Varian stuff was ok, but the paper felt slimy.

I think using the pen plotter to write cursive was my favourite, but the operators hated me when I did that.

Something12342• 6 years ago

I think using the pen plotter to write cursive was my favourite, but the operators hated me when I did that.

Why would they hate you for writing cursive on it? Other than it possibly taking a long time.

ggm2• 6 years ago

Back in the 80s there was a strong "don't waste it" vibe for devices in general. This one took very specific pens. I was writing a fortran printer driver for it, I had reasons to use it but the overall sense was "stop wasting ink"

When the wet process laser came along, we got a lot of love using it at first, but then it went to the same place. it was a continuous roll feed (bit like a fax in some ways) and consumed some kind of chemical. I can relate to them rationing it. (it also had NROFF/TBL cut marks to show where to slice it to make the effective page size)

The colour printers they got on trial from textronix we got to keep the demo sheets doing various DECUS tape 3D graphic drawings, but it was way too expensive to buy. I have no idea who bought those things then. probably big physics, not compsci schools.

The giant LPT up front which took 132 column papper? go for your life, but you had to be in the freemasons to break the feed sheet, and if you printed the 'Star Trek' overhit ascii art you were banned for months. (it burned through the ribbon)

Ops duty cycle included walking out front, breaking the feed, tearing various peoples printouts into discrete chunks, putting it into the pigeon hole.

Those stories about accidental form-feed shooting paper ribbons across the room? They are true.

xvilka• 6 years ago

Reminds me of not very famous but important project of writing open source driver for Canon CAPT printers - captdriver[1].

[1] https://github.com/agalakhov/captdriver

spacemanmatt4• 6 years ago

inetknght• 6 years ago

Paper printers will stop sucking when you can make your own with a 3d printer, some motors, and maybe an arduino controller.

lvturner2• 6 years ago

I'm at the stage now where I get annoyed when I have to print anything.

Typically I only need to do so for banks of government agencies so that my signature counts.

Though I successfully signed a government document on an iPad and argued that their instructions didn't say I couldn't use a digital pen to sign it. (Still had to print it off though)

The only real use case I can think of (I'm sure there are others) for truly personal printing is photography - even then, I think I'd probably send it off to a specialist printers.

hermitcrab• 6 years ago

Just to echo the general theme: -I have an Epson inkjet for printing colour photos. It is a pain in the arse. I hate it. -I have a cheap Brother B&W laser for printing documents. It has been great.

I once had a HP colour laser printer. It was so bad (particularly the software) that I vowed never to buy HP kit again.

nojvek• 6 years ago

I have a laser printer over wireless. Other than changing paper and changing toner once every 3 years, it just works.

I’d say we’ve come quite far. My Brother printer doesn’t suck. I can print from phone while I’m taking a dookie. The future is here.

jjnoakes2• 6 years ago

For the life of me I can not print to my Brother HL-2270DW over wifi from linux or android. I've tried all combinations of print services, cups drivers and wrappers (even the ones from the Brother web site), and protocol/port/queue combinations I can find.

Anyone got any tips/tricks that can help me out? Some way to query the printer, watch the traffic (and know what to look for), anything?

vectro2• 6 years ago

I struggled with exactly this model and use case. Check out the AUR package for the 2270DW, and make sure image quality is set to 600dpi. That was the magic combination for me. Also check out the Arch wiki on Brother printers.

b20000• 6 years ago

Making hardware is difficult. It's called HARDware.

kristianpaul• 6 years ago

Is just nostalgia or those dot printers where actually less error prone?

m0zg• 6 years ago

This is relatively recent. My HP printer from 15 years ago is excellent and it's still going strong. Anything I can buy today would be a de-facto downgrade.

gumby• 6 years ago

The real reason is that hardly anyone prints any more so the remaining companies are chopping costs in the hope of continuing to get some revenue from a shrinking market. Quality suffers...so fewer people even buy a printer “just in case”. Death spiral.

taeric• 6 years ago

Printers don't suck. Not even a little bit. They are disappointing for the pricing model. Amazing for how well they work.

throwanem• 6 years ago

They don't!

