[System32] No but like for real

Love my Brother black and white laser printer.

It is important to point out that it isn't the brand that makes it good, it is the fact that it is laser.
I used to have a Brother "multi function center" printer/scanner/photocopier/fax that used inkjet and it was pure asshole design. Wasting expensive ink just by remaining plugged in and refusing to do anything if one cartridge was low on ink (but was actually still half full)
But if I had to single out a brand that should absolutely be avoided for printers it is HP. They do asshole DRM to a whole new level. They bricked a brand new ink cartridge because I didn't put it in properly at first.
Now I have a laser printer and the nightmare is finally over.
- With my old brother inkjet, it would say it was out of ink in like 2 weeks because it used an optical sensor on the printer looking through a window on the ink cartridge at aimed at a floating piece of black plastic in the tank that would drop when the ink level went down.
  The thing is, the sponge in the cartridge would soak up the ink and cause the floater to drop when there was still like 90% of the ink left.
  So the key was to just put some black electrical tape over the window on the cartridge and keep using it until it actually stopped printing that color.
- I have a Canon laserjet that absolutely sucks and a Brother inkjet that works great. Both were about the same price (the Brother can do 11x17) and were top recommendations from a bunch of sources. Unfortunately I think buying a printer at this point is just a crapshoot of whether it'll actually be good.
- FYI, Brother seem to be acting a little shady in the last couple of years.
- All inkjet printers have to waste ink when they are not in use. Otherwise the ink in the print head dries out and clogs it up. Inkjet printers are the worst possible choice for infrequent use.
- Nah. Brother inkjets were the inky ones that didn't require chips on the inktanks. Don't know how it is nowadays but they were the only company that didn't make everything shitty.
  We now have a brother color laser and it's a godsend.
- Printer must have kept seeing the cartridge as half empty.
- As a rule, lasers make everything better.
Mate, they sold you a printer that prints white?
- Had to pay twice as much for two colors but it was worth it!
- Well, if it would only print black, you could not see the text!
I’m convinced this is the only good printer in existence. They are an absolute workhorse.
yup. If I need color I can make sure it looks good in black and white and then head to the library and print it out. Its so rarely necessary but love the hassel free nature of the laser. Real question is how long it will take me to get through the starter cartridge. May end up being the same as the comic with as how often I print. Man though its great to have it work right away with no pre print clean out of such needed.
- Buy third-party toner, it's cheap.
Did they walk back their recent less than well liked choice to get into the same pool as HP? They were my go-to recommendation for the longest time.
- Not sure, mine is several years old now.
Ate ink, ate cartridge, ate HP, luv me laser, luv me brother, luv me black and white, simple as

Disregard inkjet printers

Acquire laser printer

Brother used to be the go-to but there was a post a week or so ago showing how they are starting to hold laser toner hostage.
I replaced my HP inkjet with a Brother laser a little over a year ago and seems to be going okay. Though I'm hesitant to let it update firmware.
Yup
I think the most under appreciated aspect is that ink can dry out just from sitting around. A lot of the time and “empty” ink cartridge just evaporated off its solvents
Toner lasts forever. Perfect for occasional use
Absolutely. I had multiple inkjet printer between 2000-2012, smearing, drying, expensive, etc. In 2012 I bought a laser colour wireless, (Samsung CPL-365W) this thing was fantastic, worked with windows, linux etc. Finally in 2024 the fuser died or something...
Yeah I've been using an HP laser for a decade, get knockoff ink from some random website that probably steals my info, but whatever, who isn't stealing my info these days, it's got almost zero value at this point. Only issues are when it's just needs to be restarted to work sometimes and I have to walk down to the basement to do it. Need to put it on a smart plug so I can just do it from my phone. Then I need a trained monkey to bring me my prints.
I quite like my ancient inkjet HP. Keeps printing with "empty" cartridge just fine, and the bottle of ink from AliExpress lasts a long time even if drenching paper with dark mode documents.
I paid 71 cents on sale for 500ml of ink, though it's otherwise around 20 bucks. Still worth it.
Now, there may just be one problem for most, it doesn't work with Windows anymore. HP website doesn't provide drivers saying they get automatically installed by Windows. Windows says it can't find drivers and to use manufacturer's website.
But it works with HPLIP on Linux.
Oh, and 1 more thing. There's a high DPI mode that can almost match laser in sharpness. But, it takes 20 minutes per page. Yes, not a typo.

