Who the hell can afford a printer

I think, for me, owning a printer is like owning a van. You're the only person your friends know who has one, so every time someone needs it you're the one they ask.

Joke's on you; I have no friends.
Except for my wife and kids almost nobody knows I have one. But yes I have gotten pdfs from my mother in law to print.

I bought a Brother printer and an extra large toner cartridge a dozen years ago and it just sits there and prints things without any problems from any device on my WiFi.

So invent a time machine and get a Brother from ten years ago is my advice.

Same. After years of replacing ink in the hp to do one print job, then letting it sit and dry out until it was time again. But now I've had that brother for a decade on the same toner

"Xennials are the micro-generation of people on the cusp of the Generation X and Millennial demographic cohorts.

Many researchers and popular media use birth years from 1977 to 1983,[1] though some extend this further in either direction"

never heard of these.

We are the elder millenials, who know how to defragment a hard drive.
- I'm a bit older than the minimum age to be a millenial and have defragmented many drives. when I was like 6 but I still remember watching that stupid coloured blocks diagram for hours for some 20mb or something
- We who have set dip switches or jumpers for an irq address on a sound blaster.
- We could whistle into a phone and get a modem to try to talk to us.
- I'm a younger millennial but I know how to do that. Culturally I relate way more with gen z than I do millennials, but man do I feel immense pain when I have to explain to people younger than me how to use technology. I had to explain to one of my younger coworkers how to navigate between folders and different hard drives within Windows the other day and it was more difficult than teaching my mom how to use a smart phone when they first came out. Too young to have had a MySpace but old enough to be everyone's personal IT guy.
- The deep magic
- The proto-millennials, if you will.
- By hand. 😤
- Defragmenting takes way too long, especially with a > 6tb drive: just buy a new one and copy the data to it then wipe the old one.
- It doesn't do anything you know it just burns out the hard drive.
- Oh yeah, defrag me harder daddy
I'm in there, I feel closer to Millenial than Gen X but not quite full Millenial. Think it's also referred to as the Oregon Trail generation, due to it being a common early PC game to play in class when they taught us computers. I still remember first seeing the trash bin on a Macintosh grow fat when it had items in it, I thought it was awesome, years before Windows.
- Yes but do you remember The Secret Island of Dr. Quandary and the creepy dolls?
I thought we were the Oregon Trail generation. (‘81)
We’re sometimes referred to as “The Oregon Trail Generation.” We rode our bikes and ran around in the woods until it got dark, then went inside to play Nintendo.
- We are the Xenomorph generation.
They were called Gen Y back in the early 90s
TIL I'm a "Xelennial"
There are a bunch of us who had a more GenX life than our birth year would suggest. The internet wasn't a source of study and paper writing until college. We were allowed to stay home alone after school far younger than is legal today. In the summer we were kicked out of the house and roamind the town on your bike with no method of contact was normal.
If you saw kids in an 80s movie our lives matched that more than a 90s movie.

Who the hell can afford a printer

Anyone can afford the printer, it's the ink that's the problem

The cheap refills came with a free printer.

Xennial here, get a Brother laser printer if you can. The "starter toner" lasted me for like 4 years so far and is only now getting low. I can't imagine going back to an inkjet that would always dry up since I used infrequently, but I still needed it.

Bonus is you can buy third party refilled toner in bundles for like $15 for 3. I bought some a couple of years ago and I still haven't burned through the first replacement
- There have been reports that Brother has finally started being evil about third-party toner with new firmwares.
Same, 3 years running, printing lots of shit for my own company and just now got a "low toner" warning which I'm ignoring for the last 2 or so months. Buying an inkjet is the biggest scam there is, you pay more in the ink and broken printers than you ever would for a laser.
A second vote for brother lasers.
I upgraded my old printer about 6 months ago. Laser is far superior, and no longer particularly expensive. I also discovered they have solved the photo printing quality issue at some point (laser's only real weakness). I ran off a photo and it came out near/at inkjet quality.
- You do one up front payment and it saves so much money long term, so many people are against that concept
Yep, finally got rid of my Epson BJ with a Brother b/w laser and it’s fantastic. A little louder but it functions like it should instead of complaining about low Magenta.

