Why do all home/casual use printers suck? Endless error messages,

>>55633390
get a brother

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>using a printer

>>55633401
Are they above normal printer-company antics like re-coding their cartridges so you have to buy new ones all the time?

>>55633390
HP is quite literally the worst when it comes to consumer-grade printers. Their business-grades are alright, but right off the bat, I have an HP sitting right next to me--$25, cartridge lasted less than half a year, with barely 2-3 dozen print jobs. Go to get a replacement cartridge--it's more than the fucking printer.

>>55633403
pretty much

>>55633431
My biology teacher in high school just cut open the things and used a syringe to refill them. There are tutorials online, according to him.

>>55633390

It's all because of a shit marketing idea to sell printers at a loss and make profit on cartridges

Now they are all forced to sell printers at a loss or else nobody buys their printer because people will always will buy the cheapest one

So in order to make any money, they are stuck with jewing the customer out of every last shekel through dubious means such as price gouging on ink cartridges

>>55633390
I buy HP color laser printers then sell them when they run out of toner because its literally cheaper to buy the same printer again than buying 3x$80 toner cartridges

>>55633429

I often hear people picturing them as the most "honest" brand of printers. No personal experience though.

>>55633514
>>55633431
So what's the solution? I've had HP printers that lasted me years, but this was about a decade ago.

One anon recommended Brothers brand, I'm currently checking them out. Surely there's ONE god-like company that's raining quality from on-high.

>>55633390

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00LUH8UHC

Buy this, never touch Inkjet again, they are all utter garbo.

>>55633542

No delivery to the US
:(

>>55633401
>>55633540
>>55633542

Brother laser masterrace

Once you go laser, you never go back

>>55633565
Then order it from Amazon.(yourTLD) then retard.

>>55633542
I'm liking what I'm seeing. But as I said I need an all-in-one. Unless I'm totally blind, your recommendation is just a document printer.

Still, many thanks for turning me onto this brand.

>>55633390
Ever since I use laser printers I never had any problems whatsoever. Inkjets on the other hand really are pieces of shit and should be banned from this world. It's bad enough that every once in a while some cunt gives me a report printed with an inkjet. I hate reading those blurry, pale prints.

>ink cartridges

If you get a printer that uses ink you're making a big mistake.
I even have a HP laser that actually works. Like it actually works, when I want it to.

It looks like brothers brand doesn't have a color, laser, all-in-one.

>>55633740
I'll look into other brands now too. Seems like laser is the way to go for sure.

Basically what everyone in this thread is already saying - get a laser. I have an HP 1319 MFP. I have a cheap USB/ethernet print server hooked up to it. Works like a champ.

So if you want color, integrated network, whatever - just find a printer within your budget and read the reviews on it.

If ours ever dies, I'll prob go color and integrated network. But never ever back to inkjet.

>>55633799
>HP 1319 MFP

Why are color laser printers uncommon? Seems like the vast majority only do b&w

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>>55633576
>>55633759
I use a Brother black-and-white laser printer. No scanning or anything, just printing.

It's without a doubt the best printer I've ever had.

pic related

>>55633834
This here looks legit: https://www.amazon.com/HP-LaserJet-M277dw-Wireless-Printer/dp/B00TVACKEE/ref=sr_1_6?s=office-electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1468856845&sr=1-6&keywords=laser+printer+all+in+one

Color laser printer, that copies and scans. Hits all the bases.

>>55633540
just like with thinkpad laptops, you need to go business class

It seems like you will be paying more for less features, but in reality you are paying for components that aren't designed to break 2 weeks after the warranty ends

>>55634007
This. Consumer grade electronics are shit because they know they can shovel shit on the customer and they won't be losing out on huge bulk orders from them. You can't do that in a large contract job.

>>55633429
The printer will throw a warning to replace the toner, even though it has a few hundred pages left, BUT you can just go in the menu and disable the warning to keep printing. No hacks like covering up sensors or that bullshit.

You can also buy cheap 3rd party toners for them. The ones I get from newegg are just as good as the authentic ones.

