Not gonna lie, I learned most of my problems with printers are just actually windows problems. Mac and Linux have no such issues.
That and people buying inkjets and then printing one or two pages a year so the ink dries out and you need a full set of cartridges that cost 3/4 the price of the printer. Most home users should just get a mono laser and send color to Kinko’s or whatever is closer.
Or buy a used color laser today, and have it forever.
But yea, most people should have a small monochrome laser. They “just work” and never dry out.
I have a 1996 Lexmark that still works with an occasional paper feed issue.
It’s all the extra bullshit software they pack with it. Meanwhile Linux is just like here’s the driver so you can just print. Ofc you can download just the driver on Windows, but they sure make them harder to find.
The Windows print spooler is a portal to hell.
Um, I’ve been using Macs exclusively for over ten years. I will never buy Canon or HP ever again.
Thing is, we have a Brother and the issues are only on windows.
It’s driver issues. Printers are such a hellscape of proprietary shit that even Bill Gates is afraid of them
Which is weird cause at the backend, printing is basically the same as converting to PDF and sending that file to the printer.
If a printer can’t run with a generic driver that was developed in the 80s, it’s cause the manufacturer explicitly removed that functionality.
Depends on the printer.
My 1996 Lexmark laser works flawlessly on Windows (connected via Centronix to USB adapter and shared by Windows server), while my 2012 HP consumer laser sometimes likes to just not print though it shows online and available.
Then my 2016 Canon Color just works, every time.
Clearly it’s not just a Windows thing (that’s it’s own shitshow, dammit).
inkjet printers clog if not used for a while, laser printers don’t have that issue
It’s sad when 3D printers literally cause fewer problems than inkjets. I have to “fix” my parents’ printer every time I go home.
I got a Brother laser printer like a decade and a half ago, and it was one of my best purchases in terms of saving me mental energy. It just…works, like 95% of devices I plug into my PC. As easy as a mouse. It had some software with it that I never installed, and I’ve replaced my computer like 3 or 4 times since then. No issues. The only maintenance was replacing the toner every few years, although I rarely print stuff now and it’s been like 6 years since I did, yet the printer still works great.
That being said, I’ve heard that newer Brother printers are going down an enshittification path, which is sad in case I ever need to replace it. Maybe I should buy a spare older one now.
I got brother color a laser printer a little over a year ago. My wife is a teacher and prints around 4 cases a year. I got it because it has a duplex scanner (both sides of the paper in one pass) for my business. It’s awesome for invoices etc.
So far it’s worked very well. It complains a bit when I put the non-OEM toner cartridges into it but it works.
In the grand scheme of things given how much we use it, it’s pretty cheap.
A color printer would be nice, but I probably can’t justify it when 99% of what I print is B&W. I can duplex, but it sucks the paper back in, which is fine for personal use. I can imagine that being slow for constant printing.
But good to know that Brother’s still going strong! I’ve only used OEM toner, but that’s mainly because I rarely change it. But toner’s still way cheaper than HP ink. Maybe the enshittification thing I heard was overblown. I can’t believe something on the Internet was wrong! :0
the only piece of tech
Sir, have you used Microsoft Teams?
I can’t remember ever using it.
*eye twitchesOr any Microsoft product
I need to share that using my ancient HP LaserJet today was awesome. Stupid simple thing didn’t have w10 drivers on their site, but some from Vista x64 (?) just worked. What’s with the joy, you may ask. Well,
- when I failed to provide it with enough paper, I added some, pressed cancel for it to reevaluate things, and then it continued to print, no system dialogs or whatever;
- when I pushed a botched print job onto it, repeatedly pushing the same cancel button just, well, canceled said job - no errors, no dialogs, no asks to restart like before, it disappeared from the queue, so the fixed one started immidiately after I pushed it.
It acts like a tool. Not like newest HPs I’m fed up with, just a reliable machine that doesn’t think for it’s user or nudge you to fix toner issues. These are basics, natural things to expect. But for some godfucking reason it is a treasure to come by.
I dread the day it may eventually die.
This is a new level of tech illiteracy.
I bought a $400 toner printer like a small office has and I’ve never been happier with my printing experience. $100 printers are slop to extract ink money out of you. $100 barely pays for 10 hamburgers. You need to spend more on a printer (if you can of course, etc).