Just get a Brother laser printer. It uses a normal power chord same exact as any desktop PC, and uses toner, same exact as any real printer that's not a money farming piece of shit ink jet.

DISCLAIMER: I have not investigated Brother or other brands for enshittification in recent years, so YMMV.

My Brother lazer color printer has just been sitting here, pooping out pages and pages of what ever I want, sometimes sitting there off for months, year after year. Still haven't changed the toner.

Same, had a samsung for 5 years and it sucked, my Brother has been solid for over 5 years now. Just get one that has network support, so you can print from any computer (and even a phone) in your network.
I really miss google cloud print, it was an amazing product (my printer still supports it).
Is that an AC/DC power chord?
- Sir/ma'am, you win the best comment I've seen today, congrats
Seconded! I have several Brother MFCs. Rock solid, great Linux support, rarely change the toner.
My HP color laser was such a hassle, every time I wanted to use it I had to hard boot it, and even then it only worked half the time. No wifi or apple access over the network or any other fancy stuff ofc.
Have a b&w brother now, the android app is meh but else it's wonderful, just doing its job all day long.
Is the color laser as good?
- In my experience, yes, but I also do not print a ton of color things, or things in general. It's just been spitting out random pages here or there for years. Maybe only went through 1.5 reams so far.
I had a Samsung laser back in college and now it's leaving streaks down the page. No clue how to clean it. I think I gave it away

The best investment of my life was buying an Epson LQ500 back in... I don't know... '95 perhaps? All this years, and even after months or even years without use it will happily awake from its slumber to once again scream and punch dots on to its never ending but ancient supply of fanfold paper

But where do you get new ribbons? Or can you re-ink them?
- For one, they are still sold new for a surprising low amount of money (e.g.: https://www.bueromarkt-ag.de/farbband_kmp_0633_0501_fuer_epson,vt-farbbaender_und_-rollen,vh-epson,vg-lq_500,p-06330501.html) but re-inking them using just rubber stamp ink is also a possibility.

I just print at a local library

Got a simple brother laser printer. Duplex, BW only, works flawlessly with Linux and as a network printer.

4-5 times a year I'll need to print 10 pages. Add an additional one every two weeks.

The printer definitely paid for itself in convenience.

Same, I got mocked for buying it. It gets used at least once a month.

The entire printer industry is being funded by our grandparents, I am not fucking joking. My grandpa has bought MULTIPLE printers last year alone, please some one send help.

My entire family for probably 30 years thought i was gaslighting them about how bad my grandfather is with computers. And phones. And the internet. And phones.
He's 93 and he's convinced them really well these last 5 years or so. It's a nightmare lol.
Help in the form of more printers?
- No, he obviously needs a fax so he can receive your message

My local library has been getting refurbished for a couple of months.

It's really thrown off my ability to do paperwork, as they were the only people around with a working printer.

I actually had to fix the printer at work. Horrible stuff.

Hey! I use my local library too! 😂
Ditto on libraries. Mine does AWESOME large format printing for next to nothing. I got 5 different sewing patterns printed, which ended up being 20 or so pages of 48"x48" sheets in color and it cost about $30. Priced it at fedex and it was running well over $100 (I think closer to 200 or 300 but I didn't pay much attention after seeing how much it was at the libraries.
I have a small Canon b/w laserjet at home which has worked well for small projects but the libraries have been a huge help for anything outside standard letter size print jobs.

I've had an operational printer in the household since around the year 2000, and I cannot fathom not having access to one. I would be a virtual headless chicken running around wailing about gutenburg or something.

Switching from Ink to Laser printers was a game changer as far as maintenance and costs (you can pick up a reconditioned laser printer from the early 2000's from a company that specializes in refurbing them and rock it for decades).

i mean, yeah i have had a nice working brother printer for a few decades, but i got a library card too. My employer can afford 10 cents a page if they want me to print.
- Having a home printer allows for easy printing of shipping labels, zines, letters, etc.
  As for books, it can be useful for rarer books that a library may not have access to, though that is a bit more rare of a need.