>>55634087
I had a bad experience with Brother printers--I specifically bought a couple because they were advertised as Google Cloud Print compatible (I run an ssh lab with chromebook clients). Despite the run around the printers were never able to connect to cloud print and it was a widely acknowledged problem that Brother was unable or unwilling to fix via updates.

>>55633390
Got a refurbished Epson DX4050 (model might not be exact) from my very first job after high school, after 8 years is still printing great without issues. Don't have much experience with Brother or HP but when they started becoming "smart" that's when everything went downhill

>>55633429

I have a Brother MFC-255CW, my wife has a Brother Laser Printer (not sure of the model) and my office uses nothing but Brother printers, which is why we have them.

They really are good printers, from personal experience with my MFC-255, I bought two sets of cheap ink cartridges about 4 years ago for about $10 USD a set (set includes Black, Yellow, Magenta, and Cyan). I just put the second black in from the set last week. Admittedly, we don't print often, but in the last 4 years, I can't recall a single issue that has occured due to any fault of it's own.

Thanks for the input guys. Learned a lot. I'm buying this for my mom, who wanted to spend around $100. Obviously that isn't gonna happen. But I found this:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2493671,00.asp

Laser, color, and all-in-one, for $250.
Anyone recommend any other laser, color, all-in-ones around the same price point or cheaper?

These look pretty close: https://www.amazon.com/Brother-HL-3170CDW-Wireless-Networking-Replenishment/dp/B00BQU141C?ie=UTF8&SubscriptionId=AKIAICE7LOAJMK3SSLPA&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00BQU141C&linkCode=xm2&psc=1&tag=pcm_contextual-20
and
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2380228,00.asp

>>55634007
>just like with thinkpad laptops

And most laptops in general. HP's business laptops are so much better than the consumer crap.

>>55634145
Shit I'm retarded, those aren't all-in-ones.

>>55633759
They do, but all laser colour is incredibly expensive. If you need colour printing, go to a print shop and get it done properly. Otherwise just go B/W

>>55634224
Yeah that's what I'm quickly learning. Or town library, 10 cents a page and perfectly acceptable other than photos.

>>55634285
>10c/page for color
Fuck. Mine charges 25c/page

>>55633542
Shame it doesn't have a wired network port. The equivalent wired one seems to be, like, twice the price.

>>55634351

I have the wired version of it, It was about £5 cheaper back when I bought it.

>>55634087
older ones forced you cover up the sensor
they're not that bad, but I gave my old Brother HL2150N to my dad when I got a refurbished samsung ML-2851ND many years ago
because fuck not having automatic duplex printing..

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I have one of these from dumpster diving behind a school. I don't think they were even supposed to throw this away?

The black toner was half depleted but the rest was full. Costs about a thousand dollars to replace the cartridges so I'll just throw away the printer when I use it all, which I suspect will be in five years based on how much I print.

Though, you can get a set of bootleg cartridges on amazon for about 200 dollars. They last about 3/4 as long and the quality is supposedly 70% of the original. But any pictures I print are so pristine anyway, I'd almost be okay with a 30% loss in quality.

>>55633466
Not anymore, most cartridges have a chip that records how much ink has been used so you have to know how to replace that too.

never had those problems
already added CIS

>>55636070
there are several shops where you can get a refill for like 5$. HP saves the ID of the last few cartridges, so you just get another one in the shop and since its ID is "new" to your printer it doesnt act up.

>>55633390
Brother

With a Continuous ink system from aliexpress

>>55636070
you can get chip resetters and cartridges designed to be refilled

> planned obsoleteness, breaking quickly,

No, you just bought a shitty $30 printer

Brother 4150CDN reporting in
Color laser masterrace

I have an Epson Work Force printer. I've never had issues with it. It doesn't seem to blow through ink as fast as my old Canon Pixma. Epson also provides Linux drivers on their website which is nice. If you just need black and white printing, Brother makes some nice cheap laser printers. Next time, do a little research before you buy the first thing on sale.