I will throw this idea into the ether and hope someone with more time, knowledge, and talent than me builds on it: swap the brains of an HP Printer with a raspberry pi. All the motors and wiring are in place, and HP sells the printer for cheap to screw you on ink and software. You'd probably want a new source of ink and a way to refill the cartridges to fully cut out HP. I feel like this would get you pretty close at an affordable price.

The whole world wants the Linux version of a printer, we just need a couple people to get together and figure this out.

The Linux version of a printer is just buy a brother color laser (or non color). I bought one for 85 bucks like 15 years ago and it still chugging along
- Please tell me more about this brother laser thingy and why it is a good alternative
- Bought a Brother during the pandemic when they were hard to get. I shelled out $500 on an office machine and I've spent probably $100 in 3rd party toner in 5 years. No regrets.
Ohh God ... That's a very, very tall order.
You wouldn't think that it's that complicated. I worked in a print-on-demand house for about 5 years, The amount of black magic fuckery that goes on between streaming data into that driver and getting stuff on the page is absolutely insane.
You're standing on the backs of like 40 years of trade secrets and poorly implemented protocols at half-assed feature sets.
And then the worst part is, HP is spent the last 20 years making the printer cheaper. Most of the inkjets don't even have steppers anymore, just DC motors and a resistive feedback ribbon.
Developing a multi-platform certified signed driver would be a pretty decent hurdle as well.
Can't we just stop printing? Change things over to black and white thermal when we really need something that's pretty easy to do.
I would love to make a living lobotomizing smart devices.
Someone could probably do this. But it would just be a fun project, not replicable.
You'd need to write your own printer driver. There are probably some open source libraries out there to do most of the heavy lifting, but it's still a project.
The big issue is going to be the interface between the pi and the printer's "motors and wiring". Doable, but too finicky to publish a "kit" or something for someone else to replicate. It could be worth the work if it would help other people, but I don't think that's on the table.
Honestly, I think anyone with the ability to do that would probably find it easier to just build their own printer.
"The motor was unable to verify activation. Please contact HP support"
Inkjet cartridges are only refillable a handful of times before components wear out if you don't screw up the refill in the first place. I used to work at an ink refill franchise, it's all trash.
A decent toner printer and a small business that will refill toner for cheap is the way to go.

Fuck you, HP

Governments need to sue more companies for the environmental and resource damage they do with irresponsible business models like this. Get that money Mr. Government. It's laying on the floor for you to pick up.

They do get that money. They are called bribes ... err, I mean ... It is called lobbying.

Goes through and upvotes all the comments about getting a Brother laser printer

If you need an ink jet, I can also recommend the Epson L3260 ink tank. You pay a bit more for the printer but the ink is fairly reasonable.
Mostly true, but a few months ago there was some reports of an automatic firmware update that blocked 3rd party ink or toner. It was probably my fault since I just bought a Brother and this sort of thing always seems to happen to me.
This reminds me, I need to learn how to partition my network to keep thebprinter from reaching the internet.

Also note that printers come with a smaller cartridge. Buying another printer isn't cheaper, even if it costs less.

This is true, and yet somehow when I buy the "XL" sized cartridges they don't feel like they lasted much longer than the "S" size that came with it.
it is if you only print rarely
- The key is to buy a brother laser printer
  It’s black and white but most people rarely have a need for color. Meanwhile, the toner doesn’t dry out like an inkjet printer will
  You buy that one $150 inkjet printer and you’re set.

Pro life tip.

Buy a printer that accepts off-brand cartridges.
Buy off-brand cartridges in bulk for further discounts (I buy 12-packs of 'Hicorch' cartridges for my Epson Stylus)
Relax never having to worry about running out of ink.