Millenials

Hey other 40 year olds: Do you not have a printer? I have never not owned a printer. Technically speaking, I have 3 printers right now. A document printer, an FDM 3D printer, and a resin 3D printer.

I don't know why I would have a printer
- To throw at someone who asks for their keys.
Yeah I have no idea what this is talking about. 38 here, I've owned a printer for 15 years at least. We switched to a Brother laser printer a few years back and it's the tits.
I also own a minivan, AMA.
- Perhaps you guys are too young and printers just skipped a generation.
I own a 3d printer and haven't had a 2d printer since childhood. I do have a personal laser printer at the office and it's awesome.
I'm 34, I own a printer, an FDM printer and my ex has my 3 other 3d printers.
And two non-working printers. And a working laser color printer I miss dearly.
I'm 40 and haven't had a printer for 14 years, because I moved and left it behind (gave to a friend) on purpose; I have been printing things at work
So I guess what I'm saying is, I'm the guy in the meme

We bought a laser printer during the pandemic to keep the kids occupied with educational tasks and general craft type models.

It has been fucking awesome this past few years. It has supported the weight of many a schoolbag, been a home for car keys, kept a judo gi flat for a few days, and has even proven to be a worthy store of the multitude of swimming goggles we seem to accumulate.

Oh, it's printed a couple of documents too. I can't remember the last time I refilled the paper tray.

Yeah, I have a 20yo laser printer that's still going strong, although the network card crapped out.
- Yeah laser units are pretty much indestructible in decent conditions. Can yours be connected by USB or parallel instead?

I bought a Brother about a year ago. I hadn't owned a printer in about 12-15 years. In Japan, one can generally just print things at the convenience store (after uploading (app, browser, etc.) or via USB stick), but I moved to the middle of nowhere and got tired of going back and forth. I also needed to print things like business cards which the cobini printers won't do.

Just bought a brother laser for my job. Damn toner ran out on day 1. I printed 400 pages but still... Oh brother
- Have you considered a Kindle instead?
I used to take out my reliable ol' USB pendrive whenever I wanted to print something. Then right after a printing errand I found out my pendrive had gotten sick with a virus called "Marcelo" and suddenly all the document files on the family PC turned into shortcuts that lead to an encrypted folder. Never again lol
I've heard good things about Brother, how's the ink and Linux situation with those?
- I test printed once from Mint, but couldn't daily-drive linux due to other software I need to work not working after a mint version upgrade.
In usa you can email documents to staples to get a code to print on their copiers for a fee

I have a printer, and know where the power cord is! I even have it paired to my wifi and use it to scan stuff. Don't ask me to print anything, I can't afford the ink.

Sometimes, staples or FedEx just to print the lease, sign the lease, and scan the lease.

10 cents a page black and white at my town's library
Plus I can rent a DVD and chat with a cool librarian

You guys have work printers?

Just playing, I have a Brother color laser printer. Had it for about 7 years, replaced the toner only once, prints fantastically. I mostly use it as a scanner and printing coloring pages for the kid.

You guys don't use cloud printing for like 1000% premium?

Cloud printing?
- Yeah you send it to the cloud and the next time it rains your print comes down with it.
- OK, made it up TBH. Kinda. This is what I was referring to printme

Who prints things? Don't think I have used a printer for personal or work purposes in years.

I bought one to print anti-Trump propaganda to post by the mailboxes.
And because I'm a Millennial, I enjoy printing photos because I grew up having photo albums, and as such I'm used to making them. Plus if I don't print them I'll literally ever look at them.
I do, but it's also my favourite hi-tech success, having a functional reliable printer.
It is only black and white though.
Sometimes it's nice to print out a drawing to scribble on.

The IT folk have printers. I spent several hundred on an office-tier printer years ago and have never done maintenance or even replaced the toner. It just works and will continue to work for years.