I have three printers right now, two inkjets for photo printing and one monochrome laser for documents - lately, mostly research papers about wasps.

All three printers work beautifully. They all print perfectly from all my devices, never give me trouble, and thanks to the economics of HP's Instant Ink program, low and medium quality photo prints up to letter size only cost me as much as one sheet of whatever paper I'm using.

Maybe I'm just lucky?

baron816• 6 years ago

it turned out my toddler had dropped some coins into it when I wasn’t looking

Are there any startups out there working on an AI babysitter? There must be.

akerr• 6 years ago

Another happy Brother user here. Our HL-L2360D is rock solid, crisp, duplex and AirPrint is excellent. Cost AU$150 years ago and AU$15 for toner via eBay.

sneak2• 6 years ago

In 2020 it is now possible to simply refuse to use paper or a printer. It's possible to do an all-PDF workflow for most things.

I make do with a little wi-fi thermal sticky label printer, for the few times I need an address label, because I am vehemently opposed to the concept of handwriting. I have a letter laser printer, which I have successfully avoided needing to use.

The only time I've used it in recent memory (2 years?) is to print off updated car insurance documents, current copies of which must be kept in the car by law (and of course they change every six months). My insurance company will mail them to me, but it's faster to just print them than to order them in the app and wait for them to arrive by post. I technically don't need to print them myself.

You just have to be a little bit stubborn in refusing to use paper, and it's possible now.

rootusrootus• 6 years ago

My question is more like -- what's the next big thing? We've had laser printers forever, and the under-$100 Brother ones are just awesome for a home printer. But nothing has really changed in years. Color laser has gotten cheaper, I guess. But is that it? Is that the pinnacle of printing?

stkdump• 6 years ago

I find that my need for printing declines over time. I now have to print one or two times a year.

semireg2• 6 years ago

Ask yourself: What is the best hardware on the planet with the worst software?

LABEL PRINTING

I realized a few years ago that, if my clients fired me, I’d have to go get a “real job.” My expertise has been Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT), and I became pretty good with hardware integration UI/UX. That’s when I asked myself the question above.

I learned React/Electron and built a solution named Label LIVE. Check it out at https://label.live.

This side-hustle has been a HUGE challenge and helps augment my consulting income.

Do you have to print Avery sheets with dynamic data? Don’t want to mail merge? Copy/paste got you down? Want to use your Zebra printer on a Mac? These simple things were incredibly difficult a few years ago...

My app has tons of fun features powered by the JavaScript ecosystem: USB, Fonts, Barcodes, Excel/CSV integration, dithering via WASM, PDF generation, etc.

It may not be the most memory efficient app, but it lets you get your printing done so you can focus on something else.

Label printing was a dumpster fire. Users expect a high-stress stinky mess. If I can make it 50% better I’ve succeeded in my goal. There’s still a ton of work to do... I just need to make time for it.

p.s. Do you know another hardware industry that needs better software? Get in touch!

severak_cz• 6 years ago

I looked at your page and it seems that prices are missing at https://label.live/faq/what-does-label-live-cost

(Business licneses cost ${PRICEBUSINESSMONTHLY} per month (or ${PRICE_BUSINESS} one time) and support printing barcodes for business use.)

semireg2• 6 years ago

Oops! This is embarrassing. Looks like I broke the gatsby. Thanks for the heads up.

jmspring• 6 years ago

Only job I was ever fired from - it was a temp job. Mortgage comps in the early 90s. Printing was the slowest part of the process. I installed a print spooler and was 3x more productive than peers and boss.