1. Don't update the printer that might put DRM in after the fact.
- Keep it far away from the internet.
  Now for an idea time. Printer with WiFi that auto-connects to unsecured networks (read "public") to install updates for user's convenience. Or, the drivers could proxy host's connection. Or, download the update to host in advance, then auto-update by pushing to the printer when connected, even offline. Or, build an LTE modem into the printer.
1. don't buy an inkjet printer
- Ink is for chumps. Real chads buy toner.
Better pro-life tip.
1)Buy a laser printer instead of inkjet and never worry about ink again.
That's it. That's the only step.
Or an ink tank printer. Way cheaper.
Pro life tip.
~~1) Buy a printer that accepts off-brand cartridges.~~ ~~2) Buy off-brand cartridges in bulk for further discounts (I buy 12-packs of 'Hicorch' cartridges for my Epson Stylus)~~ ~~3) Relax never having to worry about running out of ink.~~
1. Buy a ink tank printer

My advice, since as others have said inkjets are trash: If you only need to print something every so often, use your local library. Easier if you live close to one, and still a hassle loading it on a thumb drive, but to me it’s easier than having a printer taking up space in my home.

And if you want to print photos, get it done at a lab. It'll cost more or less the same or even be cheaper, and come out much better.
- When you say "a lab," what are you referring to? Do you mean shops that provide photo printing, or somewhere more dedicated to photography specifically?
  I like to scrapbook, but I don't know anywhere that only prints photos. The photo lab at CVS can suffice for a lot of things, but if there is a better option, I'd value advice about it!
I've been doing this for over a decade now. I don't use a thumbdrive though, I just email myself the thing I need to print. Go to library computer, log in to email, print right from there. Each page is 10 cents at my local branch.
Also, a lot of libraries will provide you with a "guest pass" so you can use the computers even if you don't have a library card. 10/10 highly recommended.

Another way they get you: the ink cartridges that come with new printers are often only half full.

half full is a very optimistic view. I've taken apart HP cartridges that were defective at my last job, the starter cartridges are maybe 1/8 to a fourth of the container when being generous, the instructions back when they used to have paper instructions would say there is only enough ink in the printer for about 10 pages worth
- Keep in mind pages talks about 5% coverage, too.
Way less than that. They put demo cartridges that are like 1/8 normal capacity, so you get a few pages and then gotta cough up.

Or you can buy a safety razor and a 100 pack of blades and never have to think about razors again for the rest of your life.
Shaving is one of the most basic of human grooming techniques going back hundreds of years, we figured that shit out ages ago. Ignore Gillette's marketing, ignore BIC's "cheap" prices. Just get a no-name safety razor and some blades and you'll be sorted for the rest of your life. You don't need fancy shaving creams either, lather up some soap and rub it all over your face. Done. Easy. Cheap. Sustainable. Now you can use your time on picking your nose or playing video games or whatever you wanna do for fun!
- This will cost like $30 and you might not need to buy blades for years and years.
- I went a different route and just didn't shave for six years, then chopped it off in one go with an electric razor.
  When I did leave the house and worried about being presentable, I did enjoy a safety razor. I also had good luck with a shavette. Never got a really good shave with a straight razor, but I did both damage my (cheap) sink and sport a stylish but gnarly cut for a few days. That is, of course, a skill issue rather than tool issue.

I have to press "keep on printing" on my printer for months now and every print is fine. This is just disgusting.

I had to print maybe 3 times in the last 10 years and just used one of those coin operated printer things. Does anyone still print that much to justify owning a printer?

Yes. But I use a cheap Brother laser printer.

Move over shockedpikachu.jpg

Living in Japan and being able to walk a block over to the convenience store when I need to print something every few months is the greatest daily life I've ever had with a printer.

This came in handy for me, I dropped my phone there last time I was there on holiday, my screen shattered and I couldn't get a QR code to scan, luckily the staff at the combini helped me print it out, god knows what they thought seeing a panicked Scotsman trying to translate through Google 😄

it used to be that way... then they came up with 'starter' consumables with a fraction of the useful ink/toner inside.

Anyone ever tried to assemble a compute cluster from these?

Yep. Can anyone explain why this is?

