Printer purchase advice

[Curt Harms]

I'll be the oddball (again). I had a Brother monochrome multifunction that had a pretty short life. It printed fine but had paper feed issues. I tried everything I read about and even replaced the paper tray. It printed single sheets fine but would jam when feeding from the tray. I became a Brother guy because they supported simple reliable Linux printing. I had a Brother Ledger size inkjet for 10+ years and it was working fine when I gave it away. It was able to use refillable ink cartridges so my per page cost was insignificant. The reason I gave it away is because I could never get it to print envelopes well at all.

[Curt Harms]

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P.S. HP makes some decent laser printers but their driver and control software leave a lot to be desired... as in the software is so bad and buggy I hate their printers.

Here's a bit of trivia I learned recently. Who made the print engines for the legendary early HP Laserjets that made HP's reputation in desktop printers? HP? Nope, Canon. I don't know about the paper feed mechanism and electronics but the print engines were from Canon.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Same as it ever was. Back in 1989, I bought one of the very first inkjet printers: an HP DeskJet. They were already on the second or third generation of LaserJets at the time. And I seem to recall that their Ethernet-to-parallel network adapters had a 'Jet' in the name as well.

Yep - the good old JetDirect. Man the struggles I had with those nasty little things.

Here's one of the originators of the HP laser line telling some of their story.

https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/time...et_page_00.htm

[Bill George]

I am thinking of buying a color printer to do decals with, the Epson uses a ink jet bottles and I think the ink jet does a better job than color laser. I would rather have a laser but now all the schemes to prevent using aftermarket ink and toner is putting me off.

[Bill Howatt]

If you want to print then you have go with the system.
I haven't heard anything about laser toner cartridges having chips, expiry time, etc (other than they tell you the recommended shelf life is 2 years typically). My experience with chips was with inkjet cartridges and an aftermarket company I used to deal with had cartridges that were chipped or unchipped so you could use them instead of the OEM products.
My suggestion is that if you want to use a certain printer, reach out to the aftermarket companies and inquire about replacement ink concerns.
BTW, one of the reasons for the time-sensitive cartridges is consumers would have expired, gummy ink and it wouldn't work properly and they bad-mouthed the printer.

[Brian Elfert]

Laser printers definitely have chips too. I had a chip fail in a generic cartridge in my Xerox color laser printer. The cartridge manufacturer replaced the cartridge, but the second cartridge failed in some other way and I went back to OEM cartridges.

[Jerome Stanek]

I'll be the oddball (again). I had a Brother monochrome multifunction that had a pretty short life. It printed fine but had paper feed issues. I tried everything I read about and even replaced the paper tray. It printed single sheets fine but would jam when feeding from the tray. I became a Brother guy because they supported simple reliable Linux printing. I had a Brother Ledger size inkjet for 10+ years and it was working fine when I gave it away. It was able to use refillable ink cartridges so my per page cost was insignificant. The reason I gave it away is because I could never get it to print envelopes well at all.

My Brother didn't last as long as I would have liked I also had the paper feed problem. Then I went HP but didn't like replacing Toner cartridgages when they were only half empty put the chip said no more printing. So now I have a Dell color all in one laser

[Brian Elfert]

The good news for me is the Xerox chipped toner cartridges seem to print until the toner actually runs out. One or two of my toner cartridges are from when the printer was new over a dozen years ago and still going strong. Luckily, I can still get drivers for this printer.

[Bill George]

All of the newer laser printers Brother and HP have chips to read in the OEM toner cartridges. When your printer is online WiFi it calls home and gets the firmware updated and then it checks your toner. If you have printed so many pages or for so long it decides you need a New one whether or not its still printing good. The Epson ink jet with the large tanks prints forever on the factory ink and its not outrageous in price. But I am I not sure about the print head clogging issues they Used to have??

[Jim Becker]

All of the newer laser printers Brother and HP have chips to read in the OEM toner cartridges. When your printer is online WiFi it calls home and gets the firmware updated and then it checks your toner. If you have printed so many pages or for so long it decides you need a New one whether or not its still printing good. The Epson ink jet with the large tanks prints forever on the factory ink and its not outrageous in price. But I am I not sure about the print head clogging issues they Used to have??

The new Brother mono laser I recently bought for Professor Dr SWMBO does not have that "feature" as far as I can tell. The HP InkJet that we returned (after two years...) did and that's what did it in because it refused to print until it authenticated to HP's servers even with new cartridges installed. HP lost our business because of that.

[Dave Zellers]

The HP InkJet that we returned (after two years...) did and that's what did it in because it refused to print until it authenticated to HP's servers even with new cartridges installed. HP lost our business because of that.

We had the exact same experience with our Cannon. It was working perfectly fine one day, then the next, refused to print. Man, was I angry.

[Lee DeRaud]

My current Brother laser works fine with cheap third-party toner cartridges. That's the good news.
The bad news is, the cheap cartridge that's in it now throws random blotches and the toner doesn't stick that well to the paper. It's ok for printing the daily crossword and sudoku, but if I need it for a "keeper" doc, I'll toss the current cartridge (and the unused cartridge of the "two-pack") and get a real one. Just not that expensive in the overall scheme of things.

[Curt Harms]

The new Brother mono laser I recently bought for Professor Dr SWMBO does not have that "feature" as far as I can tell. The HP InkJet that we returned (after two years...) did and that's what did it in because it refused to print until it authenticated to HP's servers even with new cartridges installed. HP lost our business because of that.

HP is taking a different tack when it comes to printing. They seem to be trying to "sell printing as a service". You pay so much per page, we supply printer, ink/toner, and maybe paper. Certainly not to my taste, perhaps businesses will find it to their taste, they'll likely pay less per page and I would.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/...icts/?td=rt-4a

[Bill Howatt]

For the lower package at $6.99 for 20 pages and a $1 for 10-15 more if over, doesn't seem like a real bad option for a lot of people. I'm trying to be realistic given the anguish many have with their own printing setups.
My feeling is that many, many young people don't print anything, they just keep it on their phones. I gave my stepson and older HP laser and he doesn't even use it or any other printer. Even I, as an old, now octogenarian, don't see the need to print as much although I wouldn't want to be without a printer. In my case, everything is handled on my desktop/cloud rather than a phone.

[Jim Becker]

HP is taking a different tack when it comes to printing. They seem to be trying to "sell printing as a service". You pay so much per page, we supply printer, ink/toner, and maybe paper. Certainly not to my taste, perhaps businesses will find it to their taste, they'll likely pay less per page and I would.

I have no issue with subscriptions for certain software products I use because I like things to stay up to date, but no way would I embrace that model for something like printing. It might be a different situation for a business, particularly one without IT support, but not for me as an individual.