I was fired for “installing unsanctioned software”. Yet a friend’s brother was a muckity there and heard what happened and wanted to hire me full time - this was a summer part time job. I said nope. Had fun being the right hand for a chemical engineer at one of the local refineries and learned a lot more.

ponker• 6 years ago

Lol! I bought a Brother laser printer for $100. Prints automatic full duplex. Joins to my WiFi and hardwired Ethernet. Plugged it in and every computer in the house printed to it immediately. My PHONE prints to it flawlessly. GTFO printer complainer! You have no idea how bad it used to be!

natex• 6 years ago

Because relatively few use them.

j0057• 6 years ago

I have an HP LaserJet MFP M28w, and it's actually somewhat decent! It does B&W prints, and that's actually all we need at home. I can print directly from my phone, scan directly to my phone, and amazingly, I can print from Linux, which I would never have dreamed of in all my 20 years of Linux desktop usage.

Being the family tech support, I'm slowly but surely migrating all family members away from inkjets to laser printers. This is easy because the inkjets invariably die within a couple of years. I make the beloved relatives think really hard about needing color or not. Let's be fair, we don't need it for printing ticket QR codes.

plibither8• 6 years ago

A lot of comments here have mentioned that inkjets don't perform well if left idle for a long period of time, but I can't seem to a reason for this. So, why?

Ballas• 6 years ago

The ink in the nozzles dry up and usually it takes several 'cleaning' sessions to get them all working again.

fyfy18• 6 years ago

Yes this exactly. My friend has a professional printer like you'd find in printing shops, and when he is on holiday I go to his house every few days to run a test print to make sure the head doesn't dry up. If it does, the only real option is to pay a few hundred Euro for a new one.

wingworks• 6 years ago

The ink dries out on the ink heads/and then cartridge, where as toner is already dry and can usually sit unused for much longer and still work fine.

phendrenad2• 6 years ago

Has anyone had luck after buying a used, maybe corporate off-lease, laser printer?

60secz• 6 years ago

Unless you're printing novels, best bet imo is to buy a canon wifi multifunction with a duplex scanner for ~$100, and get 3rd party ink cartridges on ebay for $1 each.

mritun• 6 years ago

+1 - Canon MFP are really good. Mine is a joy to use (ha!)

Vaslo• 6 years ago

Also - projectors still suck. When I did my grad school presentations in 2004, I was asked to print 50 copies for 40 slide decks just in case the projector failed. Even in 2020 at work, we run into significant issues that completely derail meetings. And it seems like the most expensive setups (in our executive conference room for example) are the worst.

scoot_718• 6 years ago

If you're complaining about ink cartridges I have no sympathy. You bought the cheaper option that is terrible for home use. Meanwhile I've never once had to buy more supplies for my laser printer with 4 years of owning it.

SergeAx• 6 years ago

There was a quick period of inkjet printers reign when everybody wanted to print their digital photos. Now it's gone, so the only thing we should come to terms with is going back to black-and-white for everyday printing and settle with inexpensive laser devices.

poisonborz• 6 years ago

+1 Brother laser printers. Inkjet is a dead end. What pushed me over is that they now have cheap color laser printers as well (LED printers).

For photos, go to a print shop.

emrehan• 6 years ago

There was a startup researching printers without ink. They’ll work by burning the paper.

It seems like they’re out of business: https://www.yesdelft.com/startups/tocano/

Animats• 6 years ago

I've never had much trouble with printers. I owned an original Apple LaserWriter II, which I retired in working condition, an HP LaserJet, which I retired in working condition, and an Epson ET-2650, which works OK. It's cheap to operate; I have to pour in some more ink once a year or so. Doesn't seem to jam. It is subject to nozzle clogging if not used for a week or two, but a few cleaning cycles fixes that.

It's on the end of a USB cable and driven from Linux, so it doesn't phone home or require an Epson account. Prints fine. It's also a scanner, using the terrible SANE software for Linux, but it scans fine once.

bullen• 6 years ago

They don't: https://axidraw.com

brtkdotse2• 6 years ago

Simple - everybody’s buying bottom-tier garbage while expecting something long-lasting and reliable.

Step up your budget to $1500 and a new world opens up. The reason it’s not cheaper is because there’s no market for it, people just don’t value good prints enough to make the scale bring down the price enough.

timonoko• 6 years ago

Some are complaining photo quality on laser printer. Try heat laminator: colors melt again and get mixed better and then get diffused into the transparent plastic. No visible plastic layer on top. This would not happen with ink-jet colors.