Basically the business model is that if they can sell you a cheap printer at a loss, you won't consider a less cheap model from a company that isn't as shitty. Then they can lock you into years of buying their ink, which is overpriced deliberately.
Last I checked, if you need an inkjet printer, get a Brother or an Epson. All the rest will rip you off in various ways.
Even better, get a laser printer if you can afford it (or don't mind forgoing colour with a b&w model). For these, the above two brands, plus Ricoh, Xerox & Canon have a pretty good reputation last I looked into it
Never ever buy HP anything
- On top of this, the starter cartridges that come with the printer are often sized smaller than the refills.
- I am onboard with the Canon lasers. I got a color mfp/scanner. Off brand toner is less than half the price, and even the Canon toner is less than other brands.
- Also, seriously consider if a library might be a better choice than owning a printer for your use case
- A caveat to the HP thing, they split off their enterprise hardware division years ago, and it's actually a decent company.
Unregulted corporate greed
Because printer manufactures are money grubbing bastards.
The amount of ink that comes with an inkjet printer is tiny. So a new printer comes with 10mL of ink, and the refills are 35mL or more. You quite literally get what you pay for.
The other reason is that inkjet printers need to be used on a regular basis, or the ink can dry out. But manufacturers have handled this by having the printer drip out tiny bits of ink all the time, so it's literally using the ink even when you aren't using it.
For the vast majority of people, a cheap laser printer is the far better option. Unless you want to produce art prints, but at that point you're looking at spending a ton of money anyways.

After I bought a bunch of inkjet printers and figured out ink tank modifications ..... I finally just bought a good Canon Inkjet Printer.

After ten years of messing around with these dumb printers for about ten years my inkjet printer has been working fine for the past ten years and I've only ever changed the toner once and never had any problems.

Everyone keeps raving about ink tank but I feel I need to specify, don't buy this style if you don't print at least once every few weeks, the lines will clog and it's a royal pain in the ass trying to remove a clog on these styles!
They look amazing if you do a lot of artists stuff and you use it frequently but if you're the college student or someone that may have to print out a report every other month or something like that, you are far better off going with a laser Printer. Less headache for similar pricing
note: this isn't a diss on the person I'm replying to, I acknowledge that tank printers are amazing at what they're good at, I've just had so many people bring me their ink tanks because they're clogged because they only use them maybe once every other month stating that the reason they went with the printer in the first place because it was supposed to not have the penalties that standard inkjets had, so I feel the need to clarify
- No offence taken ... the last time I used those dumb tanks, or off brand cheap inkjet replacements (I still have a stack of them in my basement in sealed packages) was over ten years ago. I don't remember how or what I did back then ... all I remember is that it was all a constant pain because every time I found a solution, the companies figured out ways to break any set up and then people would start with something new again.
  And all I ever wanted to do was print black and white documents anyway. It was always a pain in the ass to try to print a black and white page and my printer would complain that it needed CYAN! ... the comic and jokes about that is real ... you couldn't print unless all the colours were there.
  I got so mad about it all I went and bought a $300 laser printer and have never had problems since. Once this printer goes, I won't mind spending $500 on another laser printer because I will never invest in an inkjet printer for my home office.
??
You said "ten years" so many times in one sentence that I'm honestly unclear on how much time passed.
- It was a time loop ... it could have been ten years, maybe more, maybe a hundred years .... I don't know

LOL, but what about ecotank technology?

Get an ecotank printer

I have am epson ecotank and they actually make money on the printer instead of the ink, you fill the ink into tanks on the printer

They some other cool uses too:
Applied Science Photochemical Machining

Why is it the cyan that's low in the comic? It's always fucking yellow that they scream about.

If I recall correctly it always screams about yellow because many printers print microscopic dots that make a code allowing law enforcement to ID the printer

I have bought a "starter" cartridge inkjet, a "premium“ AIO inkjet, and (supposedly) one-of-the-better-ones monochrome laserjet. All of them gave me nothing but grief. I used to think this was an accepted loss with the entire printing landscape, that it's a problem of the domain itself.

Turns out it was because I had always bought HP.

The last final printer I bought is a Brother inktank. It is not without its quirks, granted, yet I have never felt so easy.

God knows how much of a grief stricken, pain inducing, blood boiling, poisoned my life was– because HP. Once I switched to a different vendor, a burden of sorts was lifted.

i have had a total of 5-6 products in my lifetime from HP, and I'm pretty sure each one has easily taken out years from my life expectancy.

I have done this before!!!