I rescued mine - an A3 colour laser with network and auto duplex, no less - from work's e-waste pile after "the purge" where they eliminated all single-user "personal" printers and moved to only shared printers with swipe card print release.
Have enough toner cartridges to last a lifetime too; its, or mine (either way).
- All hail the e-waste pile. I have so many monitors, laptops, desktops, mice and keyboards from several of my old jobs that were otherwise going to be trashed.
Is this perhaps why? I thought it was because of kids.
I've had the same ink jet since 2016. The kids have done a good job keeping the jets from having a chance to clog. There is also a wall of family pictures, comparatively infrequent but it was the original reason for purchasing this specific printer. That and zero config printing from mobile devices
- That's impressive! Mine is a laser printer so it's a bit different, in my experience inkjets are prone to issues so congratulations on having it so long!

This is me. Now that I work from home, if I need to print something (maybe 3 times per year), I use a mailing service that will print a pdf and send it to my place. It cost 2€ per document, takes 2-3 days to arrive, but it is still cheaper and less painful than buying a printer.

Why not use the local library? They often offer print services
- The printer was removed from my library years ago because it was broken: they didn't have anybody to fix it and didn't want to buy a new one.

It's not even the cost for me -- it's the space! Valuable space on a table or shelf that could be used by something that brings joy to my life instead of a machine.

Not just any machine, the most foul, wretched, cursed devil's machine
Work gave me a tiny HP LaserJet 8 years ago, and it was old then. Rock and roll. Toner is $20 a pop and goes 1,000 pages.
As to space, it's racked next to my tiny server rack. Still takes space?

I just write the document by hand the one time a year I need a printer. Doesn't work for everything but is good enough for lots of the stuff that still requires your signature in ink

- Ah, found a solution for that too. There's services twhere you can send a pdf and they will print it, pack it in an envelope and send it to any address you specify.

Brother laser gang here -- highly recommend. I print a handful of things every year and it hasn't let me down. Still rocking the original toner and I bought it in 2021.

Same, same. Just FYI, Brother has maybe pushed some sketchy updates recently. This would be a massive betrayal, as Brother has always been the best & everybody else sucks.
So just make sure your printer doesn't connect to the internet. 👍
- I saw that Brother completely refuted these claims, but obviously there is always a chance that they will go to the dark side.

Home printers suck, too much gadgetry and bs involved. Industrial printers are far better at being plug and play. I dont need apps or anything at all.

Xennial here. I bought a nice lightly used office printer/copier for cheap off ebay a few years back for my daughter’s Girl Scout troop. It saw a lot of use while I was an assistant leader, but nowadays I only use it to print Pathfinder character sheets and maps. I definitely don’t use it enough to justify it, but as long as I have it I may as well keep it.

I have an awesome Brother laser printer that I have had for years. I have replaced the toner once even with regular use. Sad to have to give it up when I move to Europe.

Don't ask Richard Stallman to view a non-printed webpage.

HP doesn't even sell the ink for my (relatively new) printer where I live.
Its on their U.S site, but I can't order from that since it asks for a ZIP code.

Most BS thing I had to deal with HP ink was region-locked ink. If you buy the European version of the US ink (it’s literally the exact same thing with a different label) it will refuse to work unless you change the region of your printer. Good luck going through HP support
- What the actual fuck

I refuse to own a printer. On the odd occasion I need to print something and I'm not at work, the local copy place can do it for fuck all and I don't need to worry about ink subscriptions or the print queue not working that day.

What? I have a working printer and a box full of power cables.

Was gunna say, I have 3.
Brother b/w Laser Printer - Most things
Epson Ecotank - Color prints (usually stickers/heat transfer vinyl + cutting machine below printer)
Canon PIXMA large format - Got this one for free, I use it to print 18*24 (usually knock off posters for photography sets, or cus I HAVE THE POWER TO MAKE MY OWN BOOTLEG POSTERS FEAR ME)
- Brother b/w laser ftw

I can't remember the last time I actually had to print something, it's either digital or you get sent whatever needs to be on paper.

I don't understand why laser printers aren't more affordable. way back in 2010 I bought a full colour Samsung laser printer for $200. Nowadays you can't find a full color printer for under $500.00

My Brother color printer was like $350 and they are probably the only OEM I'd even recommend.