MarcScott• 6 years ago

Haven't owned a printer in about 10 years. I hated the bloody things. The expense, the jams, and above all the pointlessness of taking an electronic document and printing it on paper, when everyone has email.

I have an HP inkjet now, that I bought for my son's school work during lockdown. We had no choice. He was actually expected to print out work, stick it in his book, then send in a photo of the work. FFS.

It came with a three month free subscription service, to their automatic ink cartridge resupply.

So we had some cartridges arrive in the post, just as the ink was running out, and I changed cartridges.

A month later, the free subscription ended, and the printer refused to print, using the cartridges, unless I renewed my subscription, which I had to do through their mobile app.

How can you make such a simple technology, so ridiculously complex?

selfhoster11• 6 years ago

Your hate might come from using an inkjet printer. Lasers are much cleaner and not nearly as annoying to deal with.

WhyNotHugo2• 6 years ago

Fortunately, the era of printers came and passed, and I managed to survive without ever having to own one.

Gods, that makes me happy!

In this new era of social distancing and everything online, I can't see printers making a comeback (knocks on wood). Good riddance.

Note: I'm obviously not talking about industrial printers or alike. Then again, neither is the article.

ec109685• 6 years ago

With learning at home, we are using the printer 100x more than normal.

WhyNotHugo2• 6 years ago

I'm curious to hear why. I can't think of any reason to use a printer (not implying your usage is invalid, just saying I can't think of what it might be).

harha3• 6 years ago

I wouldn't mind printing out a paper (as in academic paper) to read and add notes while building things, since I would need to take hand written notes anyway and to avoid having the screen on all the time or to read outside when the weather is nice.

My experience with printers is keeping me from it. It feels like a market for lemons, the cheap ones are obviously crap, but who is to say that an expensive printer will be any better, especially with all the silly strategies the bean counters are using to squeeze the last bit of revenue out of the consumer. Reading the other comments, HP seems to be the company to avoid (My last cheap laser printer from them, P1006, was reasonably good though, it just doesn't support duplex and I won't run around with double the paper that's needed)

On the distance learning bit: My old iPad I used in college and grad school was great. When I had a bunch of readings to go through, I did prefer it to printing for the lower cost, synced notes, less to carry, better for the environment bits.

Now that I don't have any class notes and assignments, I would really like a printer for the once a month 30-50 pages duplex prints. Especially since my iPad is essentially a brick now that it can't access my Safari saved pages or iCloud Drive and can't install Firefox – yes it's old, but it would work fine except for software, so I'm not getting a new one.

harg• 6 years ago

From reading many of the comments both in the original article and the HN post there is a clear theme: HP printers seem to be the source of many people's frustrations. Perhaps printers wouldn't have such a bad rep if it wasn't for HP.

I very rarely print nowadays but I'd certainly never buy an HP printer based on what I've read. The amount of e-waste they're responsible for as a result of their crappy semi-disposible printers must be shocking.

diegocg• 6 years ago

HP laser printers are good, their expensive stuff is good. It seems that most people buy the cheap ink ones, that's where most problems seem to come from (mine is certainly frustrating at times)

But one should also notice that HP seems to have a lead in the cheap ink printer market, so a lot of testimonies mention HP. I think the lesson is: don't buy cheap ink printers.

meerita• 6 years ago

I remember my first academia study delivered in the best paper, printed with my Inkjet Cannon printer, and later, with my laser Epson... my proffesors where drooling over it and i got the best puntuation because of the quality over the rest of the guys who used typewriters :S

brutuscat• 6 years ago

I would not want to endorse any company, but we've been using HP Instant Ink quite successfully since we knew the existed and we are really happy with how that resulted. It is actually pretty cheap for us, 3 EUR per month and we get 50 prints per month and these accumulate if you don't use them. They even send you the ink before you run out of it and they take the empty ones for you to recycle. Great value for the customer if u ask me!

jaimex2• 6 years ago

Best advice I can give anyone - buy yourself a used office laser printer. Those things never die. You'll probably never finish the cartridge and they print crazy fast.

