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.
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2025
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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.
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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.
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I just go to a print/copy store. Pay up, be done with it.
Norway is pretty much paperless I only use the printer to print colouring pages for the kids.
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)
(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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
A printer's cheap. It's the ink.
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.