Who the hell can afford printer cartridge

The problems with society can really be highlighted with how printers are marketed. Cheaper to buy a new printer than replace the ink cartridges on an existing printer.
We are literally built to encourage waste.
- Nope. You just need to pay more to be eco friendly

Eh just go to the library and use theirs on the cheap.

and they tend to use good industrial grade ones so they work most of the time, and if anything goes wrong you are not the one that needs to deal with it.
- This. The one time I bought a printer for home use it turned out to be possessed by evil spirits or something.
  By contrast the enormous printer at work is a perfect angel and if it ever plays up, that's between it and its servicers.

Nephew of Xena

laser is the secret

Brother is the other secret, though it seem like maybe even they have turned... the problem with making a solid piece of equipment that will last for a decade is you consume your customer base and can't show 'growth' constantly.
My Brother color laser (model 3170, bought in 2016) doesn't print the perfect photos, but that's not what I use it for. I print coloring sheets and camp forms for my kiddos and random forms for adult life. It ran on the original toner carts for around 5 years, with black being replaced first on its own. There's no inkjet in the world that will have 5 year-old carts work, but laser toner doesn't dry out.
- Yup, one of the first things I did when I had a reasonable expectation of not moving around often was buy a big ass brother laser printer, scanner etc used for like $60. These things are built like a tank.
Going to my local library is the secret.

Bought a Canon laser printer a decade ago. Only needed a new set of toner and a bunch of paper obviously. Standard power cord, standard USB 1.x cable. Still works in Windows 11. I think I got it working in Linux at some point, but I don't know if it does nowadays, because I probably don't have the mental fortitude to touch CUPS again in this lifetime. (People keep saying audio is a nightmare to set up in Linux. Ohh you clearly haven't tried to set up a printer or you would not be complaining)

Linux is fine for printers. As long as you don't want to print more than one copy. But even then you just start multiple print jobs. Unless you need a lot of copies. Then Windows or Mac is probably easier.
(People keep saying audio is a nightmare to set up in Linux. Ohh you clearly haven’t tried to set up a printer or you would not be complaining)
My single worst experience with Linux was getting audio to work with an ISA Plug 'n' Play Sound Blaster card back in the late 90s. Eventually I got it to work, but after installing the card I had to dig through documentation and forums to figure out that in addition to audio drivers I needed to install a package for ISA PnP cards, run a tool that came with that to generate a config file, realize that config file contained every hypothetical configuration my card could potentially have all commented out, find and uncomment the actual configuration I wanted the card to use and then restart the isapnp driver. All of that to get basic functionality. For Windows, I literally just installed the card and it worked with basic functionality out of the box, with an option to go to their website and download a driver for some extra functionality specific to that card.
That...soured me on the idea of desktop Linux for several years.
Strangely, this has never been the case for me (printers, not audio which obviously has sucked in the past). Also if you get a printer that is networked, it generally just works these days, better than my Windows experience.
I've genuinely never had a better printing experience than on Linux. Across multiple distros. just press ctrl+p, printer is already detected, press ok, done. What am I doing wrong?

A printer's cheap. It's the ink.

I haven't had a printer in maybe a decade. No, more than that. Like fifteen years.

Got a few lying around somewhere. It'd take weeks to get them working. Fuck it I'll just print to a pdf and email the file.

i had to print 2 whole pages a few years ago, and gone to a office supply store. told them i would like to pay for it by card...cashier told me if i use the card, the banking transaction cost more than printing two a4 papers, so long story short it was free.

these stores usually have a printer so expensive i wouldnt be able to pay for it with all my organs, but its cheaper to print there then having a printer at home.

as for work, i dont like the looks people give me when i print there. i like to keep my private life out of the office, i recommend the same. if you want to print out a long ass book however, and nobody cares at work, go ahead.

I had to get one during covid lockdown since I wasn't going to the office and staples messed up my jobs most of the time (and it wasn't cheap). I got a laser all-in-one and got knock off toner from Amazon and it works great and I got it for less than $90

I just go to a print/copy store. Pay up, be done with it.

Personally, I like not needing to dedicate the space to a printer. The rare times I need to print something, I'll just go to a store with a print shop like staples. Over the last 8 years, I've spent less than $10 on all of my printing needs, which is still way cheaper than even the most cost-effective, least-HP printer out there.