MarkusWandel• 6 years ago

+2 for Brother laser printers. I have a HL2270DW (duplex wifi) and a DCP7040 (multifunction print/scan/copy, USB only). They cost me, respectively, $0 and $5 at garage sales. They have <$20 aftermarket toner cartridges in them and print flawlessly with these.

There are really two use cases for printers: Heavy, frequent use, and infrequent use. Laser printers excel at the latter because they use dry supplies. I've had laser printers that sat idle for a decade, toner and all, simply power up and print.

I couldn't get these Brother printers to work except by using Brother's Linux printer installer, which works perfectly, but alarmingly, is still 32-bit software which makes me wonder how much longer it'll work. Similarly, the scan feature of the multifunction machine will only work after Brother's installer is run (but then it works great - sheet feed duplex scanning (stack flip and second pass) with gscan2pdf).

Anyway so slight software concern aside, very happy with these printers. I don't think either of them has ever jammed in my use.

lmz• 6 years ago

The HL2270DW should be PCL compatible. Not sure about the DCP7040.

peterwwillis• 6 years ago

I really enjoyed my Epson multifunction inkjet, up until it just stopped printing, even with new ink cartridges. It died after only a couple years of extremely seldom use.

My favorite part? The software. It was very Japanese. Very ugly and very functional. Little jingles for everything. A ton of useful functions out of the box. First rate mobile support. It was so easy to use I'm honestly sad the POS printing part stopped working.

inshadows• 6 years ago

Theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9wsjroVlu8

traceroute662• 6 years ago

You want a real-life "why do printers still suck story" ? Try this one one for size.

Go out and buy yourself a Canon laser, one of the current LBP models.

Set an admin PIN/password.

Forget the password and try to recover it.

You'll find there is no recovery function. You'll find there is no factory-reset function. Your ONLY option is to call out a Canon service engineer at your own expense (or 'carry-in' the device to a Canon service centre and still be charged for the pleasure).

No, I'm not joking. I have this both verbally and in writing from Canon that they have no factory-reset because of "security reasons".

taspeotis• 6 years ago

Doesn’t Apple get plaudits for Activation Lock that prevents an iPhone being activated? Why is Canon bad for making things secure but not Apple? Do you own your phone any more or less than you own your printer?

krick• 6 years ago

What a terrible article. I clicked to learn why do printers suck, and ended up spending several minutes reading some absolutely non-informative ranting.

brnt• 6 years ago

Wherever you find embedded programmers, you find pain.

resters• 6 years ago

My advice on printers:

- only buy a laser printer, no ink-jet, etc.

- avoid all-in-one units that have scanners, fax, etc.

- choose one that supports internet printing and wifi, but also has an ethernet connection

patwolf• 6 years ago

As a kid we had an HP DeskJet Plus. It was built like a tank and cost close to $1000 (in 1989). It worked flawlessly for many years, and we only eventually upgraded to get color.

Part of me is nostalgic for the days when printers were built to last, but when I realize it cost the equivalent of $2000 today, I'm content with the cheap "disposable" printers they make now. $2000 would be enough for me to buy enough printers, paper, and ink to last my lifetime.

rejschaap• 6 years ago

A HP LaserJet from 2001 is still my main printer. It's a bit slow, but very reliable, cheap to run and has good quality prints. Many InkJets have come and gone in that time.

city41• 6 years ago

I also have an HP Laserjet and it works reliably. it's hooked up to a Raspberry Pi running CUPS so it even works for my phones and Linux desktop.

I'm not educated in printers at all, but anecdotally it seems most problems arise with ink printers.

bsenftner• 6 years ago

I gave up on their entire product category. I stopped buying printers 15 years ago and I urge everyone to stop also. When their fucking wallets are empty they'll fix their fucking shitty printers.

