Buy it for Life

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A place to share practical, durable and quality made products that are made to last, with an emphasis on upcycled and sustainable products!

Guidelines:

Things that are well-made and durable (even if they won't last a lifetime) are A-Okay!

Unlike that other BIFL place, Home-made and DIY items are encouraged here, as long as some form of instruction is included in the body of the post.

Videos links are not allowed as post titles, but you may use them in a text post.

A limited amount of self-promotion is accepted, IF the item you are selling aligns with this criteria:

The item must be made with sustainable or recycled materials.
If electronic in some way, the item must be open-source.
The item must be user-serviceable (if applicable).
You cannot be a large corporation.
The post must be clearly marked with a [Self Promotion] tag in your title.

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Laser printer recommendations (midwest.social)

submitted 5 days ago by sxan@midwest.social to c/buyitforlife@slrpnk.net

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Recommendations for a color, full duplex, laser printer?

Another printer company (Brother) has fallen to the allure of "remote disable" if they object to you using your own device in a way they don't like: trying to self-service, use third party inks, whatever. It's at their discretion. Given printers are the sorts of devices to which you tend to want to have network access, preventing this is a lot of work.

I've been looking at color duplex laser printers, and Brother has been at the top of the list, until they recently announcement that they'd disable printers using third party inks.

BIFL to me implies that the company isn't going to actively sabotage self-service, or restrict your usage of the thing, so I think this is an appropriate question for this c/.

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[–] LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz 7 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Brother is saying they won't "brick" your printer. Sounds like they're only denying the most extreme description and not what they're actually doing.

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 12 points 5 days ago

Why the hell does a printer need to "call home" for anything anyway?

Man that really grinds my gears. So now I need to isolate my printer in a VLAN and only open a port for my server to access it so it can be shared there, to keep it from accessing the internet.

I've found refurbed HP lasers (older ones, that have NICs but before this web crap) - they're looking pretty attractive...

[–] Nomad@infosec.pub 1 points 4 days ago

They are saying they are not reducing print quality intentionally if not using the wrong toner cartridge.