Your problem is comparing to the shittiest of printers.

If this is me in several years, I think my version will be “my precious pre-enshittification brother laser is so old they stopped making third party toner carts for it” or probably more likely something like “how do we have a working plugged-in printer on wifi that we can’t find? Did we build a wall in front of it? How long was it sitting in the corner of that spare room?”

Last year I bought an old second-hand Brother laser printer for $20, with 60% ink and 75% on the drum. Works like a charm.

I have a printer, actually. I use it pretty often, too. No internet connected, while the Canon 4200 series do have wifi capability I generally stick to the USB cable.

In a pinch I would go to a library or I would even visit a print shop for more exotic prints.

Printers are scams.....the end

I have a printer

My label maker sees FAR more use. I do have to bring a printed form to the post office to confirm my purchase of my new P.O. Box though. Oh, also to get my replacement passport. Other than that, I can’t remember the last time I used it for printing.

Idk man. I’ve had the same printer for years and I don’t think I’ve ever replaced the ink. Very rarely have to print, but it’s sure useful when I need to. I use the scanner more than anything

Given the extortionate cost of printer ink, owning a printer is a mug’s game. Much like owning a car if you live in a walkable urban environment but might need to drive somewhere once every year or two.

The hardest part about returns is driving to the local library to print out the return label for 25 cents.

Much less trouble than owning a printer!!

I have two ten year old non color hp laser printers. I bought them at a surplus sales along with two new toners. So far I'm still on the first printer. They are old enough that they have no drm. The work with everything and I expect them to outlast me. I print about ten to twenty pages a year.

Picked one for free two years ago, works perfect, I buy pirated cartridges for like, 30$ per entire set, evep prints high quality photos...

pirated cartridges
what
- Will it be better if I call them 'third party' or 'not approved by the manufacturer'?

Just picked one up for $10 at habitat for humanity restore. Works perfectly, scanner too! Still got em.

I’ve heard Xennial and even heard Xellennial, had not heard Xenninial yet. Impressed.

I have had a series of perpetually 10+ year old printers that have been handed down to me by Boomers. I print something maybe once a year, so I usually have to go through a half hour of printer cleaning to get the dried out ink to flow again. I really should just get rid of it and go to a photocopy place the next time I need a physical copy of something.

Edit: I just realized it would literally be easier and faster to burn something onto paper with my laser engraver. I think I just talked myself into quitting printers.

Get a toner printer, they don't go bad.
They can be left on their own for years and they still print the same.

Don't send anybody anything to print at home. If you need something physical in today's year, you go through that effort and mail it

I have a canon pixma printer and the goddamn IT people can’t make it work with my new laptop. Fucking bullshit.

What the fuck? How do they return shit they don't want? Do young people just keep everything they order?

it's in the meme- they print things out at work to use at home
You're kidding, right?
You cross out the address and write "return to sender" ? What has a printer got to do with it
I mean, the tweet says it - work printer. Though in all seriousness, I think the last time I needed to print a return label, I think I just did it at the UPS store for a few cents.

Norway is pretty much paperless I only use the printer to print colouring pages for the kids.

I wish I could turn mine on. The power button is so flimsy that it broke, so now it functions as a foot stool.

Have you ever considered the fact that you can simply take it apart and repair the button?
- Is this a trap question where whatever I say will be contradicted and berated? Because your tone feels a bit arrogant and condescending right from the get-go.

I have to use a printer for my work-from-home job. If you just buy a Brother laserjet printer and avoid other brands and inkjets, it's way more affordable. It costs more up front, but they're reliable and don't need to be replaced every year. My printer cost $250 and I've had it for at least five years at this point.

I have a cheapass printer that is probably listening to me. It has little ink (i barely used it and the black ink is at 50%) i use the scanner feature more often.

I love copiers

Who the hell can figure out how to make a printer work

I recently bought a nice Epson tank printer and I love it. The ink is lasting so long too I print a ton and am not even halfway through the ink it came with. Nice prints too. Photos