JoeAltmaier• 6 years ago

Got the ink subscription plan. Worked for a while. Lost the little bag to send cartridges back, but wait! you can order another on their web site. Got it, sent the spent cartridges back and ..... nothing. No more ink. Still paying, but not getting ink. Sigh. No button on the website to press that says "where the fuck is my ink?!"

varispeed• 6 years ago

I bought a Brother laser printer from a company that was upgrading their office equipment. I paid for it like £30. It is a colour printer. I have been enjoying it for like 6 years now and it still has plenty of toner left and no issues whatsoever. It feels like it can print infinite number of pages without any issue. I am truly amazed. When I compare it to the Canon and HP printers I had where I had to literally swap the ink every few pages and for Canon there was a moment where it was cheaper to buy a printer with ink included, than just the ink.

exabrial• 6 years ago

https://archive.is/gv0SZ

dangus• 6 years ago

Printers don’t still suck. You just have to spend proper money on one if you want it to be nice. Like every other consumer product.

My HP OfficeJet 9015 is fantastic. It’s fast, automatic duplex printing, automatic duplex scanning. Recognized by every wireless device I own (Windows 10, macOS, iOS) automatically with zero software installs. AirPrint is fantastic.

Yes, that’s a $200+ printer. Probably most people are going out and buying $50 all-in-one printers and complaining about how they suck. No shit!

And IMO the ink cartridges are priced reasonably enough. I could swear they didn’t used to be this cheap but I don’t have any kind of ink price index or anything.

2143• 6 years ago

Intrigued by the hugely favorable reviews for Brother printers. I like appliances (printer or otherwise) that just work. If I ever have to buy a printer again, I'll seriously consider Brother.

I currently use HP InkAdvantage 2135. Everyone at home uses Linux and it works flawlessly. Didn't have to particularly install anything for printing.

After reading the comments here, I'm starting to believe that we got lucky.

Here are the downsides of my HP:

1. You cannot print a lot of pages on a single cartridge. They claim just 480, but I would put the realistic number to below 400 pages. And the cartridges are NOT cheap.

2. No auto-duplex

3. No wireless connectivity option for this particular printer.

But I knew about 2 and 3 while making the purchase, so it's not really a downside.

However, considering that Brother printers are cheaper and paper yield is substantially higher, I feel that I should've bought that instead.

I'm secretly hoping my existing printer goes kaput :)

slezyr• 6 years ago

I still have a Canon Pixma iP3600 that I've bought 10 years ago and 3rd party refillable cartridges. It's cheap, plug'n'play setup, compact (relatively to the laser jet printers).

Yea, inks can run out. When they do I just use a syringe and refill them all in 20 min. However, laser cartridge can run out as well, what are you going to do with it? Buy new? Refill at the shop? Meh, I don't want to go to the shop. (If it works during these times)

People hate them, however, for tech savvy folks they're cheap and easy to maintain.

chkaloon• 6 years ago

It's not just printers. Windows' print spooler and drivers are still garbage after 25 years, since W95. Freezes, hard to tell if printing is actually happening, etc., etc., etc.

es7• 6 years ago

Do they still suck?

I have an HP inkjet printer from ~2010 that works great.

When I want to print from my phone or PC, it seems to just work. I can email a magic address from any other device and it also starts printing.

I order ink a few times a year (we print a lot) and it takes just moments to install. Maybe I'll buy a new laser printer at some point, but I haven't really seen the need.

chmaynard• 6 years ago

I seldom need to print anything, but when I do I email the document to my local Staples. They are cheap, fast, and reliable. I suspect most people could get rid of their printers and do the same thing.

Noxmiles• 6 years ago

Why are there no real open source hardware printers? Some parts should be similar to 3d printers, probably the print head (for ink) or toner roll/drum (for laser) will be quite difficult. I saw some tries on hackaday etc, but no real printer with 100% open source & open hardware.

Does anyone know a project building that?

samth• 6 years ago

Sadly this article doesn't actually answer the question, but there was a great New Yorker article in 2018 that did: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/why-paper-jams...

Why do printers still suck?

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