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like the other anons said, don't buy a fucking inkjet piece of shit, laserprinters are the way to go. a friend of mine gave me pic related for free. it's an office printer, so it was abused as hell before I got it, so I had to glue the whole thing back together. but aside from that it has been performing perfectly for more than two years now, and on the same fucking cartridge that came with it.
oh yeah, i also got zapped a couple of times touching the usb cable. apparantly there is a 30V AC load on the outer metal part of the usb port when the printer isn't turned on. needless to say i only connect it to my pc when i need to print.

>>55633390
cheap shit with lots of moving parts is going to fail on you

my printer sucks, but I barely need to print anything
anytime I really, truly need to do a lot of printing, I'll take it down to the print shop

>>55633431
However they're the only printers that are plug-and-play on Linux.

HP lasers are bretty gud, even if they need a proprietary plugin to work with HPLIP.

>>55633401
This

>>55633528
remember:
>cheap printer - expensive cartridges
>expensive printer - cheap cartridges

>>55639587
>there is a 30V AC load on the outer metal part of the usb port
u wot m8

>>55639683
exactly

>>55633528
>I buy HP color laser printers then sell them when they run out of toner because its literally cheaper to buy the same printer again than buying 3x$80 toner cartridges

No it isn't.

Because the toner that comes with the printer are only "DEMO" cartridges.
I think mine were only like 5% the capacity of a proper cartridge.

Also, you don't have to buy HP cartridges.
Just stop being a cuck and buy cheap 3rd party alternatives.

>>55639255
>>55639400
>>55634145
>>55633842
>>55633401
>>55633576
>brother
enjoy having to replace the image drum unit every 12000 prints

>>55636019
We had several redundant printers at my last job, due to downsizing of the company.
Couple of years old, but hardly used and perfect working condition with full toners.

Tried to sell them online - no takers.
Tried to give them away for free - no takers.
I would have taken one myself, but they were so large and my apartment is tiny.

Eventually one colleague took one for his sister, who had her own company.
The rest we threw in the dumpster, which pained me.

People just don't want large stuff, even if it is expensive.

>>55633401
/thread
Every brother that I have use that wasn't a bargain bin version has worked well.
They even release plenty of driver support for Linux with support for multiple distros and a very simple installer.

>>55639955
>They even release plenty of driver support for Linux with support for multiple distros

Then why did I spend hours fucking around in CUPS and still only have basic functionality?

>>55640071
Are you using ArchLinux?
My debian machine has nearly the same level of support as windows with a one-click installer.

>>55640085
>Are you using ArchLinux?

Yes.
It's a constant pain desu.

>>55640170
>ArchLinux
You should be using a debian based print server instead of doing it natively. Even if it's just a virtual machine.

>>55640196
I should just be dumping Arch.
Just too lazy to re-install everything.

>>55633390
All-in-one is shit. Buy a separate fucking scanner. Brother workgroup series mono laser should be $100 or less and is the best option for home use. As for a scanner, get a Fujitsu ScanSnap S500 or S1500 - they're on eBay for $120-$200 right now.

>>55639632
My Brother HL-2170W was plug and play on Linux, even on the network.

>>55633390
Get an HP if you need Linux drivers.
Get a brother if you need it to work forever.

>>55640530
Brother MFC-J6920DW are amazing multifunction machines.
Yes they're inkjet, but by god do they work, and they work perfectly after months of sitting there doing nothing.
The scanner is huge, and looks great as well.

>>55640578
All-in-one is always a compromise. You won't ever get the value for your money compared to separate components.

Also inkjet = trash. Look at the most helpful 5 star amazon review for your printer:

"[...]print-head started missing a lot of lines on the black ink, so I changed the cartridge. There was no improvement, so I made many attempts to run the head cleaning steps.
That made things worse and then it started missing lines on all colors big time. Some were missing almost all the dots in the test print pattern. After days of trying to fix this,
I was tempted to simply give up and buy a new printer once again! But since I now am retired and don't use it for my business, I gave it another try. I ordered this cleaning kit
from Amazon/Printhead Hospital: <link removed>
It took many, many repetitions of the procedure before the test print was almost perfect (only one dot missing). At that point I said "close enough" and stopped. That was two
months ago and it is still printing fine."

>>55640665
>print-head started missing a lot of lines on the black ink
Sounds like head alignment to me. The guy is retarded.

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>>55640703
What if I told you there was a printing technology that never required head alignment nor nozzle cleaning.

>>55640806
What if I told you I was printing images onto photo paper?
What if I told you that I have only ever had to do head alignment once in 5 years, and that my printer has never needed nozzle cleaning?
>MFC-J6910DW

>>55640830
>printing images
>photo paper
I'd say it sounds like you're a printer nerd and you're doing some niche bullshit.

>>55640873
>printer nerd
Sometimes you just need to get the colours right man.

>>55633390
OP I have that exact printer and its been going strong for 4 years now. The only problem I run into with it seems to be the print heads need to be cleaned every 2 months but other than that its a fairly decent printer.

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I have a HP F4185 selfmodded with external ink tanks. It's about 9 years old, hassle free operation for almost a decade.

8.76 USD per liter of ink.

HP 22 which is a 6.0ml color cart is rated for 160 pages, That's 26,666 pages per liter of ink.

HP 21 is a 7.0ml black cart is rated for 190 pages, 27,142 pages.

I mainly print color with occasional black n white copying, ink is much more suited for what I use my printer for, also no warmups from a cold start, no smell of cancer toner either.

Looking to upgrade to a Brother A3 AIO in the future though because they support supersize carts.

why are there so many lasercucks in this thread

inkjets have way better print quality

>>55639926
lol okay then friendo

Got myself a Samsung ML2165 Laser printer for about 30€ three years ago. Still working fine, needs under heavy use by three people yearly new toner, which comes in at about 20€ a pop

>>55644367
Noone gives a fuck about quality if it hardly works.

>got Cannon ip4500
>recommended to me by some faggot on anandtech around 2007-2008
>it is the only piece of tech ive ever wanted to physically destroy in anger

After many years of suffering replaced it with a brother laser and never looked back. Cunt on anandtech trolled me good.

>>55644367
>inkjets have way better print quality
in what world?

>>55639926
Nigger if it can go 12000 prints without an error I consider that a win.

>>55633401
inkjet brother. had to replace print head after six months. good thing it was still under warranty. still pretty sucked

>>55644367
>laserbeams are thinner than an inkjet nozzle could ever be
>"inkjets have way better quality"

go away ink jew

>>55633390

Few reasons:

Printing, even for as long as its been around, is an incredibly, stupidly, complex idea. Literally, think about it. You're asking your PC/Printer to take a package of data, which you or I see as an image/text document/whatever on the screen, and turn it into instructions for a series of rollers, microscopic nozzles, and pulleys to follow to reproduce what you see. It's not a type-writer. It can't just actuate a single arm to give us a letter, no. It has to activate microscopic nozzles on the print head to spray a certain pattern onto the page, at a certain point on the page, which it best guesses from where the page came in at. It doesn't use a Pen. It can't just move 2 arms to replicate a drawing someone did before like an Autopen. It has to break down that drawing into parts, decode the color data, and tell the print head as the rollers/pulleys move, where to spray ink on the paper, what color combination to spray, and how much to spray for, to give us a tiny little part of our image. They're absolutely mind boggling complex, really. And that's a "simple" inkjet printer.

All these moving parts, pressurized ink systems, sensors, nozzles, electronics, body panels, and more, have to fit together and work to be sold for $40 in a box at Walmart. That is why cheap printers suck.

Yes, "expensive" ones suck too. Mostly because they use similar/identical systems to the cheap ones to simplify the supply chain/construction process. Get yourself one that is genuinely different and unique and never sells for cheap. Those are the ones worth having.

>>55633431
I love my HP, always bought them. I tried an Epson InkJet and Brother Laser, and brought them both back, and went right back to HP.

Ya, the ink situation for colors sucks, but it's the same with any brand of inkjet printer.

Also, when you say your inks only lasted a few dozen print jobs, were those print jobs a bunch of color rich prints, or just black and whites? So many people think their inks will last forever when printing a shit ton of pictures.

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>>55647305
Or....
...you just get a laser printer.